Spanish women protest over plans to tighten abortion laws

Women take to the streets to protest over plans to make it harder for women to get abortions in Spain

Women have taken to the streets of Madrid in protest against government plans to tighten abortion laws.

Spain's conservative government want to make abortions illegal if the foetus is deformed and put in a requirement for parental permission if women aged 16 and 17 wanted an abortion.

The crowd of hundreds of women argued it would take Spain back to the era of General Franco, when abortion was illegal.

Justa Montero, of the Feminist Assembly in Spain, says: 'It seems to us to be a throwback to the Franco dictatorship and we are not willing to accept under any circumstances measures that will take away our rights.'

Women in the crowd chanted 'we give birth, we decide' and scrawled slogans on their bodies, such as 'judges and priests away from my body'.

Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon believes the law should be changed to ban abortion in cases of a deformed foetus.

He told right-wing newspaper La Razon: 'I don't understand why we should deprive a foetus of life by allowing abortion for the simple reason that it suffers a handicap or a deformity.'

A poll published on Sunday by left-wing paper El Pais shows 81 per cent of Spaniards are against banning abortion in cases where a foetus is deformed.

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