By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
SPAIN, February 5, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) – According to a new opinion poll, a majority of Spaniards oppose the idea of further loosening restrictions on abortion, a possibility that socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has promised to raise in the next parliamentary session, following national elections in March.
According to the poll, performed by the DYM Institute for the Spanish publication ABC, 49 percent of those questioned would like to either maintain existing restrictions on abortion or increase restrictions, while 42 percent would like to loosen restrictions.
The Spanish public’s strong negative response to loosening abortion restrictions extends even to the Socialist Worker’s Party itself. About 50% of the party faithful are in favor of the idea, while a total of 43 percent want to maintain restrictions or even increase them.
The public’s strongly negative attitude towards the socialist pro-abortion agenda may stem in part from recent revelations of illegal late term abortions at clinics in Barcelona and Madrid, in which unborn children at later than five months gestation were being aborted based on fabricated evidence of a psychological “risk” associated with the pregnancy.
Thirteen abortion clinic workers, including Spain’s “abortion mogul,” Carlos Morín, are being prosecuted for these and other illegal activities.
However, regarding other aspects of the family values debate in Spain, the nation exhibits a strange mixture of views.
A very strong majority, 69%, support maintaining the Socialist Worker’s Party’s institution of “homosexual marriage”. Fifteen percent would like to modify it, and only 14% want to eliminate it, despite the fact that the country is nominally 94% Catholic.
The poll also indicated, however, that the socialist government’s ongoing conflict with the Catholic Church had helped the socialists’ opposition, the People’s Party. The results showed that Spaniards were more likely to criticize the socialists for their family policies and for their relationship with the Church. Strangely, however, they were more critical of the less-pro-abortion People’s Party regarding the abortion issue.
The poll’s data seems to suggest that the public continues to sympathize with the Socialist Worker’s Party on the abortion issue, while rejecting the party’s tendency to loosen abortion restrictions. Simultaneously, the public is dissatisfied with the socialists’ family policies in general, perhaps reflecting the ongoing population crisis caused by small families and a shrinking population.
The intensity of the debate over abortion and family values, however, is playing an increasingly important role in the debate as the country approaches an already close election in March (see today’s LifeSiteNews coverage at https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/feb/08020502.html). Although the outcome remains uncertain, if the socialists lose it is likely that the result will be partially due to their controversial policies regarding human life and family.