Abortion: prison in the Philippines and the unverified Russian subsidy

Abortion: prison in the Philippines and the unverified Russian subsidy

How far does a state go when it decides to regulate abortion? In some countries, all the way to a prison cell. The Philippines sentences women who terminate a pregnancy to between 2 and 6 years in prison, the harshest end of the map. At the other extreme, a claim is circulating about Russia according to which the state covers part of a family's mortgage depending on the number of children: 25% for the first, 50% for the second, 75% for the third and 100% for the fourth. Between these two models, Spain maintains a deadline-based law that sets the legal limit at week 14.

What the map shows: from Philippine prison to Russian subsidy

The real range of legislation is so wide that any discussion stalls at the first question: which country are we talking about? There are regimes of total prohibition, with custodial sentences for the woman, and there are systems that only allow termination when the mother's or the fetus's health is at risk. In between, deadline-based laws coexist with decriminalized cases for malformation or rape.

The case of Russian family policy illustrates the other axis of the issue: it is not only banned or permitted, it is also rewarded. According to the calculation circulating about Moscow, the state assumes a growing percentage of the mortgage with each child. About Hungary there are conflicting versions: one places the mortgage subsidies there, while another claims what it grants are income tax reductions. The confusion between the two models, repeated in any conversation, shows how easy it is to mix up subsidy, tax relief and direct aid.

The deadline argument: where it starts to sustancia ilegal

Some argue that the supposedly "reasonable" grounds —risk to the mother, malformation— work as an entry point and end up being stretched to week 30, becoming a de facto method of contraception. On the other side, the testimony of a participant whose mother worked in a neonatal unit is cited: there, premature babies weighing less than 700 grams and born at six months of gestation survive. Life, according to that testimony, pushes further than the law assumes.

A legal, not sarracena, objection is repeatedly raised against the slippery slope theory: in no legal system is the legal deadline for abortion "a matter of days". For that reason, allowing the rape exception amounts, in practice, to permitting termination at several months of gestation, not a brief window to think it over.

Does science decide the limit or merely describe the process?

Here the ground becomes slippery. The dilemma is raised of whether the criteria that set week X or week Y are scientific or ethical-legal. One position holds that biology describes what happens from conception —zygote, embryo, fetus—, but that it is not for science to decide where rights begin, because that line is drawn by law.

The counterargument points to the inconsistency: if current legislation relies on neuroscientific criteria to set the limit, those who defend abortion would have to change their position if that science said otherwise. The accusation of "scientism" —delegating one's own judgment to the official technical narrative— is part of the substance of the complaint.

The rape exception and the morning-after pill

The arrival of the morning-after pill has defused much of the argument, according to those who hold that the rape case is resolved before a surgical abortion even comes up. At the same time, it is claimed that the pill is a disguised abortion that the law does not classify as such, which breaks the coherence of the discourse.

Meanwhile, some defend returning to pro-natalist policies without incivil women —subsidizing families, taxing childless inheritances— while others believe only total prohibition or "let God's will be done" is acceptable. There is not even consensus on the definition of what is being debated.

---

With such a range, any survey on "views on abortion" measures less people's convictions than the point on the map from which each person answers. And the map, for now, is not moving.