On May 9, the TC with a leftist majority will approve the sentence drafted by magistrate Montalbán that endorses Zapatero’s abortion law
The president of the Constitutional Court, Cándido Conde-Pumpido, is ignoring a complaint filed before the Court of Guarantees by 140 associations for breaching their duty to abstain in the appeal on abortion. On May 9, a few weeks before the elections, the plenary session with a leftist majority will approve the sentence drafted by magistrate Inmaculada Montalbán that fully endorses the abortion law of the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.
On March 16, more than a hundred civil society associations including Jaime Mayor Oreja and María San Gil as the Assembly for Life, Dignity and Freedom, represented by E-Cristian, the Spanish Federation of Pro-Life Associations, the One of Us Federation, or NEOS, filed a complaint before the Constitutional Court denouncing that Conde-Pumpido, like the leftist magistrates Juan Carlos Campo and Inmaculada Montalbán, had to abstain in the deliberation on abortion.
Sources from these associations consulted by Libertad Digital affirm that «a month and a half after they presented their complaint to the TC, they have not received any kind of response from the Guarantee Court.» Conde-Pumpido had to abstain since when he was State Attorney General with the Zapatero government, he endorsed said Law in the Fiscal Council. Judge Montalbán, who drafted the sentence that will endorse abortion, was a member of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). and ruled on the norm, while Campo was part of that Executive as Secretary of State for Justice when the Law was approved. For her part, the conservative magistrate Concepción Espejel was also a member of the CGPJ and announced her intention to abstain, but the Plenary of the TC rejected it.
The document presented by the 140 associations, to which LD has had access, highlights the future ruling on abortion that «since the resolution will affect such high and important protected legal rights, from the protection of human life to the health of people, it is necessary that the composition of the Plenary of the Constitutional Court is outside of any cause that could suppose contamination in any of its members for being able to be involved in legal causes of recusal and could invalidate the resolution that derives «.
«The presenters of this document are aware of the exceptionality of this complaint, but the situation that hundreds of thousands of human lives in gestation and other constitutionally protected rights are facing is even more exceptional, in the case of issuing a resolution without attending to the presumed DUTY OF ABSTENTION, in coherence with the scrupulous legality on the part of the maximum guarantor of the control of the same.Our legislation may not have foreseen this route that today, as a last resort, we have to exhaust, but most probably because it really could not foresee either situations like the ones we have come to present in this complaint, in extremis,» they add.
«It is by virtue of this confidence in the prestige of our institutions, of their necessary impartiality, as a fundamental right that derives from article 24 CE, for which those appearing claim the due legal protection of this COMPLAINT and request the timely reconsideration of the Plenary regarding the challenges that at the time have been presented by the merited Commissioner,» the letter states.
«These associations represent thousands of citizens»
According to the complaint presented, «we are not facing an appeal for amparo that affects a mere citizen, but rather a situation of presumed subjective and objective causes of recusal before the deliberation and decision of a resolution that has a general scope and that affects the generality of present and future citizens, parents and the right of the ‘nasciturus'».
«These associations and entities represent hundreds of thousands of citizens who defend the aforementioned legal rights protected by our Constitution. In reality, it would also be a question of public order, and before the affectation of a possible cause of lack of impartiality that which would become a radical nullity, for which reason we believe that the arguments that we present in this COMPLAINT should be taken into consideration,» the document concludes.
