San Marino legalizes abortion, year after voters gave OK

By FRANCES D’EMILIO
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Abortion rights advocates in San Marino say they’re pleased that lawmakers in the tiny republic have approved legislation legalizing abortion. Advocates were speaking Thursday after law’s passage by a wide margin a day earlier. The parliamentary vote is the culmination of referendum last year in which citizens overwhelmingly rejected a 150-year-old old law that criminalized the procedure in the predominantly Catholic nation. Lawmakers voted 32 in favor and seven against with 10 abstentions to make abortion legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. According to the referendum’s result, 77% of people wanted abortion to be permitted beyond the first trimester of pregnancy if the woman’s life is at risk or if her physical or psychological health is endangered by grave fetal anomalies.