Spain Abortions Double Over Last 10 Years New Government Report Says
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 2, 2008
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — A new government report issued on Tuesday finds the number of abortions in Spain has more than doubled over the last ten years. Despite the new numbers the socialist government in the European nation wants to expand the nation’s abortion law to allow even more.
Spain has become an abortion capital ever since the Catholic nation’s parliament legalized abortion in 1985.
There were 53,847 abortions done in Spain in 1998 but there were 112,138 last year, according to the Spanish health ministry.
As in other nations, the abortion rate was highest among women between the ages of 20 and 24 and second highest for women aged 25 to 29.
The figures also show that abortions increased more than 10 percent from 2006 to 2007.
Still, Equality Minister Bibiana Aido told AFP that the nation’s abortion law should be expanded.
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, abortion is essentially legal for any reason 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.
The Institute for Family Policy released a report last year showing an increase in the number of abortions of 90.5 percent. That puts Spain third, behind Belgium and Holland, with the greatest increase in the abortion rate during that time.
“If this trend continues, in 2010 one out of every five pregnancies (125,000 annually) will end in abortion,” IFP president Eduardo Hertfelder said in the report.
Some “266 children are not born each day in Spain because of abortion, resulting in one abortion taking place every 5.4 minutes.”
“The Ministry of Health must drastically re-orient its health and sexuality policies once their ineffectiveness has been made clear in order to stop or lessen this significant increase of abortions, which results in 266 deaths by abortion each day in Spain, making it the leading cause of mortality in Spain,” Hertfelder added.
In October the pro-abortion group Women on Waves sent its abortion boat to Spain, though it normally targets countries with pro-life laws.
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