Last Thursday, the Spanish Parliament approved two bills promoted by the government and with a strong animalist ideological charge.
The two animal rights bills approved on Thursday in Congress
The two bills were presented by the government on August 2, 2022 and were qualified on September 8. The first of these is the Project Law for the protection of animal rights and welfare (you can see his parliamentary dossier here), approved last Thursday with 174 votes in favor , 167 against and 7 abstentions. The second is entitled Project of the Organic Law to modify Organic Law 10/1995, of November 23, of the Penal Code, regarding animal abuse (see parliamentary dossier . It was approved last Thursday by 178 votes in favor, 165 against and 5 abstentions.
The second of these projects legalizes bestiality
This second bill has generated controversy in various media, which have pointed out some of its most striking aspects. You can read the bill here and here is the opinion of the commission. One of the most controversial aspects of this bill is that it suppresses Article 337 of the Penal Code, which currently criminalizes bestiality, that is, sexual relations between humans and animals. The current wording of that article establishes “a penalty of three months and one day to one year in prison and special disqualification from one year and one day to three years for the exercise of a profession, trade or trade that is related to animals and for the possession of animals, whoever by any means or procedure mistreats them unjustifiably, causing injuries that seriously undermine their health or subjecting them to sexual exploitation.”
The new law only penalizes bestiality if it causes injuries
This article was introduced in the reform of the Criminal Code promoted by the Rajoy government in 2015. In its place, the Sánchez government introduces Article 340 bis that punishes with a prison sentence of three to eighteen months to whom “outside of legally regulated activities and by any means or procedure, including acts of a sexual nature, causes a domestic animal, tamed, domesticated or living temporarily or permanently under the human control injury requiring veterinary treatment to restore health.”
As can be seen, Article 337 currently in force considers that bestiality is a form of abuse, but this classification disappears with the new law, which only considers that there is a crime when the act of bestiality causes injuries to the animal. animal. Curiously, the government, which has insisted that any non-consensual sexual act is sexual assault – even acts previously classified in the Penal Code as sexual abuse – now allows sexual acts with animals , who cannot give their consent. This is a contradiction that the government, for the moment, has not yet explained.
The Plural Parliamentary Group presented an amendment, number 4 so that this new Article 340 bis would punish anyone who “performs acts of a sexual nature with an animal or subjects it to exploitation” with a prison term of between six months and two years sexual”, but was rejected.
The law contemplates imprisonment for injuring or killing “vertebrate animals”
Another controversial modification that this second bill introduces is related to the same articles that we have just seen. The current Article 337.3 of the Penal Code contemplates imprisonment from 6 to 18 months for those who kill a domestic animal, tamed, domesticated or that lives temporarily or permanently under human control. The new law of the PSOE and Podemos extends this crime to any “vertebrate animal” and increases the penalty to between 12 and 24 months in prison (Article 340 bis, point 3). In addition, it also increases the current sentence for injuries to domestic animals from the current maximum sentence (12 months in prison) to 18 months, and sets the current sentence from 3 to 12 months in prison for those who injure any “vertebrate animal”.
To give an example to make it clearer, now you can be sentenced to a maximum of one year in prison for killing your pet, but with the new law you could go to two years in prison for killing a rat or any other wild animal. But to further refine the cited examples, now you could even go to prison for injuring a rat. You don’t have to go to the extreme of killing her.
The Judiciary issued a report alerting on this point: the government ignored
In November 2022, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) issued a reporton this new bill (it can be read here). On page 7 of the report, point 19, the report stated the following:
“The option of the pre-legislator to configure the legal good to be protected, which reaches all vertebrate animals, in such a broad way, deserves special attention as it is the most far-reaching modification of the reform introduced. The protection of all vertebrate animals without any limitation in the proposed terms will cause major problems as it is difficult to reconcile with the protection due to other legal rights such as public health or the environment. It is noted that on more than one occasion the defense of these legal rights will conflict with the protection of physical integrity, or even the life of the vertebrate animal, requiring an immediate response that will not always be supported by laws or other provisions. of a general nature dictated in advance that, in light of the proposed modification, justify the conduct.”
As happened with the sexual freedom law (known as the “only yes is yes law”), the government ignored that report. Once again, and as happened with the law that has allowed the sentences of hundreds of rapists to be lowered, the authorship of this new law corresponds to a ministry of the far-left party Podemos, the Ministry of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda, directed by Ione Belarra.
You can’t injure a rat, but you can kill your unborn child
The most striking thing about this law is that the same government that wants to imprison anyone who injures or kills a rat, at the same time considers it a “right” to eliminate human beings in the womb during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, or up to the 22nd week if the unborn baby is disabled. It has gone to the aberrant extreme of giving more protection to a rat than to an unborn baby. A nonsense that hardly fits with the haste of some politicians and the media to close the debate on abortion.