The Spanish parliament will today begin a closely fought debate to approve or reject a major amendment to the abortion law. Although the bishops have not, as they did in 1985, threaten with excommunication "anyone who procures an abortion", they have waged a bitter campaign against the amendment. One bishop described doctors who performed abortions as "Herods", while a letter was read out in Spanish churches on Sunday entitled "Licence to kill even more children".
Abortion was legalised in Spain under the Socialist government in 1985 when a law was passed permitting abortion for pregnancies as a result of rape, when the foetus is deformed or when the life of the mother is at risk. Since that time, almost 400,000 women have undergone abortions. Women's organisations estimate that before then around 100,000 women had clandestine abortions in Spain or travelled to England or other countries where it was legal.
Today's debate will centre on two amendments to the law, one presented by the Socialists which would permit abortion up to 12 weeks when a pregnancy constitutes "serious personal, family or social conflict" and when the woman has undergone professional counselling and has had a "cooling off period" of three days to give her a chance to reconsider. The second, more radical reform, is that of the United Left party which would permit virtual abortion on demand if the operation is performed within the first 16 weeks of pregnancy.
The debate is likely to be extremely tense and the result will be close depending on the decision of fewer than 20 deputies in order to obtain the 176 majority needed to approve the motion. The Socialist proposals can almost certainly count on the approval of their 161 deputies, although one leading Socialist has warned that his Christian conscience will not permit him to vote in favour and he will probably abstain, and they can also count on the support of some of the regional parties.
The conservative Popular Party has called for party discipline to oppose the amendments, even though some PP deputies favour a more liberal abortion law. A similar proposal before the Cortes last February ended indecisively with the results tied after three consecutive votes. Many fear this debate could end as inconclusively as the last one.
The Spanish government demanded yesterday that the Basque guerrilla group, ETA, agree to surrender its arms as a condition for beginning a peace process to end 30 years of separatist conflict. In the strongest official response so far to ETA's unilateral ceasefire, a government spokesman said: "The peace process will begin the moment ETA decides definitively to lay down its arms, to turn them in and, from that point on, to start dismantling itself."