On the 41st Anniversary of the Law, the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation Spain Denounces the Eugenic Roots of a Law That Opened the Door to the Discarding of Unborn Children with Disabilities and Calls for Medicine Focused on Care, Not Selection.
Madrid, July 6, 2026
This Sunday, July 5, marked the 41st anniversary of the passage of Organic Law 9/1985, which amended Article 417 bis of the Spanish Penal Code Ley Orgánica 9/1985, de reforma del artículo 417 bis del Código Penal. This was the law that decriminalized abortion in Spain under three circumstances and introduced, for the first time, serious legal discrimination against unborn human beings with disabilities or genetic conditions.
The law established that an abortion performed by a physician would not be punishable when certain circumstances were present: a serious risk to the life or “physical or mental health of the pregnant woman”; a pregnancy resulting from a reported rape; or when it was presumed that the fetus would be born with “serious physical or mental defects”, subject to certain time limits.
Beyond the seriousness of a law that provides legal justification for ending the lives of some human beings, the expression “serious physical or mental defects” is neither a minor detail nor a technical phrase belonging to the past. It reveals a profoundly unjust and inhumane view of people with disabilities: the idea that a human life can be considered less worthy of protection because of a disease, a genetic condition, or a disability.
The Jérôme Lejeune Foundation Spain firmly denounces this eugenic logic, which for decades has contributed to establishing in society the idea that some lives can be discarded before birth if they do not meet certain criteria of health, ability, or normality. The case of people with Down syndrome is particularly significant. The development of prenatal diagnostic techniques, combined with a culture that presents disability as a tragedy that can be “avoided,” has placed growing pressure on families and healthcare professionals. Organizations such as Down España estimate that today more than 95% of pregnancies in which Down syndrome is diagnosed end in abortion. Where there should be truthful information, support, and accompaniment, fear, loneliness, and rejection are offered instead.
This is not merely a legal issue. It is an anthropological, medical, scientific, and social issue. A truly humane society should not measure a person’s worth by their chromosomal makeup, state of health, future autonomy, or productive capacity. Human dignity does not depend on a diagnosis.
“A just society cannot accept that a prenatal diagnosis effectively becomes a death sentence. The unfortunate 1985 law opened a deep wound by introducing explicit discrimination against unborn children with disabilities or genetic conditions. Forty-one years later, the attempt to constitutionally enshrine abortion as a healthcare service in Spain does not correct this injustice; it entrenches it. At the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, we believe that the response to vulnerability cannot be rejection, but rather care, accompaniment, and the protection of every human life,” said Pablo Siegrist, Director General of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation Spain.
Indeed, 41 years later, this issue is once again highly relevant. On April 7, 2026, the Council of Ministers approved a constitutional reform bill to amend Article 43 of the Spanish Constitution and constitutionally enshrine “voluntary termination of pregnancy”—that is, abortion—as a right that public authorities must guarantee under conditions of effective equality. The proposal seeks to place abortion within the scope of the right to health protection. This is also reflected in the Council of State’s opinion on the reform of Article 43 of the Constitution, which examines the inclusion of a new provision concerning “voluntary termination of pregnancy” and its guarantee by public authorities.
For the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation Spain, the risk is clear: constitutionally protecting abortion as a healthcare service represents another step toward normalizing a practice that, in the context of prenatal disability, has had devastating consequences for the most vulnerable, further entrenching an inhumane model of society.
Medicine must not be used as an instrument of selection. Its proper vocation is to care, relieve suffering, treat, and accompany, especially when human life is at its most vulnerable. When faced with an adverse prenatal diagnosis, the healthcare and social response should never be the elimination of the patient, but rather comprehensive support for the mother, the family, and the child.
This same warning was expressed with particular clarity by Pope Leo XIV in his address to members of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation, delivered on June 22, 2026, on the occasion of the centennial of Professor Jérôme Lejeune’s birth. The Holy Father recalled that Lejeune soon understood that his scientific discovery could be used to eliminate people with Down syndrome before birth, and denounced the new eugenics that Lejeune himself described as “chromosomal racism.” In the same address, Leo XIV stated: “A person’s worth does not depend on what he or she accomplishes or produces. For this reason, no physician should ever allow himself or herself, based on laboratory algorithms, to decide on the life of a particular embryo or a particular elderly person! Medicine can never become a servant of programmed death!”.
Jérôme Lejeune, the discoverer of the genetic cause of trisomy 21 and a physician to thousands of patients with intellectual disabilities of genetic origin, devoted his life precisely to defending this truth: every human being possesses inviolable dignity, regardless of their health, age, development, or abilities. His scientific and ethical legacy remains profoundly relevant today. Where some see a life that can be discarded, Lejeune saw a patient, a person to be cared for. For this reason, 41 years after that law, the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation Spain reaffirms its commitment to a culture of life that rejects every form of eugenics, including when it is presented under the guise of progress, autonomy, or healthcare.
In the face of chromosomal racism, we call for care; in the face of rejection, accompaniment; in the face of families’ loneliness, truly humane medicine. A person’s dignity does not begin when vulnerability disappears. It is precisely where there is greatest fragility that a society’s true humanity is put to the test.
