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Spanish Socialists Seek to Further Loosen already Liberal Abortion Law

By Hilary White

MADRID, September 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Spanish government has announced the introduction of legislation to remove legal restrictions on abortion. Bibiano Aido, Equality Minister for the Socialist government said she will introduce a new abortion bill in the first half of 2009.

Bibiano did not give details but said that the new law would afford "protection" for women who wanted to abort their children and the doctors who carried out abortions.

The 1985 Spanish Abortion Law already allows abortion to "save the life of the mother", and at any point if the pregnancy represents a "threat" to the "physical or mental health" of the mother. The "mental health" exception has been interpreted by courts to allow abortion virtually on demand. Under the current law, between 1996 and 2006, Spain's abortion rate rose 72 percent and 95.7 per cent of all abortions listed "health concerns" of the mother as the reason.

The law also allows abortion in cases of pregnancy due to rape in the first trimester, and allows eugenic abortion in cases of foetal "abnormality" up to the second trimester.

Previous attempts to further loosen abortion restrictions by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) government have failed. In December 2007, Prime Minister Zapatero, after announcing that his government would include further loosening of abortion restrictions in their manifesto for the following general election, backed away, saying only that the current legislation must be "reassessed."

The abortion law with its few remaining restrictions has been under attack by pro-abortion militants for a long time. In 1998, the Spanish parliament voted down a proposal to loosen restrictions by only one vote. The proposal would have allowed abortion if a woman was suffering "grave personal or economic problems." The Socialists, in opposition at the time, gave the bill full support along with their allies on the extreme left.

The announcement of the new bill is part of the ongoing process in which the governing Socialists, in power since 2004, are undermining Spain's traditional Christian ethical foundations in a variety of legal areas including divorce and marriage laws, same-sex "marriage" and adoption, embryonic research and, perhaps most absurdly, the granting of "human rights" to apes.

In 2005, Spain became the one of the first governments in the world to legalise same-sex "marriage", including adoption rights for homosexuals. At the same time, the government banned all references to true marriage, such as "fathers" and "mothers", in legal documents pertaining to the family. In the same year, the government announced that homosexual "diversity" training would be made mandatory in all schools, to teach children from the age of ten that homosexuality was the moral and physical equivalent to true marriage.

The government also announced in June this year that a parliamentary committee had given its approval to a proposal to grant great apes, such as chimpanzees and gorillas, certain "human rights" - including the right to life, liberty, and freedom from torture.

A US commenter on bioethics, Wesley Smith, wrote that this was a deliberate shot at Spain's Judeo-Christian culture and an attack on the concept of the sanctity of human life.

"Once people accept that premise [that humans and apes are equal]," Smith wrote, "Judeo/Christian philosophy goes to the guillotine allowing the utilitarian agenda to proceed unhindered, leading in turn to the moral value of the weak and vulnerable among us becoming archaic, resulting in their loss of the right to life and being used instrumentally for those deemed more valuable."

Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Gay-Friendly "Diversity Training" to be Mandatory in Spanish Schools
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07072508.html

Legal Status of Catholic Church in Spain Threatened over Opposition to Mandatory Pro-Gay Citizenship Course
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/aug/07081003.html

Spain's Socialist Government Now Concerned About Country's Dismal Birth Rate
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/mar/08031714.html

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