The Spanish Catholic Church today accused the Socialist government of undermining society’s moral standards with a proposal to make it easier for women to have abortions. “The government does not have the right to impose any system of morality . . . and especially not one favouring abortion,” the spokesman for Spain’s bishops, Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, told a news conference.
Spanish law currently only allows abortions in cases of rape, if a foetus is damaged or if the pregnancy could endanger the physical or mental health of the mother.
Martinez Camino said Catholic members of parliament should vote against a government-sponsored bill that would make it easier for women to abort in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.
“The right to life is not the government’s to concede,” he said.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has been trying to shift political debate towards social issues and away from the recession-hit economy and unemployment of four million.
But the abortion proposal, a key component of the Socialist campaign for June’s European Elections in which they narrowly lost to the conservative opposition, has annoyed even government supporters.
One poll found that 56 per cent of Socialist voters opposed a measure in the bill, which would allow girls as young as 16 to abort without parental consent.
In the past, the Church has led big demonstrations against the Socialist government, which has accelerated the transformation of long conservative, Catholic Spain into a liberal society with legal gay marriage and a reduced role for religion.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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