Spain Judge Drops Charges Against Women in Illegal Late-Term Abortions
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 29, 2008
Barcelona, Spain (LifeNews.com) — A Spanish judge has dropped the charges filed against more than 20 women who had illegal late-term abortions at a handful of abortion centers in Spain that were recently shut down. Police raided the centers after learning they were violating various laws.
The judge in the case said the women were unaware they were breaking the law when they had the disputed abortions.
The Spanish news web site Typically Spanish indicates Judge Elisabeth Castelló, of instruction court 33 in Barcelona, confirmed the charges were dropped.
The women were also considered victims in the case because they did not receive any pre-abortion medical or psychological examination from the abortion centers as required by law.
The news site said prosecutors in the case are examining the decision to drop the charges but they are not expected to appeal the decision. Instead, they are focusing on the abortion centers and abortion practitioner Carlos Morín, who runs them.
Morin allegedly did abortions on women as late as 29 weeks into pregnancy and on girls as young as 13 years of age.
Castelló held a hearing in March where Morin admitted to those facts. Spain only allows abortions as late as 22 weeks of pregnancy unless there is a legitimate medical or mental health reason for the abortion.
Morin’s abortion centers were said to have completed medical papers for women ahead of time with 97 percent of the abortions done for supposed mental health reasons, even though Morin had never met the women getting the abortions.
Europa Press indicated Morin admitted to doing illegal late-term abortions in court yesterday and that there are now 4,000 pages of court documents in the case.
Raids by Spanish officials in the case came after a tip from a Denmark-based pro-life group, which learned from a reporter that the abortion centers were offering the illegal abortions. Morin offered an abortion to the reporter, who was seven months pregnant at the time.
Morin gave the journalist a form she could use to falsely claim she had a mental disorder that allowed her to have the late-term abortion. He also said he would inject a poison that would kill the baby and the woman would give birth to a stillborn child.
The raids netted about a dozen suspects who were accused of doing illegal abortions or falsifying medical records making them appear to fall under Spanish law.
Police eventually arrested staff psychologists who falsified medical reports on the mental health status of the women getting the abortions.
The facilities drew women from across Europe and came under fire in Malta for offering free abortions there even though the nation prohibits abortion. They also received referrals from British and Dutch doctors who wouldn’t do such late-term abortions in their nations.
Approximately eighty percent of the abortions done at the Spanish abortion business are performed on British women, the British press reported. Other women come from France and Portugal.
Local authorities also found that the abortion centers in question were flushing the bodies of the dead babies down the drain.
