Spain has passed a law outlawing pro-life activity outside of abortion facilities, as well as banning abortion staff from counselling women against killing their children.
Spain’s Senate has criminalised pro-life free speech and peaceful activity that seeks to help women outside abortion facilities. Pro-lifers now face up to a year in prison if they try to offer mothers a way out of abortion.
In practice, the law – which deems pro-life activity in the vicinity of abortion facilities as “bothersome, offensive, intimidating or threatening” – constitutes a buffer zone that criminalises free speech and peaceful acts of witness.
In 2010, Spain legalised abortion on demand up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. The traditionally Catholic country has since become increasingly pro-abortion and extreme, even questioning the right to conscientious objection to abortion.
As SPUC reported last year, Spanish Equality Minister Irene Montero stated that “the right of physicians to conscientious objection cannot be above women’s right to decide”.
Montero, a member of the Podemos Party, part of the ruling coalition led by the anti-life Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, seeks to totally decriminalise abortion and scrap parental consent for abortions for girls aged 16 to 17.
SPUC comment
A SPUC spokesperson said: “The Spanish Government has disgracefully smeared pro-life acts of love as ‘offensive’ and ‘intimidating’. When such loving acts, which can and have saved lives and helped mothers, are criminalised, it is clear just how upside-down and sick society has become.
“In the UK, illiberal buffer zones are also a real possibility and active danger, which SPUC has been opposing vigorously. Most recently, the Scottish Government has sought to recruit a high-level abortion ‘guru’ to take the lead on abortion policy, including the implementation of buffer zones.
“SPUC will continue to fight for vigils that offer intercessory help, love and information to vulnerable mothers when they need it most.
“We must not ban love.”
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