On the following day, without any explanation, the Catalan government closed down the website where the list that included the Catholic hospitals was posted.
The president of the pro-life organization Barcelona es Vida, Mariano Arnal, also questioned whether Cardinal Lluis Martinez Sistach was well-informed about the hospitals linked to his jurisdiction.
He told CNA that if one inquires directly at San Pablo Hospital, “The information you will get is not the same as what cardinal has. The cardinal has the information he wants to have.”
Arnal said many Spanish bishops “are completely asleep, and there is too much silence surrounding abortion, such that the laity has had to step up and say this cannot be.”
“We have been silent for too long, especially the clergy. The hierarchy has been silent for too long. It is time for (local Church leaders) to strenuously speak out,” he said.
Dr. Xavier Sanz, a member of the Association of Christian Doctors of Catalonia, told CNA that the director of San Pablo Hospital, Father Jose Maria Forcada, has often expressed a vague position on issues related to the defense of life.
“We cannot have an unclear position,” he said. “We need to call what is black, black, and what is white, white.”
He said Fr. Forcada has a very calm personality and is very articulate, “so much so that when he speaks he doesn’t leave a clear impression of what his position is. It seemed like he was trying to defend the gynecologists at San Pablo a little.”
Sanz said that on several occasions the priest has appeared to justify abortion and euthanasia.
Adding to the accusations against the hospitals are personal testimonies of women who claim that they were offered the procedure during clinic visits.
One woman who preferred to remain anonymous over fear of reprisals, told CNA that a few months ago she approached an administrator at San Juan de Dios Hospital in the Diocese of Sant Feliu, which is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Barcelona, who told her that she could obtain an abortion at the facility.
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The woman said she asked what she could do if she was pregnant and did not want the baby, and she was told she should go to the emergency room “and they will take it (the child) out of you, give you a pill or something, and you’ll no longer be pregnant.”
“I don’t agree that they do these things, because on the one hand as a hospital they are saving lives, but on the other they are inciting people to kill,” she said.
CNA also gained access to the confidential testimony of another woman who was taken to San Pablo Hospital after feeling dizzy, where she was told she was pregnant.
The nurses caring for her asked how many children she had and if she wanted another one. In the emergency room she was told that if she was less than thirteen weeks pregnant she could get an abortion there, but that since she had been pregnant longer she would have to obtain one in another part of the hospital.
According to some media reports, the doctors at San Pablo Hospital claim that as of “very recently” abortions are no longer performed there.
However, Father Custodio Ballester, pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Barcelona, said that abortions at San Pablo hospital “are performed on late-term pregnancies, because abortion clinics won’t perform them and send them to the Church’s hospitals.”