Madrid, January 8, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Dr. Joaquim Calaf, head of Gynecology at the Holy Cross and Saint Paul Hospital in Barcelona, has expressed his outrage at the conservative Spanish government’s proposed abortion restrictions.
The proposed law will no longer allow for abortion on demand until 14 weeks gestation like the current one does, and baby malformation won’t be considered a reason for the mother to abort.
“We’re returning to practices that will at least be obscure,” said Calaf to the local media. “We’re being put in a Third World situation in regards to women’s health.”
According to Calaf, there’s no clinical reason to change a law “that works and hasn’t presented any conflict to users or professionals.”
Holy Cross and Saint Paul Hospital, and Calaf in particular, have for years been at the center of a controversy over abortion, with Catholic officials denying that abortions are performed at the hospital, despite evidence to the contrary. Priests with the Barcelona archdiocese sit on the board of the hospital.
As LSN reported, in October 2012 an abortion was performed at the Catholic-affiliated hospital on a 24-week old unborn child, who was killed because of a deformity.
And according to ACI Prensa, in May of 2013 the hospital also admitted to performing an abortion because during “the first trimester of the pregnancy a fetal alteration was detected.”
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LSN also reported that in 2011 Calaf announced his involvement in a website that promoted contraceptives, including “emergency contraception” pills, which may cause early abortions.
Fr. Custodio Ballester, a Barcelona priest who is leading protests against the hospital, told LifeSiteNews.com that the gynecologist has publicly endorsed abortion in the past, with the physician stating that “the earlier that an abortion is done, the better, both for medical and psychological reasons.”
“The Holy Cross and Saint Paul Hospital, in whose administration the leadership of the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Barcelona participates, continues to carry out abortions according to various witnesses and the health care workers themselves,” Ballester told LifeSiteNews.com, adding that the most the archdiocese has done is to state that “abortions should be done in other health centers.”
However, notes Ballester, that hasn’t happened. There is “an agreement with the administration of the hospital to deny the problem and not a coercive order to not do abortions,” he said.
Cardinal Archbishop Lluís Martínez Sistach has repeatedly denied that abortions take place in the Saint Paul, even when the Health Ministry has confirmed them and local media have reported on them.
But the problems at the hospital go beyond the surgical abortions.
“The sterilizations and abortion pills that are dispensed in the hospital is a topic that the archdiocese has not wanted to broach, nor has been interested in,” stated Ballester. “Regarding the experimentation with human embryos, the Archdiocese of Barcelona excuses itself saying that a ‘foundation independent of the hospital,’ is doing it. But it has its headquarters and acts in the very facilities of the Saint Paul Hospital.”
According to Ballester and local media reports, the Catalonian hospitals of Granollers and Sant Celoni in which the diocese of Tarrsa participates, and the hospital of San Juan de Dios, on whose board sit members of the diocese of San Feliu, are also performing abortions.
Under Spain's proposed new law, abortions would still be allowed up to the 22nd week, but only when the physical or mental health of the mother are at risk, which must be certified by two physicians independent of the abortionist.
Women will then be informed of the medical risks of the procedure and of the maternity social services the state provides, and must wait seven days before undergoing the procedure.
The law will also require girls 17 and younger to have their parents’ consent to perform the abortion.
Doctors who perform illegal abortions may face up to eight years of jail.
Spain has already one of the lowest birth rates in the world. According to the National Statistics Institute, by 2017 deaths will outnumber births with an estimated 404,054 deaths for every 397,714 births.
A study performed by the Family Politics Institute in 2010 showed that one in every five pregnancies in Spain ended in an abortion.
According to the Spanish liberal newspaper El País, this can “put our own survival at risk.”
“It’s been long since the Spanish population is not guaranteeing the replacement of its generations,” reads the article. “Since 1981 the average number of children per women has decreased… without any signs of (the country) touching rock bottom.”