A MAJORITY vote in Spanish Parliament means the controversial abortion law reform has been approved and will become law, meaning women will only be able to choose to terminate a pregnancy if it is the result of a rape – and only within the first 12 weeks – or if her life and health is in serious danger.
Opposition socialists, who say the bill will force women who cannot afford a 'charter flight to London or Paris' into back-street abortion clinics, challenged the law reform in Congress, but as the right-wing PP government is in the majority, it only needed the agreement from the reigning party for the law to be passed.
In the end, opponents' 151 votes to scrap the reform were up against 183 votes in favour of the abortion restrictions in a process which, for the first time, permitted anonymous ballots.
Members of a political party are not allowed to publicly oppose its policies and can be fined for doing so, particularly where they are in government – unlike in other northern European nations where dissidence is commonplace.
A number of MPs on the PP party are against the reform, and the secret ballot box gave them a chance to say so without fear of identification or reprisal.
But even then, enough PP members voted for the reform to go ahead that the impact of those who oppose it made no difference in the end.
Surveys show that eight in 10 Spanish nationals do not agree with the restrictions, and that a significant number of them identify as Catholics.
Famously, a nun recently declared on her blog that it was not up to the church or the government to decide 'what a woman does with her body', and that abortion was a private and personal decision, as well as a highly-emotive one, which should only be made by the woman herself and others directly involved.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com