According to the report, most abortions (91%) are at the request of the woman
The latest data on abortion in Spain are chilling. Since the law came into force in July 2010, where according to title II, more specifically in articles 13 and 14, the “decriminalization of the practice of induced abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy” is established, 100,000 women of have decided to end the lives of their children. As shown by the latest data offered corresponding to the year 2021, 90,189 women aborted with a rate of 10.7 per 1,000 women of childbearing age.
The data provided by the Ministry of Health exceeds those published in 2020, when 88,269 women decided to end the life of their babies before birth, which represented a rate of 10.33 per 1,000 women between 15 and 44 years. Despite these data, the highest number in history was in 2011, with 118,611.
By autonomous communities, Catalonia was the region with the highest rate of abortions (13.42%), followed by the Community of Madrid (11.90%), the Balearic Islands (11.56%), Asturias (11.50%) , Murcia (11.46%), Andalusia (11.18%) and the Canary Islands (10.6 1%). The regions with the lowest recorded data were Ceuta and Melilla (1.79%), Galicia (5.37%), La Rioja (6.17%), Extremadura (7.10%), Castilla y León (7.17%), %), Navarra (8.39%), Cantabria (8.68%), Aragon (8.79%), Castilla-La Mancha (8.90%), the Valencian Community (9.02%) and the Basque Country ( 10.39%).
Abortion by ages
According to the data, four out of 10 women who ended their pregnancy were between 20 and 24 years old, thus placing themselves as the majority group with a rate of 16.09 abortions per 1,000. In addition, in 2020, 312 children under 15 years of age and 9,076 young people between the ages of 15 and 19 aborted. The abortion rate for these two groups is 7.9 per 1,000.
According to the new abortion law approved last February and created by the Ministry of Equality, minors aged 16 and 17, as well as intellectually disabled women who want to end the lives of their children may do so without parental consent. In the same way, a judicial procedure will be created in the event that a minor under 16 years of age wants to have an abortion and the parents do not agree.
Since 2008, the evolution of infanticides in children under 20 years of age has been decreasing. The minimum peak was reached in 2020 (with a rate of 7.41), but in 2021 it increased again to reach 7.9. The highest figure was reached in 2011, one year after the law was approved.
Causes of abortions
According to the report, most abortions (91%) are at the request of the woman. In other words, they are the ones who decide to end the life of their son before the 14 weeks that the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero imposed.
0.33% decided to abort because their future newborn had anomalies incompatible with life or an extremely serious and incurable disease. On the other hand, almost 6% of women who decided to carry out this action did so because the pregnancy or giving birth posed a serious risk to the life or health of the pregnant woman. Finally, 3% did so due to a serious risk of abnormalities in the fetus.
