Spain: The Bishops Speak Out Against the Abortion Law
9-08-2010
Filed under News, The Church in the world
On July 5th, the law liberalizing abortion came into effect in Spain. This new law allows women to obtain an abortion during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy without limitation and up to 22 weeks in cases of risk to the health of the mother or of serious abnormalities of the foetus. Girls under the age of 16 will be able to acquire an abortion without parental consent, although they must inform one of their parents of the decision beforehand. Up until now, abortion was not permitted except in the cases of rape, serious malformation of the foetus or danger to the physical or psychological health of the mother.
The Spanish Catholic hierarchy reacted as expected, although none have spoken as virulently as the archbishop of Burgos, reported the daily Spanish newspaper El País. Bishop Francisco Gil Hellín, Archbishop of Burgos and member of the Pontifical Council on the Family, addressed this issue on July 19th in an open letter to the Spanish government and Parliament. He called for the Catholics of the country to act with disobedience concerning the law on abortion: “This law is not a law, even if it is presented thus because of political and legislative authorities. It is not a law because no person has the right to kill an innocent. For that reason it does not oblige. On the contrary, it requires direct opposition. . . . Let us go out to meet all the mothers who are in difficulty, and make their maternity easier.. . . . Let us prevent tyranny,” declared Archbishop. “Let us stop this plague that is abortion and which to date has killed more people than all those who live in the cities of Zaragoza, Cordoba and Burgos combined.”
The low level of abortions practised in the public hospitals in Spain can be explained by the objections of conscience advanced by the doctors. In 2009, the vast majority of abortions (97% of the 115,000 annual abortions) were performed in private clinics.
Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, Spanish president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, harshly criticized the new law as “completely insane” in a July 29th interview granted to Il Consulente Re, the Italian Catholic on-line monthly magazine. This law “corresponds to the mentality” of the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero “who has an obsession with the question of rights,” although, the bishop asserted, he is “incapable of understanding what is a right.”
In an interview granted to L´Osservatore Romano on July 30, 2010, Bishop Carrasco de Paula also warned against the recourse to the pill RU 486, also called the abortion pill. This pill “could cause the trivialization of abortion and treat an undesired pregnancy as the equivalent of an annoying cold that one can eliminate with the help of a pill,” he declared. In the face of this situation, the Pontifical Academy for Life is working on “an in-depth document” to answer “the numerous polemics which always incite a passionate debate” such as that on abortion, “even at times within the Catholic world.”
The President of the Academy for Life went on to explain that there is a considerable, deeply urgent need to address the subject of post-abortion syndrome which strikes many women and about which little is spoken publicly. “I refer to a state of depression which attacks many women who have obtained an abortion. Sometimes it may manifest as a state of anxiety or as a more serious condition. We are looking to determine the pattern of these symptoms, he added, because it is certain that abortion, in addition to killing an innocent, weighs deeply on the conscience of the woman. It is a question which one cannot ignore, especially from the pastoral point of view.”
On July 30th, in closing a conference on the theme of `the immense value of life’ with Aranjuez (Spain), Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, declared that the laws which do not protect life are not “respectable.” When a law legalizes abortion or euthanasia, “it ceases to be a true, morally binding, civil law. . . . The moment will arrive soon when we will become as ashamed of abortion as we have already with slavery.” (Sources : apic/imedia/archiburgos/ L’OsseratoreRomano – DICI n° 220 du 07/08/10)
