A bill passing through the Spanish parliament that will restrict abortion gives hope for a new culture, one that acknowledges the innate dignity of each person, the head of a leading pro-life think tank has said.
Luca Volonte, chairman of the Rome-based Dignitatis Humanae Institute, congratulated Spain’s government which last week saw off an attempt by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party to scupper a bill aimed at tightening the country’s abortion laws.
Called “A Comprehensive Law for the Protection of the Rights of Women who have Conceived and are Pregnant”, the government bill, if enacted, will reassert the termination of an unborn child as a crime.
The legislation will decriminalise abortion in cases of rape or a proven risk to the physical or psychological health of the mother. But it also requires that two doctors unconnected to the abortion clinic certify the necessity of a termination. Furthermore, any medical practitioner finding the practice of abortion morally abhorrent will have the expressed right to refrain on the grounds of conscientious objection.
The socialists’ motion to reject the legislation was defeated by 183 votes to 151 in the Spanish Congress last Tuesday. Observers say the bill will most likely be ratified and passed into law later this year.
“While not a complete end to abortion, this bill does give hope for a new culture, one that would value every human life as equally important, acknowledging the innate dignity of each child, including the unborn,” Volonte said.
“To change the law in Spain would send a message to all pro-life campaigners across Europe that despite the current trend towards a culture of death, it is possible to advance the cause of the unborn child.”
The legislation, which the abortion lobby claims is tantamount to declaring war on women, essentially returns the law to its previous position, before the socialist Zapatero government declared abortion on demand in 2010.
The Dignitatis Humanae Institute says the removal of these restrictions “quickly turned Spain into one of the abortion capitals of the world, with one in every five children being terminated.”
Volonte pointed out that Spain’s Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy Brey, was elected to office with a “manifesto commitment” to tighten Spain’s abortion laws and has duly taken the first steps towards honouring his election pledge.
“Yet in the past weeks we have seen the international abortion lobby bring all its influence to bear against the Spanish government, culminating in the attempt to withdraw the bill from Parliament,” he said. “Despite the vitriol thrown at them, Mr Rajoy and his government have remained resolute in their commitment to speak up for the most vulnerable in society, those without a voice of their own to protest, the unborn child.
“I therefore commend the steadfastness of the Spanish government, and pray that they will see this bill through its remaining stages,” he said.
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