Andorran Government wants to coerce the Church to force the Prince Bishop of Urgell, sign an Abortion Law

The idea is that abortions cannot be performed in Andorra, but only in France or Spain, with the "support" of Andorran public services.

The Andorran Government, led by Xavier Espot, is pulling strings to get an abortion law passed, but it is trying to find a balance to force, or at least try to get, the Bishop of Urgell, who is co-prince of Andorra, to accept this law.

To this end, the country's executive intends to pass legislation decriminalizing abortion. However, the nuance would be that these abortions would not be performed in Andorra, but rather "nearby," and all of this would be financed by Andorran public services, according to local media outlet La Veu Lliure. Basically, this means that the abortions would be performed in Spain or France.

It should be noted that Andorra, along with the Vatican and Malta, is one of the three European countries where abortion remains prohibited in all cases, including risk to the mother's life, rape, or fetal malformation. Each year, around 130 Andorran women cross the border to terminate pregnancies, according to data from the Department of Health of the Generalitat (Catalan Government) from 2022, with costs ranging from €300 to €6,000.

The new law aims to eliminate prison sentences of up to two years for women who perform an abortion, and up to three years in prison and five years of disqualification for doctors who perform them. Instead, women would be referred to clinics in Spain or France, with public support and financial compensation in cases of vulnerability, as explained by Xavier Espot.

In fact, the head of government of Andorra explained in a television interview in May of this year that the country's current political system, in which the President of France and the Bishop of Urgell, currently Josep-Lluís Serrano Pentinat, alternate as co-princes, limits the possibility of applying "secular legislation" on abortion.

He also acknowledged that legalizing this practice "would put the bishop in a contradiction," considering that for the Church, "the defense of the right to life" is a "dogma of faith." Hence, he specified, work was being done "discreetly" on this regulatory change with the Holy See. But there is another issue to consider. Article 8 of the Constitution "recognizes the right to life and fully protects it in its different phases." Both co-princes have sworn to this fundamental norm, and therein lies another stumbling block.

Years of talks

All this began in 2019, when Espot was Minister of Justice and the Interior and Antoni Martí was the head of the Andorran government. A report was then commissioned that could provide this issue with "a legal response acceptable to the social majority of Andorrans and acceptable to the head of state." And since then, reports, meetings, and multi-party negotiations have followed.

Thus, for example, in September 2023, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, visited the Principality on the occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Meritxell. Then, when asked about this reform, Parolin admitted that abortion was a "delicate" and also "complex" issue that needed to be handled "with great discretion and wisdom."

He made it clear that the Church defends life at all stages, from the beginning of conception, and assured that she also intends "to be close to and help all people who find themselves in difficulty," such as, for example, "having a child." For the Andorran government, this visit represented, in a way, an endorsement to address the issue.

But that was a couple of years ago, and things have also changed since then, among other reasons because there is a new Pope and a new Bishop of Urgell. And the door is open to another possibility: that the law in question could be signed by only one of the co-princes. This has already happened on other occasions with complex reforms. In this case, the French president would be called upon to push the law through. The goal is to present the draft this fall, and then process it through Parliament in 2026, before the end of the legislative term in 2027.

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