Every day the sectors that see the need for the National Congress to approve the reform project to the current Penal Code are added, leaving out the three causes that would allow abortion in order for the country to have enough claws to face the social ills that they show up.
Although some of the actors who demand the sanction of the initiative agree that abortion be allowed in three specific cases, they agree that dissent should be put aside and the possible law evacuated.
It is in this sense that the bloc of the Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in the Senate updated its traditional position, of opposing the legislation on the controversial issue, and joined those who want the consensus Penal Code.
“The best and healthiest thing is that we exclude everything that has to do with the interruption of pregnancy so that it is known concomitantly in a special law,” declared Yván Lorenzo, representative of that party in the Senate.
That is why, for the former spokesman of the Fuerza del Pueblo (FP) deputies, Rubén Maldonado, with this new position of the PLD bloc together with that of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM) “a light of hope opens” that the bill of the Penal Code that is currently in the Senate is approved.
Maldonado was the one who reintroduced in the Lower House the special bill of the three causes so that they are known outside and the Penal Code can be sanctioned.
The three grounds consist of allowing abortion when the pregnancy represents a risk to the life of the mother; is the result of incest or rape; and when there is fetal malformation incompatible with life.
The former president of the Chamber of Deputies recalled that since 2018, when the concept of the three causes of the Penal Code that was being studied at that time was removed, he has submitted the legislative piece, which perime recurrently.
“Now, as a result of this new group of legislators that we entered in 2020, I reintroduced the project to remove the three grounds from the Penal Code, and in fact, they have been meeting in the Justice Commission of the Chamber of Deputies the three causes as an independent and separate project, “he said.
Meanwhile, Senator Yván Lorenzo insists that it is the PRM that does not want the reform of the Criminal Code to be approved.
FP supports exclusion of causes
Rubén Maldonado explained that the Fuerza del Pueblo “unrestrictedly” supports removing the three grounds from the Code, so that “once and for all” it is approved as agreed in the Chamber of Deputies and, sanctioned on first and second reading, but that was later modified by the senators.
“After it reached the Senate, the senators boycotted them… due to a decision by the PRM, which in practice has not shown any interest in approving this project,” criticized the legislator, who acknowledged that the president of the Lower House, Alfredo Pacheco, He has placed it on the agenda on several occasions.
It is recalled that last Wednesday different sectors demanded from Congress the urgent approval of the legislative project that has been in that body for more than 20 years. The representatives of the entities did this aware that it will be difficult to reconcile on the three grounds.
Will render the report of the PC in the next session
The special commission of the Senate in charge of the project of the Penal Code approved the favorable report in the meeting of last Thursday. It will be in the next senatorial session when Antonio Taveras, president of the delegation, renders a report to the Plenary. The piece was signed by Antonio Taveras (PRM-Santo Domigo), Franklin Romero (PRM-Duarte), Lia Diaz (PRM-Azua), Pedro Catrain (PRM-Samaná) and Rogelio Genao (PRSC-La Vega).
