Petition in Spain to Remove Abortion Law Gains Over 250,000 Signatures

By Myles Collier , Christian Post Contributor

November 22, 2012|3:59 pm

A petition in Spain looking to repeal the county's abortion law has garnered over 250,000 signatures since October.

The petition was started by pro-life advocates from Right to Life in a country that continues struggle to quell the dramatic rise in abortions - a result of country's liberal abortion laws.

The Zero Abortions petition has been able to collect support from all over Spain. Volunteers worked in November to collect a total of 103,264 signatures. Those will be added to the 150,000 signatures that were delivered to Spain's Ministry of Justice in October.

Organizers and supporters of the Zero Abortions petition are working with local grassroots movements to garner support for life in the face a fierce abortion rights advocates.

Volunteers were able to establish more than 100 different locations throughout Spain in order to collect the signatures. The collection of signatures has produced only minimal disturbances, but one report has indicated that a group of abortion rights activists attacked volunteers collecting signatures in Madrid.

An elderly woman helping to collect signatures was harassed by a group of people who took some of the petition papers with signatures on and ripped them up, according to reports from EWTN.com.

Abortions have dramatically risen since the law was amended to allow abortions in cases of fetal deformity.

Spain's justice minister, Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon, had previously stated that he would work with lawmakers to change the law that specifically targets disabled or deformed fetuses.

Some of the proposals listed in the pending legislation would eliminate the ability to obtain an abortion for any reason during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.

Ruiz-Gallardon recently stated that he would work to return the nation's abortion law to a "law of conditions," as reported in the Spanish publication La Razon.

That newspaper recently published national statistics that showed 90 percent of disabled fetuses are aborted in Spain with more than 16,000 occurring the past five years.