On July 5, 2025, 40 years of the first Abortion Law in Spain are turned. Since then, more than three million people have been deprived of the right to life, despite the mobilizations and prophetic preaching of the Catholic Church.
Thus came the decriminalization of abortion in three assumptions, promoted by the ruler Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE): Risk for the physical or psychic health of women, without limit of weeks of prenatal life; violation, up to 12 weeks gestation, with prior complaint; and serious malformations, until 22 weeks.
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Official statistics collected 9 abortions in 1985, 411 in 1986 and 16,206 in 1987. The next year the 30,000 were exceeded. The 50,000 level was first exceeded in 1996 and, a decade later, the 100,000 registered annual abortions were exceeded.
These figures remained until 2014, when they fell to almost 95,000. With oscillations since then, in 2023, the last published figure, turned to the figure of 103,097.
Official statistics on surgical abortion encrypt 3,031,420 aborted human beings. To these must be added, according to the study Those who are missing prepared by the Public Association of faithful Hope Motherto “hundreds of thousands of embryos aborted by the pill of the next day.”
The document also emphasizes that, in these years, the dignity of all human life of “thousands or millions of frozen and discarded embryos has been violated as a product of in vitro fertilization”, the embryos to which its uterine implementation was prevented with devices such as the IUD or by the abortive effects of the contraceptive pills.
Despite the alternation of power and the theoretical positions of the Popular Party, at least for some years, there was never a change in favor of the right to life in Spain in four decades.
Since the approval of the law and during the last decade of the twentieth century, feminist voices promoted a new reform, called the “fourth supposed” that sought to give nature letter to the fraud of law that supposed that almost 100% of the abortions were accepted to the alleged decriminalizer of the “psychological risk” of the mother.
However, it did not become, partly due to the mobilizations provident in front of the Congress of Deputies.
The abortion law remained during the two mandates (1996-2004) of the Executive led by José María Aznar, of the Popular Party, despite the fact that the formation was defined as inspired by the Christian values.
Free Abortion Law in 2010
The socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, during his second term as president of the Government, approved in 2010 the so -called AIDO Law (by the Bibiana Aido Minister, in charge of promoting it).
It was a law that abandoned the decriminalizing scheme and placed abortion not as an evil exempted in certain assumptions, but as a mother’s right to kill her son at will during the first 14 weeks of prenatal life and only limited in theory after some circumstances.
At first, the procedure required an informed consent and a 3 -day reflection period, and 16 and 17 -year -old girls could not access without consent from parents (which was eliminated shortly after). However, criticisms from the movements caused by their breach were repeated.
This rule was answered with numerous and mass demonstrations, promoted by provident organizations as the right to live, the Federation of Provide Associations of Spain or the Family Forum.
Unfulfilled promises of the Popular Party
In 2011, the Popular Party (PP) filed an appeal for unconstitutionality and He promised In campaign to change the model of the 2010 law and “reinforce the protection of the right to life” as well as “promote a law of protection of motherhood, with support measures to pregnant women.” He won the general elections with an absolute majority.
In December 2013, the Council of Ministers approved a Draft Organic Law for the Protection of Conceived and the Rights of Pregnant Women. This rule prohibited free abortion at the request, allowed in case of violation until week 12 of intrauterine life and for serious risk to the mother’s health, after accreditation of two doctors. In addition, it eliminated the case of fetal malformation.
Only nine months later, the Executive withdrew his draft, claiming “lack of consensus” and the Minister of Justice, Alberto Ruiz Gallardón, resigned.
In March 2015, the PP slightly amended the free abortion law without modifying the system of deadlines and recovering the paternal consent in the 16 and 17 year old girls. In addition, “purge” of his electoral lists to the December 2015 elections to the parliamentarians Provida and eliminated any approach in its 18th Congress, held in February 2017, as reflected In his doctoral thesis The former PP parliamentarian, Lourdes Méndez Monastery.
This minimal modification was restored by the Government of Pedro Sánchez in 2023, which also eliminated the three -day reflection period, guaranteed that prenatal homicides in the public health network be made and limited the objection of awareness of doctors, among other measures.
A few months before, in addition, a modification of the Criminal Code that aims to criminalize the informative and welfare action of the providers in the vicinity of abortion businesses was approved.
Provide and preaching actions of the Catholic Church
In these forty years there have been numerous pronouncements of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), even before Francisco Franco died, the stage of the transition was opened and a new Constitution was approved for a system of parliamentary monarchy in Spain in which the right to life was collected: “Everyone has the right to life and physical and moral integrity, without any case, in any case, they can be submitted to torture or torture or degrading. ”
Thus, in October 1974, one month before the death of Francisco Franco, the Episcopal Commission for the Doctrine of Faith spread a note in which it already established that, in the debate on abortion, “one of the fundamental principles is at stake not only of Christian morality, but of all ethics: that of the value of human life and its consequent inviolability”, circumscribed it to the context “of a progressively materialized society”.
He also addressed the debate on the cases of “risk to the mother’s life” and “congenital anomalies”, reminded doctors for their vocation to take care of human life and sent a message to the mothers “especially those who feel the temptation to destroy the life they lead in their guts; we ask them to know how to understand the greatness of their vocation as a woman and mother; to life and giving reception and food to that new being that God has entrusted to them. ”
After this pronouncement, many others arrived in the 80s, such as documents Life and abortion y The decriminalization of abortionof 1983 or those published in 1985: before the ruling of the Constitutional Court, on the issue of moral consciousness in relation to abortion and the “moral and Christian attitudes” before decriminalization.
In 1986, when the fourth assumption of decriminalization for economic reasons began to be discussed, the Spanish bishops pointed out in a new statement that, if approved, “would constitute the most dramatic expression of human selfishness, structural injustice and social insolvenience. The poor would not be entitled to be born.”
In 1991, CEE published Abortion One hundred issues and responses to the defense of human life and the attitude of Catholicsa compendium of Catholic doctrine about the protection of human life.
At the end of the 90s and entering the third millennium, the ecclesial pronouncements put the focus on chemical abortion and, specifically, about the use of the Ru-486 pill, which by means of the miningistone, blocks progesterone, essential hormone for the viability of pregnancy. Next to this compound another misoprostol is administered, which causes contractions to expel the dead embryo. This pill was approved in 1999.
This reflections were collected in documents such as Pill abortion is also a crime, Even broader license to kill children o With the pill he also kills.
Since 2000, the EEC addressed the issue about the so -called “following day pill” warning that it is “an authentic abortive and not simply contraceptive technique.”
Already in 2009, before the announcement of a free abortion law, CEE launched a communication campaign with the slogan “protects my life” in the face of the increase in social acceptance of abortion to which another titled “is my life!
In 2010, given the entry into force of the new abortion law, the bishops denounced that it was “an objectively incompatible law with the straight moral conscience – in particular, the Catholic – since, from the ethical point of view, the current legislation worsens.”
In 2023, CEE was wondering in another pronouncement if the right to life is unconstitutional in Spain, after a controversial judgment of the Constitutional Court that rejected an appeal against the law approved in 2010.
Nicolás de Cárdenas
Born in 1980, I am a Spanish and journalist’s husband and father with more than 20 years of experience in print and digital media, specialized in socio -political and religious information. I have worked more than 10 years in defense of human rights and I have accreditations in journalism and comprehensive communication. Since July 2022, I am a correspondent for ACI Press and Ewtn News in Spain, covering international events of the Catholic Church.