Spain’s Socialist prime minister has irked his natural enemies on the right and in the Catholic Church by legalizing gay marriage and instituting fast-track divorce. Now he has hit a raw nerve even among his supporters with a proposal to let 16-year-olds get abortions without parental consent.
The debate is harsh and emotional, showing that for all the changes Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has introduced with his trailblazing social agenda since taking power in 2004, abortion remains ever sensitive in a country where most people call themselves Catholic, even if few churches are full on Sundays.
Liberalizing teen abortion is part of a broader reform proposed for Spain’s abortion law, the main thrust of which is to allow the procedure with no restrictions up to 14 weeks into a pregnancy.
The government gave the bill preliminary approval in May and parliament is expected to take it up in the fall. Zapatero probably has the votes to get it passed. However, the outcry on the teenager issue may force him to backtrack.
Under the current law, Spanish women can in theory go to jail for getting an abortion outside certain strict limits — up to week 12 in case of rape and week 22 if the fetus is malformed. But abortion is in effect widely available because women can assert mental distress as sole grounds for having an abortion, regardless of how late the pregnancy is.
Zapatero is seeking to deepen his mark on Spanish society.
What he’s proposing wipes away the threat of imprisonment and says abortion is a woman’s right.
“That is a qualitative change in Spanish culture and politics,” said Javier del Rey, a professor of political communications at Complutense University in Madrid. “Something that had been a crime is transformed into a right.”
The UK, France and Germany already allow minors to get abortions without parental permission. But in Spain it’s the issue that is dominating the debate.
The conservative Popular Party asks why a girl who cannot legally buy alcohol can have an abortion without asking her parents.
“The inconsistency is crushing,” lawmaker Sandra Moneo wrote in the newspaper El Pais.
“No father or mother can understand the idea of a minor going through that trauma without the advice, support and opinion of her parents,” Moneo said.
Zapatero’s camp counters by noting that 16-year-old Spaniards can choose to have open-heart surgery or chemotherapy without parental consent, but not an abortion.
Conservatives were enraged when Bibiana Aido, the minister of equality, said abortion was no bigger an issue than breast enlargement.
Socialists saw red when Antonio Canizares, a Spanish cardinal who holds a key position at the Vatican, seemed to play down a report detailing decades of sexual and other abuse of children by religious orders in Ireland and said abortion was worse.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing