Spanish lawmakers vote to legalize abortion, instate parental notification

[popehippo]

Spain's lower house voted Thursday to lift legal restrictions on abortion up to 14 weeks. The measure is expected to pass the Senate.

From the Associated Press:

Under the current law, which dates back to 1985, Spanish women could in theory go to jail for getting an abortion outside certain strict limits -- up to week 12 in case of rape and

Comments

[yunghustlaz]

What do you think Cuba was before Castro? It was a broken republic run by Batista, a US puppet state that even our government recognized was rife with police brutality, corruption, and a complete lack of social or economic justice, absolutely barbaric. It's not like the 26th July movement was swept to power from a fringe, it was through massive popular support. Not to mention, that Batista responded to this popular support by killing and torturing the population, and suspending the constitution.

Now, Cuba has made immense strides in the world of healthcare, addressing poverty, and education. Health care especially is amazing, with the highest life expectancy in the region, just under the US. As noted above, Cuba has unrestriced access to legal abortion, leaps and bounds above the US. Cuba also produces HIV antivirals through the state for the infected to be given for free, has access to free preventive care, and free hospital care. Maternity leave is one year, full pay.

Cuban education is astounding, with a near 100% literacy rate, mandatory public school attendance, available, free higher education, and it tops Latin American countries in math and language skills.

The US, meanwhile, has continuously tried to sabotage Cuba. The US Embargo causes the most damage, we've invaded them (Bay of Pigs), we've made multiple assassinations attempts, we've threatened the government repeatedly, Cuba has been under almost near-constant siege from the United States, where we've been making every effort possible to undermine them and marginalize them as a nation.

WE'VE EVEN COMMITTED ACTS OF -TERRORISM- AGAINST THEM. A great example of a terrorist act that America committed against Cuba that isn't very well known either : in 1976, a Cubana airliner was blown up (Cubana Flight 455), 76 people will killed, the bomb was planted by a CIA and FBI contact, Orlando Bosch, who also had a hand in Operation Condor. Nevermind Operation Condor, or the ways the US is responsible for Pinochet's rise to power and the deaths of thousands there, since we're just sticking to Cuba right now.

Cuba's not perfect, it's a tightly controlled society, but there's nothing like the gulags. Political prisoners get trials or at least charged, in fact the only camp in Cuba that holds criminals without charge is Guantanamo Bay. (Cuba is estimated to have about 300 political prisoners. We, the US, have 215 in Guantanamo, not too much better.) You could easily say the revolution has not gone far enough in terms of democracy or civil rights, but it's a work in progress.

Think where Cuba went, from all power held by a corrupt elite, to a situation where all Cubans have rights to healthcare, education, housing, and subsidised food. We don't even have that in the US, people die from a lack of healthcare, people die on the streets, people starve, and the education system fails us.

This isn't to mention either that Cuba's quickly getting better on the matters of human rights, thanks to close allies Venezuela and Bolivia that have popularly elected socialist presidents, helping to strengthen Cuba's political base and encourage the country to be more liberal in some government matters.

This is a tiny little island nation, oppressed by one of the biggest countries in the world, making strides from abject poverty to near-complete equality. The idea that Cuba is some Stalinist, oppressive dictatorship is severely misguided, and a result of US imperialism, and far from the truth.

[yunghustlaz]

I acknowledged it has political prisoners, but the US does too, EU countries do, Israel has some 1,700. Most of the world does, it's a horrible thing for sure and I support Human Rights Watch and all of these other groups working for their release, I'm merely stating that Cuba, beyond the political issues, is a very empathetic socialist state, with better services for their civilians that we do in the US. We don't even have healthcare, what a lot of good our 'democracy' gives us (mind you, true democracy would come in the form of syndicalism and anarcho-socialism, probably the closest thing we could get to good, functioning direct democracy).

Also, I'm not a big fan of Fidel, I just support the revolution, and like most socialist revolutions that came out of coups, it has leaps and bounds to go on human rights (Although things are getting a lot better under Raul.) Venezuela and Bolivia I think, are both better socialist governments in the sense they were elected through socialist democracy, but where else would Cuba be without the revolution? Still under Batista? Under some other US puppet president? Never mind that the US didn't exactly help to try to reform Cuba's human rights, with the CIA fueling Fidel's paranoia (the amount of assassination attempts against him is insane) and the embargo having a direct effect on the wellbeing of the Cuban peoples and the state.

I think it all comes down to weighing the value of the social programs (high literacy rate, extremely effective healthcare, almost no wealth inequality, stable government) vs. the damage of the authoritarian style of rule (repression of political criticism, human rights abuses, etc.). But I think, on the global scale, Cuba pulls ahead. The US has done far, far worse than Cuba, as has Europe and plenty of the eastern world, and I was not trying to make the point that Cuba's some -fantastic- state, but that it's an imperfect state that's the focus of some unwarranted vilification, and not criticism, but outright vilification that it's a broken, impoverished country reminiscent of Stalinist Russia, when it's more a better run version of modern China without the whole ethnic oppression and controlled territories and without political oppression nearly as bad as the CCP.