Traditionally Catholic Spain easing abortion law
Lawmakers in Spain have voted to ease the tradtionally Roman Catholic country's abortion law, the Associated Press reports, approving a bill to allow the procedure without restrictions up to 14 weeks.
After the vote Thursday by the Congress of Deputies, the measure goes to the Senate, which is expected to approve it next year. The legislation would move the country closer to its more secular neighbors in the European Union.
From the Associated Press story:
Abortion reform was the last major pending issue in a bold reform agenda undertaken by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a Socialist who took power in 2004. Under Zapatero, Spain has also legalized gay marriage and made it easier for Spaniards to divorce in a drive that has infuriated conservatives and the Roman Catholic Church.Under the current law, which dates back to 1985, Spanish women could in theory go to jail for getting an abortion outside certain strict limits — up to week 12 in case of rape and week 22 if the fetus is malformed.
But abortion is in effect widely available because women can assert mental distress as sole grounds for having an abortion, regardless of how late the pregnancy is. Most of the more than 100,000 abortions carried out each year in Spain were early-term ones that fell under this category.
The bill approved Thursday wipes away the threat of imprisonment and declares abortion to be a woman's right."We are legislating women's right to decide whether to be mothers," said Carmen Monton, the Socialists' spokeswoman on gender issues.
Conservative Popular Party spokesman Santiago Cervera insisted there was no clamor in Spanish society for changing the existing law and the government instigated it just to raise a stir and distract people's attention away from the country's economic recession.
Anti-abortion demonstrators wearing sandwich boards rallied outside the legislature during debate on the bill. One of the boards showed a picture of a child with Down syndrome asking Zapatero "why are you letting them kill me?"
