Abortion Boat Takes Three Women From Spain Aboard, Gives Dangerous Drugs
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 17, 2008
Valencia, Spain (LifeNews.com) — The abortion boat operated by the pro-abortion group Women on Waves took three women from Spain on board on Friday and gave them the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug that has killed more than a dozen women worldwide and injured more than 1,200 in the U.S. alone.
About 100 pro-life advocates form the group Provida were on hand to protest the ship’s arrival.
Actress Pilar Bardem, mother of Hollywood star Javier Bardem, gave a speech to a small crowd of abortion activists who greeted the boat.
In an email to LifeNews.com the operators of the abortion ship, which take women to international waters to help them violate the local abortion laws of their home nation, bragged that pro-life groups failed to prevent the ship from docking.
"The Catholic anti-abortion rights groups failed to fulfill their promise to prevent the ship from entering the harbor," WOW said. "More than 200 people attended the manifestation to celebrate the arrival of the ship even though police imposed a last minute ban on the artistic and musical parts of the manifestation."
The email, received late Thursday indicated that, "Tomorrow, Friday, the ship will sail to international waters to give free and legal abortion services to women with unwanted pregnancies."
That’s exactly what the abortion boat did today.
Three women received the mifepristone abortion drug even though a British teenager became the latest this summer to die from using the pills. Manon Jones, an 18-year-old student experienced heavy bleeding after the abortion and eventually died.
That leads to one of the main criticisms of the abortion ship — that it does not have the medical facilities needed to care for women after an abortion should complications arise.
The abortion boat will stay in Valencia until Tuesday.
In Spain, abortion is only legal in case the pregnancy supposedly is a threat to the physical or mental health of the woman (despite the fact abortions typically cause medical and mental health issues).
Still, over 100,000 abortions are done annually in Spain because abortion practitioners routinely say the abortion is needed for mental health reasons. Officials in Spain have started to crack down on some abortion centers that were completing patient intake forms with that reason checked before women arrived for their abortions.
WOW described why it would take its abortion boat to Spain, even though abortion is generally available throughout most of pregnancy.
"There is a great lack of clarity about the Spanish abortion law," the group said. "By inviting the Women on Waves ship, the Spanish organizations want to urge the Spanish government to remove abortion from the penal code."
The Spanish groups also want to legitimatize abortion as a medical procedure and get full financial reimbursement for abortions as happens with legitimate medical procedures.
June marked the last occasion on which the operators of the abortion boat tried to take it to international waters to do and promote abortions.
After upsetting residents of Ireland, Poland and Portugal by traveling there over the years, the Dutch-based abortion boat arrived in the South American nation of Ecuador, where abortions are illegal.
The organization recently traded in its converted tugboat, or trawler, for a high-end sailing vessel, but the group suffered problems as the ship literally ran aground in a tropical storm.
The group tried to put a good face on the predicament in a press release and said its officials would spend their time in Ecuador promoting the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug that has killed more than a dozen women worldwide.
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