Madrid (EFE).- The Constitutional Court has established that forcing an abortion to be performed in an autonomous community other than the one of residence violates the fundamental rights of women.
Legal sources report that the First Chamber has unanimously granted protection to a woman for appreciating that the Murcian Health Service, by referring the plaintiff to a private health center in Madrid, has violated the right of legal configuration of women to the interruption of pregnancy, which is part of their fundamental right to physical and moral integrity.
The decision of the autonomous court considered this decision of the Murcian Health Service justified because no physician in the Region of Murcia had requested to perform abortions.
But the Constitutional understands that this circumstance cannot exempt the doctors of the Murcian public health or the centers linked to it from practicing the voluntary interruption of pregnancy in the legally foreseen cases.
The court maintains that such exemption would only have been possible if all these professionals had exercised their right to conscientious objection as established by law, which would have required them to exercise this right individually, in advance and in writing, which in the case prosecuted was not accredited.
The law guarantees that abortion must be performed in public centers of the own autonomy
The magistrates recall that the legal provision that guarantees that the abortion must be carried out in the centers of the public health network of the autonomous community itself, except in exceptional cases in which the public health service cannot facilitate it due to an objection of widespread awareness, constitutes a guarantee that the termination of pregnancy is carried out in accordance with constitutional requirements.
This is to safeguard “that the woman who is going to terminate the pregnancy, who is in a situation of physical and emotional vulnerability, does not leave her usual environment and can count on the support of her relatives to face this difficult situation in the least traumatic way possible.
For this reason, it considers that the Murcian Health Service, by referring the woman to a private health center in Madrid to perform the abortion without having given any exceptional reason, has violated her right to terminate the pregnancy, which is part of her fundamental right. to physical and moral integrity.