By Dave Andrusko

Part Two discusses the cruelty of assisted suicide. In Part Three Wesley Smith reminds us that everyone counts! Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you'd like, follow me on http://twitter.com/daveha.

One of many huge rallies against changing Spain's Abortion Law

The relentless campaign by Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to change Spain's abortion law is on the verge of success. The Latin American Herald Tribune reports that the Spanish Senate voted Wednesday to authorize abortion on demand until the 14th week of pregnancy for girls 16 and older. King Don Carlos I is expected to sign the measure which will go into effect within four months after it is published in the official gazette.

The vote was 132-126 with one abstention.

Carmen Duenas, a spokeswoman for the main opposition conservative Popular Party in the Senate, accused the government of trying "to bring in unrestricted abortion," according to the Associated Press. "The government wants to do away with one of the pillars of Spanish society, which is the family."

In recent years rallies brought together hundreds of thousand of people to protest a change in the 1985 law.

Under the "Organic Law of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy," adolescents as young as 16 will not need their parents' consent. They are obliged to inform their parents, but they are exempt "if they can show that fulfilling it would expose them to violence within their family, threats or coercion," the Associated Press reports.

Abortions will also be allowed up to 22 weeks "if two doctors certify there is a serious threat to the health of the mother, or fetal malformation," according to the AP. "Beyond 22 weeks, it would be allowed only doctors certify fetal malformation deemed incompatible with life or the fetus were diagnosed with an extremely serious or incurable disease."

The 1985 abortion law limited abortion to cases such as a threat to the mother's health or life, and to cases of rape or fetal deformity. But with an expansive interpretation of risks to a woman's "mental health," the number of abortions in Spain more than doubled in the past decade--from nearly 54,000 in 1998 to 115,812 in 2009.

According to Spain's Ministry of Health, that represented an increase of 3.27% from 2008.

"Of those 10,221 were between 16 and 18 years of age," the Herald Tribune reported.

Part Two
Part Three