Politician of Spain's Vox party offers ultrasounds outside Madrid abortion clinics

Madrid, Spain, Nov 20, 2019 / 10:56 am

Gádor Joya, a pediatrician and a legislator of the Assembly of Madrid from the Vox party, operates the "Life Ambulance Project" outside abortion clinics in the city, offering ultrasounds to pregnant women.

"I and other doctors have been giving these women ultrasounds… Precisely because I have been doing this, I know what has been hidden from these women. Most of them, when they receive the information and hear the heartbeat, decide to go forward with their pregnancies," Joya said at a meeting of the regional health committee Nov. 5, according to Madrid daily El País.

The ultrasounds are performed in a van near the clinics. The van has been authorized by the health department.

Joya has long been a pro-life advocate. She spoke at the 2014 French march for life, saying that "we know that at the end the Truth will triumph, and abortion will disappear from our society.

The Life Ambulance Project is opposed by Mónica García of Más Madrid, a progressive regional party.

García said that "what we could not have imagined is that there would be people performing ultrasounds on the street. It's extremely serious."

Vox is often described as a far-right party. In this month's Spanish general election, the party took 52 seats. The party opposes both abortion and same-sex marriage.

The November general election was inconclusive. The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party took 120 seats, and will try to form a coalition government, which it failed to do following the last general election, held in April.

Vox more than doubled its seats thismonth, having won 24 in April.

Santiago Abascal, leader of Vox, said after the Nov. 10 election that "today a patriotic alternative and a social alternative has been consolidated in Spain that demands national unity and the restoration of constitutional order in Catalonia."