Abortion boat leaves Spain
2008-10-20 21:12
Madrid - A Dutch "abortion boat" left the eastern Spanish port of Valencia on Monday where it spent four days providing abortions to circumvent Spain's stricter laws on the procedure, the organisation Women on Waves said.
The yacht had sparked protests from pro-life groups since its arrival on Thursday, with Valencia's conservative Mayor Rita Barbera describing it as a "provocation that has sparked indignation".
The founder of the Dutch non-profit organisation Women on Waves, Rebecca Gomberts, declined to say how many women received the abortion pill on the boat, anchored in international waters 12 nautical miles off the port.
"We never talk about numbers, because we believe abortion is not about numbers, it's about the need of an individual woman," she told AFP by telephone from the Netherlands.
"The women who came on the boat had no means to pay for the private clinics in Spain. There were a lot of immigrants, and women who were under 18."
"What we learned here (in Spain) is that there are still a lot of obstacles for women to obtain abortions, and these obstacles are mostly financial and that is caused by the law," said Gomberts.
Spain decriminalised abortion in 1985, but only for certain cases: up to 12 weeks of pregnancy after a rape; up to 22 weeks in the case of malformation of the foetus; and at any point if the pregnancy represents a threat to the physical or mental health of the woman.
But Spain's Socialist government last month said it plans to introduce a new law that will offer greater legal protection for women who wish to have an abortion and doctors who carry out the procedure.