Thousands of people marched through Madrid on Sunday to protest abortion, as Spains leftist government drafts legislation to ensure that the procedure is available in public hospitals.
Demonstrators marched through the Spanish city, carrying posters that read Abortion is not right and chanting More respect for life, to Cibeles square in central Madrid, where a manifesto was read aloud.
There are other options. There is always trauma after an abortion, but it isnt talked about, Yolanda Torosio, a 44-year-old secretary who attended the demonstration with her daughter, said.
The Yes to Life platform organized the demonstration, which drew an estimated 20,000 participants. The number of demonstrators was estimated to be around 9,000 by the central governments envoy in Madrid.
Parents wheeling strollers, older couples, and groups of youths, some waving Spanish flags, were among the audience.
While abortion was decriminalized in Spain in 1985, many doctors refuse to perform the surgery, making it difficult for women in the mostly Catholic country to terminate a pregnancy.
According to the Spanish doctors union OMC, most public-sector obstetrician-gynecologists consider themselves conscientious objectors who refuse to perform abortions.
As a result, women in certain areas must travel hundreds of kilometers for an abortion because no private clinic is close and the local hospital refuses to perform abortions.
The administration of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is drafting legislation to ensure that all public hospitals perform abortions, as well as to prohibit protests outside of abortion clinics as harassment.
IT also wants to change the law to allow children aged 16 and 17 to abort a pregnancy without the approval of their parents, as is the case in the United Kingdom and France.
According to polls, the majority of Spaniards support the countrys current abortion rules, which permit the operation on demand throughout the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.
