Spanish socialists want abortion law relaxed

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2008

MADRID (AFP) — Spain's governing socialists, meeting at a congress in Madrid, said Saturday they wanted the law on abortion to be relaxed in the predominantly Catholic country.

Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said the socialists wanted to draw on the "most innovative European laws governing circumstances and time limits."

Late last year Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who was re-elected in March 2008, ruled out any reform of the country's abortion laws although he said his administration was "open to reflection" on the issue.

Abortion has been de-criminalised in Spain, since 1985, in only three specific sets of circumstances: for rape victims (within 12 weeks); where there are foetal deformities (22 weeks); and when "the...