FULFILLED WOMANHOOD IN DYSTOPIC SPAIN

Since the 1st January 2014, the legislation about reproductive rights in Spain has changed. If a child gets injured or contracts a life-threatening disease, one of the biological parents, preferently the father, will be seized and brought to a hospital, where he will be bound to the child to act as a hemodialysis machine. He will also be legally bound to donate blood, plasm, bone marrow, and other tissues and/or organs in order to save the life of his child. He will be under legal custody for the duration of the treatment, and he will also be in charge of all the medical expenses and bills of the procedures.

The biological parent can appeal for an exemption of this procedure, but it will only be approved if two different physicians sign a document stating that his body will not save the life of the child. Also, if he successfully runs away and absconds, he will not be prosecuted afterwards, even if the child dies.

Thanks to this law, families will be protected, and fathers will enjoy freely their right to paternity. They will also be spared the trauma of seeing their child die. The lawmakers truly know what is good for parents, and the enforcement of this law will bring true freedom to society.

Haha just kidding. What a dystopic, terrifying scenario. This shit does never happen to people, unless they happen to have a uterus, and in that case they are not real people anyway.

Fuck, we dumb sluts have no clue about what is good for us. Our bodies and minds are nothing much more than a life support system for a fetus. The Minister in charge has the nerve to tell us that women (for them, a womb=woman, always and forever) can only find true fulfillment through maternity. Mr. Gallardon, what a strange little sad man you are.

This month, a group of fifteen cis men has stripped more than twenty million people of their bodily rights, and no one has thrown a stone. I see a thousand voices raised, complaining about it, but nobody is really doing anything.

What did we expect? Did we really think we were their equals?

This is our fault. We white cis women have willingly handed away our rights to cis men, in hope they would not abuse them. We have never demanded a quota of female politicians or lawmakers. We have never demanded equal representation of all social groups and strata in the government. We have happily thrown other oppressed groups under the bus, because we already had “equality”. We thought we had the power and we were unwilling to share.

We wanted rich white cis men to like us: we have laughted at their jokes, we have applauded enthusiastically to their racist, sexist, ableist laws. We have insulted and denigrated other women, poor women, immigrant women, trans women, because of their sexuality or lack of it. We have insulted and dissed women who have taken an emergency contraceptive, even if we also had to take it (all abortions are immoral, except mine, amirite?). We have become oppressors, and now we whine because suddenly we are oppressed again.

This is a hard, bitter lesson for us. The government we have? We voted for them, for fucks sake. We have forgotten to vote. Even if the abortion bill was in their electoral program. Even if they promised to implement it, loud and clear. And now, what do we have? A government nostalgic of the dictatorship. An opposition without a backbone.

What will we have? I wonder how many of the young girls who waved the PP’s banners in triumph the election day will book a ticket with Ryanair with the excuse of having a nice weekend in London. How many tired housewives will have to resign themselves to not go back to work after finding out they are pregnant again. How many families, already burdened with a dependent person, will find out that the fetus in the womb will probably never develop properly. How many scared teenage girls will look up in the Internet to discover a website that explains that a pregnancy can be interrupted if you take a high dose of certain over-the-counter medicines (omitting conveniently the liver damage and the uterus erosion that can happen as a consequence, as well as the almost unavoidable sepsis). How many more trafficked women will be brought to the emergency room with their insides torn, because of an unnamed incident with a coat hanger.

The new laws are, make no mistake, a violent, misogynistic attact on people with uteri, and, by omission, we have enabled it. Now we, as a privileged group, have the obligation to go clean our own mess.

Words by Esther Nelke

Illustration by Lo Pecado & Judy Mièl