Laws

This from the Portugal to legalize abortion, conservatives shaken - washingtonpost.com:

Under the current ban, women caught aborting can go to jail for up to three years.

When the ban is lifted, Portugal will join most European countries in allowing abortions, except a small group with strict abortion laws -- Malta, Ireland and Poland.

Liberals now hope other progressive laws can be passed as in neighboring Spain, such as allowing gay marriage.

The conservative camp, led by the head of Portugal's Catholic Democratic party, Jose Ribeiro e Castro, said this was a "sad chapter in Portugal's history" and blamed Socrates for insisting on a move that split Portuguese society.

More than half the traditionally Catholic nation's 8.7 million electorate abstained, but of those who voted in Sunday's referendum, 59.3 percent voted to lift the abortion ban and 40.8 percent to keep it.

Democracy cannot flourish if women do not have the right to exercising their free will. Anti-abortion laws are just another name for reproductive slavery.

A country is not conservative if it has laws denying women equal reproductive rights. Said country is a tyranny when it forces women --and for that matter families-- to take extreme measures when it comes to their free will.