On 20 December, the Spanish Government announced that it would be making changes to the current law on abortion. These measures will make it one of the most restrictive in the world;even prohibiting the termination of a pregnancy in cases where the fetus is malformed. Worldwide media are debating the measures the Spanish Government wishes to take and denouncing them as an abuse of power. Women in Spain took to the streets on a massive scale, but the Government paid them no heed. Our goal was to collect signatures, mobilise people in Spain against the
changes to the abortion law and get them to reopen the debate to prevent the proposed changes, unthinkable in most countries of the world, from being passed.
To illustrate this reality we created a fictitious agency specialising in arranging trips to have an abortion outside Spain: Abortion Travel, 'the agency that should never exist.'
We opened the physical agency in premises in Madrid with the external appearance and operations of a normal travel agency. The agency was the campaign's headquarters: a press conference was held there, women were informed about the consequences of the proposed changes to the law, and signatures were directly collected to prevent it from being passed. We expected the physical travel agency to make headlines and collect around 5,000 signatures
over the three days it remained open.
The campaign attracted the media's and the public's attention because it highlighted aspects which had not been previously analysed in the debate and the civil protests:
- What it would cost women obliged to travel outside Spain to have an abortion (both economic and emotionally).
- That those who had the resources could continue having abortions despite the law.
- That this situation could be very big business.
By placing the public in the aftermath of what our customer was seeking to prevent, there was a sense of outrage leading to a massive media and public response. However, its most important aspect was that the campaign reached the Chamber of Deputies, reopening the debate on the proposed changes to the abortion law.
35,000+ signatures on our petition at change.org while the physical agency was open (collecting thousands more signatures online later on). A hit on national and international media with a ROI of €1,044,103 and an audience of more than 38.5 million people. 3 million impressions on Twitter. In addition, the agency was visited by figures from the worlds of culture and politics. The campaign reached the Spanish Chamber of Deputies
where parliamentarians and the Vice President of Congress were obliged to address it in statements. We managed to reopen the debate and made the ruling party rethink the law.