The Spanish government is planning to introduce a new law that offers women and doctors greater legal protection for carrying out abortions, AFP reports.

Why should you care? For one, Spain isn't too far away. Americans determined to have the procedure could conceivably hop a flight there if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned, and if their Spanglish was good enough to get them around.

More importantly, keeping an eye on the policy debates and changes in a country like Spain, whose culture is similar to ours, provides insight into potential policy directions the U.S. could go as well as the debates that may arise along the campaign trail in the coming months. 

Last night, in his acceptance speech, John McCain referred to his goal of promoting a "culture of life." The rhetoric was aimed at rallying his pro-life supporters around the always heated abortion debate. In the coming months, you can bet the issue will arise a number of times during debates, commercials, and interviews.

Indeed, some states plan to add an abortion ban to the ballot in November, having found, just as Spain is finding, that the devil is in the details.

In South Dakota for example, a referendum to ban abortion outright failed in 2006 because the policy did not include provisions for justifying the procedure.

This coming November, the mistake won't be repeated. Pro-life activists in South Dakota have crafted a bill that grants exceptions to women seeking abortions that have become pregnant through rape or incest. It also places the mother's health above her future child's, so in cases in which the mother's health is in jeopardy from the pregnancy, abortions may be conducted.

In Spain, abortion was decriminalised in 1985 in rape cases, if the fetus was malformed within the first 22 weeks, and if the pregnancy represented a threat to the physical or mental health of the woman. Sound familiar?

Of course, mental health is a very subjective term that could almost always be used to justify an abortion, and in Spain, it is the most frequently cited reason for having the procedure. But if more lenient laws are introduced in Spain, women wouldn't need to hide behind their fear of motherhood or childbirth to have the procedure.

Interestingly, when looking at the U.S. and Spain, those few exceptions where abortions are tolerated by pro-life groups are identical: rape, incest, or danger to a woman's life. What is it about these circumstances that triggers such acceptance? Is the life of a bastard child worth less than a child from a known couple? Does a soul not form in a baby if the mother becomes pregnant through rape? And if so, when was that proven? 

Regardless of what side of the abortion argument a person is on, one has to wonder why a "culture of life" is pushed up to a certain point by the "moral majority," and then abandoned in unfortunate cases of rape or capital punishment. Shouldn't it be all or nothing? 

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