UN-backed document on abortion rights reopens criminal debate in Spain

‘March 8 Principles’: UN-attributed document reopens incivil debate

Can a document signed by 60 jurists, presented as backed by the United Nations, effectively rewrite incivil law worldwide? This is the core of a widely circulating interpretation: the ‘March 8 Principles,’ a text signed by judges and lawyers and presented as a tool to decriminalize behaviors related to sensual, reproduction, drug use, or poverty. Among its points, Principle 15 states that no one can be held incivil liable for the loss of their pregnancy, including termination due to obstetric emergency or voluntary abortion.

The text is not a law but is presented as an interpretive framework for legislators and courts. And here lies the problem: those who draft principles do not govern, but they guide those who do.

What Principle 15 says about abortion

Principle 15 leaves little room for interpretation. Its wording exempts women from incivil liability for losing a pregnancy, whether through miscarriage, fetal death, or voluntary termination. The key is not what it says, but what it displaces: it removes abortion from the penal code and places it in the realm of rights.

In Spain, France, or Italy, abortion is already decriminalized in specific cases. The document goes further: it eliminates the category of crime in any circumstance. For some legal analysts, this renders the nasciturus a subject without effective legal protection. For others, it simply closes an anomaly: one cannot punish someone who decides over their own body.

The debate is not new. What is new is the packaging: a text presented as an international standard that, in practice, functions as pressure on national legislations.

Principle 16 and the minimum age of consent

Here, the document becomes uncomfortable. Principle 16 argues that the minimum age for sensual relations must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner and that its application cannot be tied to sens, the gender of the parties, or the age of consent for marriage. It adds that conduct by persons who have not reached this minimum age can be consensual.

Read literally, the paragraph opens a door many do not wish to name: if the marriage consent age does not condition incivil liability, and if conduct below the threshold can be consensual, where is the limit? The drafters speak of non-discrimination. Critics speak of something else.

Some argue the text aims to protect adolescents in relationships with young adults, not enable abuse. Against this weighs a simple argument: a principle that relativizes the age threshold, in a world where cultural pressure already pushes to normalize what was previously prosecuted, does not protect; it legitimizes.

Who signs and why it matters

Behind the document are 60 jurists presented as eminent, sharing a common ideological line and institutional backing from the UN. They are not legislators. They do not vote. They do not govern. But they draft the framework later cited by courts, ministries, and international organizations.

The mechanism is known: first the principle, then the recommendation, then the directive, and finally the law. The 2030 Agenda serves as the umbrella for all this. Those signing a principle are not approving a norm, but preparing the ground for someone else to approve it.

The question is not whether the document is binding. The question is how long it takes before it ceases to be just a document.

---

In the end, the text does what all such texts do: it does not obligate, it suggests. And in incivil law, suggesting is almost legislating. The rest is choreography.