Criminal populism is an evil that has afflicted us for decades; a woefully transverse scourge, increasingly present throughout the spectrum, from left to right. Criminogenic factors are neglected, criminal investigation and prosecution (the probability of punishment) are not improved, we continue with a Criminal Code of the nineteenth century and everything is reduced to laws – which generally increase penalties and carry their own names – of poor quality, which generate expectations that are quickly unsatisfied, discrediting all the institutions of the system, less to the parliamentarians who enjoy smiling, while we succumb in a vicious spiral.
In these days we witnessed its maximum expression, with Deputy Urruticoechea at the head. His project and his sayings may not be “popular” (as something massive), but they are addressed to parishioners who ardently celebrate these barbarities. The honorable said that “the greatest number of rapes do not occur inside the home, they occur in prisons”, with an evidently false data; “Beware they have to be repeated rapes, for a woman to get pregnant”, knowing, I suppose – although I probably wish the stork was taught in schools – that procreation has no relation to the absence of consent of the woman; and that “a woman who has been raped and aborts, does not deviolve [sic]”. This does not have much originality, because Yesli Vega said something similar after winning a parliamentary primary in the United States, minimizing the chances of pregnancy in rape. Vega is a Republican from there, and we know that copies are usually bad. But I don’t want to stay with the straw person; we are going to try to refute an iron one, assuming that what the honorable says he seeks is true.
The controversial statements arose after he presented a bill with Harry Jürgensen to repeal abortion on three grounds and sanction certain figures more severely (Bulletin No. 15372-11). The project, which seeks to speak to very few people, has no chance of being approved, but Urruticoechea wrote on Twitter, next to a photo with his hand up, that he will continue “defending the lives of the innocent despite the cheap insults of the progressives, the street militancy of feminism and gender ideology.” So, without insults, let’s assume that this is the intention of the honorable and review some issues of the (not so famous) project.
Banning abortion does not diminish its practice, as the Ministry of Women and Gender Equity rightly published, and I have already referred to the fact that I believe that a model like the Uruguayan one would be more effective in its reduction, but we will leave that aside to look at the proposal.
The bill repeals abortion on three grounds approved with immense support from criminal law experts. At the time it was cataloged by 17 outstanding professors of the area as the “most conservative system possible [dentro de los que regulan la interrupción del embarazo], that is, it is the most protective system of the fetus and restrictive of the autonomy of the woman that is known among the relevant systems in the regulation of this matter”. I suppose that for the honourable the conviction in Indonesia for aborting a 15-year-old girl raped by her brother is a heroic act of defence for life. Let’s look a little more.
The project was carried out with more haste than reflection and its abundant spelling mistakes account for it, but the worst thing is its content. It starts from an incorrect premise, defining abortion as a form of homicide. If it refers to human life as an object of protection, it has a point, but the norm of behavior required by the sanction of homicide is different from that which bases the penalty of abortion. Homicide only requires not killing; while abortion requires not to kill and also not to terminate the pregnancy until its term, under threat of imprisonment. Thus, since the honorable even want to punish cases of therapeutic abortions, the project seeks to impose a penalty of up to 10 years for the woman who aborts to save her life. It would be the most burdensome imposition of the legal system, even worse than being forced to hand over under threat of prison a kidney, a piece of liver or bone marrow to save an innocent, because in those cases no life is risked.
Then the bill increases the penalties for certain abortions. This crime can be classified according to who performs the conduct: it can be committed by a non-professional third party; by a third-party physician; or by the woman, whether it causes it or the conscious. Then, its severity is distinguished according to various hypotheses, for example, whether it is carried out with or without violence, with or without the consent of the woman, etc.
Well, the project of Urruticoechea and Jürgensen increases the penalty in two figures: for the woman who causes or consciously causes an abortion and for the doctor who causes it or cooperates in its realization. The problems are in what it seeks to establish and in what it does not consider.
On the one hand, it increases only those two cases and does not consider the most serious of all. Well, no one, absolutely no one, is in favor of the decriminalization of all abortion. Of course, everyone believes that the most reprehensible case should be punished: that caused by a third party, with violence and without the consent of the woman; like the one caused by a man stabbing his partner. This case is currently punishable by a penalty of 5 years and 1 day to 10 years. And what do Members propose? They propose to keep that penalty the same and punish the woman who consents to an abortion, even after rape, with the same penalty: 5 years and 1 day to 10 years. As the penalty is the measure of gravity of the crime, for them it is the same. In other words, violence against women and their absence of consent is the same. It does not add gravity, it does not add reproach. The principle of proportionality is a basic limit of punitive power. Any undergraduate student knows this since penal 1, but I suppose the defenders of life did not have time to get minimal advice.
Then the bill does not address one of the real problems that could exist with the protection of dependent life: injury or reckless death (abortion) are not punished, according to the jurisprudence and doctrine of the majority. Simple examples: if someone speeding runs over a pregnant woman who was crossing correctly with a green light, he only answers for the injuries he causes to her and not to the fetus; or if medical malpractice causes the death of the fetus, there is also no crime: there is no quasi-crime of abortion. I would think that those who say that penalizing defends life would attend to this issue, but again it is not considered. So, the project is hypocritical, because in reality it only pretends to aspire to its ends; or he is ignorant, for he does not know what should be important for his ends.
Finally, the bill creates a new crime that punishes the dissemination of “abortion” services. This, and nothing else, in 5 poorly written pages, is the best job they can do, like Batman and Robin, self-styled defenders of life. If anything, all three articles leave room for something more anecdotal.
If one searches the dictionary of the RAE for the word “abortionist”, it does not exist; nor is there “deviolar”, and despite that Urruticoechea uses them. It’s funny. This same parliamentary duo some time ago presented another project, of constitutional reform, which sought to prohibit inclusive language in education. In the foundation of the motion, which should not have taken away their sleep with so much work, they declared us a linguistic colony, affirming that the RAE was the “body in charge of ensuring the correct use of language and maintaining the unity of the Hispanic field”. Then I imagined the honorable annoyed because the teachers said friends or president, but happy to be taught in the basic to say bat or crocodyl, because they are accepted by His Highness RAE, despite the fact that Word emphasizes it to me in red. You shouldn’t use those words that don’t exist and deform language, according to your terms.
In short, it is very easy to proclaim oneself messiah, but one would expect more from one who acts calling himself the defender of life. Mr. Member, try a little: your project is very bad.
If not, it only looks like populism for barras bravas.
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The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
