The Church in Spain has announced it will excommunicate any members of the Spanish parliament who have voted in favour of a government-sponsored bill to liberalise the country’s abortion laws.
A spokesperson for the Spanish Bishops’ Conference, Juan Antonion Martinez Caminohe, yesterday described the move as a “warning to Catholics, that they can’t vote in favour of this and that they won’t be able to receive communion unless they ask forgiveness”.
He added that those who supported the bill were “in an objective state of sin".
The government-sponsored bill, which passed the first of a series of votes in the Spanish parliament on Thursday, will allow abortion until the 14th week of pregnancy and, in cases of extreme foetal deformity, at any time in the pregnancy.
The bill will also allow teenage girls to obtain abortions from the age of 16 without parental consent, a clause that has generated dissent even within the governing Socialist Party.
Abortion is currently allowed in Spain in cases of rape, a malformed foetus or if the pregnancy endangers the physical or mental health of the mother.
Spain has a higher rate of abortion than other European countries because many Spanish doctors are willing to attest to the danger to the mother's psychological health.
Abortions have doubled in the past decade from nearly 54,000 in 1998 to 112,000 in 2007, the most recent year for available data from the Spanish Ministry of Health.
It was legalised under certain circumstances in Spain in 1985 and that law was further liberalised to it current version in 1986, despite fierce opposition from the Church.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched against the abortion law in Madrid last month. But the government, which has fallen slightly behind the conservative opposition in opinion polls, calculates that the bill has strong support among left-leaning voters.
Opposition to the law have been led by Catholic groups and the opposition People’s Party.
In response several Spanish Socialist politicians and political commentators have called for an end of the Churches Tax Exempt status.
