Shazia Rafi ’79 wrote an article on the ongoing issue of abortion laws and the ownership of women’s bodies in Spain for Women’s Media Center online. The article, which opens with a reflection of her own struggle with her birth certificate, details the protest movement of women registering ownership of their bodies with the Spanish Chamber of Commerce of Personal Property. These women are protesting a vote by the Spanish parliament to revise abortion laws to severely restrict a woman’s right to abortion.

Rafi writes in the article, “As news of the proposed law circulated a few months ago, Yolanda Dominguez, a visual artist in Madrid, decided to turn the logic around with a simple, powerful tool. ‘We are always being commodified, as if we are the property of another—it was the men of our families, not the state,’ says Dominguez. ‘So I decided to make my body my property, and I went to the property office where one registers cars, houses, etc. to register myself.’”