Spain may have gone too far in liberalizing its abortion laws, and the government is floating a proposal to halt abortions of handicapped babies.
Spain's justice minister is proposing to reform current law that allows unrestricted abortions through the 14th week of pregnancy. Joseph Meaney of Human Life International (HLI) explains that the country has apparently concluded it has gone too far on the abortion issue.
"They're trying to reel back some of the extremism that the socialist government previously had put into place," he reports. "And I think it's very interesting that they're starting this actually by talking about the rights of the handicapped and that it's unfair to discriminate against children before birth just because they might be Down syndrome or have another handicap."
Meaney suggests Spain's new thinking should serve is an international lesson for a modern genetics movement that wants to do prenatal testing to find and eliminate anyone who is not "perfect" -- prompting parents to abort babies for problems that can be corrected after birth, such as cleft palate.
According to one Spanish publication, 90 percent of handicapped or deformed children in Spain are aborted -- a total of more than 16,000 over the last five years.
Pro-abortion forces have conducted big demonstrations in Madrid and elsewhere, opposing implementation of new restrictions, but the HLI spokesman says pro-life forces will continue to push for them.
"The pro-life movement in Spain has managed to put over a million people on the streets twice," Meaney notes. "Nonetheless, the liberals are very active and are very contrary to any move to recognize the right to life, so it's clearly going to be a struggle. But I think the pro-life side has a lot of momentum there, and the government knows who really voted them in -- and it certainly wasn't the leftist radicals."
The church in Spain is taking an active role in the pro-life battle.