Spain Arrests 6 in Abortion Clinic Raids

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:52 p.m. ET
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MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Police arrested at least six people Monday in raids on clinics suspected of carrying out illegal abortions in Spain, officials said.

Four facilities in Barcelona were being searched, said a Civil Guard official in the city who could not be identified named under rules barring his name from being published. The official would not say what illegal activity the clinics were suspected of doing.

Spain allows abortions in cases of rape, fetal deformation or danger to a pregnant woman's physical or mental health. In the last instance, this danger must be certified by a doctor other than the one who would carry out the abortion.

The raids were ordered as part of an investigation that began following a complaint by an anti-abortion group called E-Cristians, the Civil Guard official said.

That complaint was filed in January after Danish television broadcast a documentary in which the gynecologist who runs the four raided clinics, Dr. Carlos Morin, was filmed offering to perform an abortion on a female journalist posing as being nearly seven months pregnant, said Pablo Molins, a lawyer for E-Cristians.

The doctor dispensed with the medical-certificate requirement and offered her a form in which she could state she suffered from a grave mental disorder, Molins said.

Morin was among those arrested, the Civil Guard official said.