SPAIN’S UNRESTRICTED ABORTION LAW TAKES EFFECT

SPAIN’S DEBATABLE NEW ABORTION LAW
GOES INTO ACTION IN MIDST OF PROTESTS

MADRID (AP) - A new Spanish law allowing abortion without restrictions in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy went into effect Monday but the Constitutional Court could yet intervene to suspend or change it. The law, approved by Parliament in February, was the latest item on a liberal agenda undertaken by the Socialist government, which took power in 2004. Equality Minister Bibiana Aido told Cadena SER radio the government was unworried by an appeal by the conservative Popular Party to the Constitutional Court challenging the 14-week clause as unconstitutional. “The government is fully convinced of the constitutionality of the law,” she said. The Popular Party cited a 1985 ruling from the court that said a woman’s rights could not automatically take precedence over those of an unborn child, and could do so only in cases of rape, fetal malformation or when the mother’s health is in jeopardy. The Constitutional Court must also decide whether to suspend the law while it studies the appeal.
The law allows 16- and 17-year-olds to have abortions without their parents’ permission, although the parents have to be informed.

The new law also wipes away the threat of imprisonment for having an abortion and declares it a woman’s right.“Above all it is a more secure law, providing legal protection for both women and health professionals,” said Aido. She said it reflected the needs of Spanish society better than the previous law. Fewer than 1,000 people gathered in Madrid on Saturday to protest the new law, down from the hundreds of thousands of people that have attended protests in recent years. “The drama of abortion has been in Spain for 25 years, it has caused terrible pain to over a million women, more than a million children have not been born,” said anti-abortion campaigner Benigno Blanco. “With this new law this drama is going to get worse. What we want to say is ‘enough of abortion.”


Now in Spain, women who choose abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy may do so without giving any explanation. People forget that pregnancy does not occur only by sexual intercourse, but it is also the result of divine will. Therefore, if we voluntarily stop the process, we are really committing a sinful activity.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

Abortion brings a very negative karma. The child in the womb is a soul, a living being destined for a human body. This is true from the moment of conception. “The Personality of Godhead said: Under the supervision of the Supreme Lord and according to the result of his work, the living entity, the soul, is made to enter into the womb of a woman through the particle of male semen to assume a particular type of body.” (S.B. 3.31.1) If one has sex, then one must take responsibility for raising any child that is produced - or at least see to it that the child is raised by someone. One cannot escape suffering by committing sins. … Legalizing abortion has not at all decreased the number of unwanted children in the world, or the number of mistreated children. In fact, easily available birth control and abortion has gone along with an increase in illegitimate and battered children.

VEDA - Vedas and Vedic Knowledge Online :
“Current Issues : Abortion.”
http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz
http://www.veda.harekrsna.cz/bhaktiyoga/issues.htm#1