Alarming increase in legal abortions in Spain confirms failure of government policies

Madrid, Spain, Jan 2, 2006 / 22:00 pm

In response to a report by the government that legal abortions in Spain were up 6.5% in 2004 from the previous year, the Institute on Family Policy is demanding the country’s Health Minister, Elena Salgado, publicly acknowledge the failures of the Spanish government in this area and announce “a drastic reorientation of its failed and obsolete policy.”

Just days ago the Health Ministry revealed that deaths by abortion in Spain reached 84,985 in 2004, that is, one abortion every six minutes.

In a press release, Eduardo Hertfelder, president of the Institute, stated that “the government should realize once and for all that in order to solve the problem of abortion the solution is not to either directly or indirectly facilitate it.  Each mother who aborts is a failure of an administration that does not know nor want to help her.  It seems the Heath Minister lacks the sense to address this issue both for the woman and the child.”

The Institute is calling on the Health Ministry to organize a round-table discussion in January “with various social workers, experts and family institutions in order to come up with a new policy that defends both the mother and the child.”

One abortion every 5 minutes in 2007

Hertfelder noted that if the numbers continue to go up, there will be more than 102,000 abortions in Spain in 2007.  Therefore he has presented a number of proposals aimed at “seriously and rigorously addressing the problem of abortion in Spain.”

By 2007, he pointed out, more than 1,200,000 children will have been aborted in Spain since the practice was legalized.  “In fact, during 2005 we will have surpassed the sad record of one million children who have not been allowed to be born since the passage of the abortion law in 1985,” Hertfelder stated.

“The fact that one in seven pregnancies ends in abortion (15.8% in 2004) is a problem of such scope and gravity that the government cannot look the other way in an attempt to ignore it and escape blame,” he added.