Bishops: Abortion is a ‘bloody falsehood’
By Carmen Blanco

3 July 2009

A Spanish Catholic expresses her support for the Pope during a Mass in St Peter's Square (Photos: CNS)

Spain's Catholic bishops have severely criticised legislation that would liberalise the country's abortion laws, calling the bill "a very serious danger for the common good".

In a document posted on the bishops' conference website in mid-June the bishops' permanent commission said it felt it had a religious duty to inform the public about its concerns over the legislation.

The bill, expected to be considered by parliament in July, would allow girls as young as 16 to abort their unborn babies without parental consent.

It also would allow abortions to be performed without restrictions up to the 14th week of pregnancy.

In the document, Declaration on the Draft Bill of the Abortion Law: Endangering the Life of the Unborn, the bishops quote Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), and the Second Vatican Council's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), which called abortion and infanticide "unspeakable crimes".

"The bishops, who on numerous occasions have announced the gospel of life and denounced the culture of death, wish to emphasise some aspects of the draft bill in question that, upon becoming law, would be a serious regression in the protection of an unborn life, a major abandonment of the pregnant mothers and, finally, a very serious danger for the common good," the document said.

It continued: "The inclusion of abortion among the methods supposedly necessary for guarding health is in and of itself a grave falsehood.

"The medical act is geared towards stopping illness or to cure it. But pregnancy is not an illness even if it can carry with it health complications, be undesired or be the fruit of violence.

"Therefore, abortion is never curing but always killing. It is a different thing if a necessary therapy indirectly causes an unlooked-for abortion.

"To include abortion in health policy always gravely compromises the medical profession which is distorted when it is placed in the service of death.

"The falsehood is even more bloody when the concept of health used - even if it is the World Health Organisation - is changed to an excuse to cover up the particular desire to not have a child to the point of taking its life.

"In effect, if health is 'the complete physical, mental and social well being' and this well-being may be threatened by that which will be born this can be treated as an obstacle to the quality of life, the elimination of which will eventually be considered licit."

Under the current law, enacted in 1985, abortions are available to women aged 18 or older only in cases of rape or foetal malformation or if the pregnancy threatens the woman's mental or physical well-being.

The proposed legislation would relax these restrictions, allowing abortions for any reason during the first trimester of pregnancy. Abortions would be available up to the 22nd week of pregnancy if a doctor detects foetal malformation or a threat to the mother's health.

After 22 weeks abortions would only be allowed if foetal malformation would result in an unsustainable life.

Although the legislation lists women's health as a primary concern, the bishops said it failed to mention the moral and psychological consequences abortion can have for women, especially if they make the decision when young, without the guidance of their parents.

"This bill has no real interest in the well-being of the women tempted to abort, particularly young women," the bishops said. "It is merely trying to clear the way toward the moral abyss."

The bill also includes a provision mandating that sex education - including contraception and homosexuality - be included in all school curriculums. While the bishops agreed that sexual development and procreation were important issues to be discussed, they said the state should not mandate that they be taught in all schools.

Such a provision "would violate the rights of parents and/or of the school, freely chosen by the parents according to their own beliefs", they said.

Since coming to power in 2004 Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government has been at odds with Catholic leaders over the legalisation of gay marriage, increased rights for transsexuals and allowing stem-cell research.

Pope Benedict visited Spain in 2006 for the fifth World meeting of Families.

He spoke in support the traditional family during a visit to Valencia, only a year after the Zapatero government had legalised gay marriage, made divorce easier and downgraded religious education in schools.

It was his third international visit as Pope and he urged the Spanish bishops to stand firm in the face of the rapid secularisation that was happening across the country.

Spain's conservative opposition Popular Party is also protesting against the proposed abortion legislation. Popular opposition to the measure is over 50 per cent according to several Spanish newspapers.

A poll for El Pais showed that 64 per cent of the population opposed the measure while ABC, a conservative newspaper, had 57 per cent of Spaniards opposing the measure totally. According to another newspaper, La Vanguardia, the opposition was at 71 per cent.