By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
MADRID, October 12, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – According to Spanish Equality Minister Bibiana Aído, unborn human children are not human beings.
In response to a formal inquiry made on the subject of abortion by a Spanish parliamentarian, Aído said last week that “the Government cannot share in the affirmation that the interruption of a pregnancy is the elimination of the life of a human being.”
“Having an abortion does not suppose that a human life is terminated, because there does not exist a unanimous opinion regarding the concept of a human being … because 'human life' refers to a complex concept based on ideas or beliefs that are philosophical, moral, social, and ultimately, subject to opinions or personal preferences,” added Aído.
Aído's statement was made in response to a question posed by Carlos Salvador of the Union of the People of Navarra (UPN) party, who was in turn responding to Aído's claim that “a country is not worthy if even one person is suffering mistreatment.”
Salvador asked, “Do you or do you not consider the elimination of the life of an unborn human to be an act of mistreatment?” and also asked: “If the act of aborting involves the elimination of a human life, unique and unrepeatable, on what ethos do you base your argumentation for accepting, as a woman's right, the worst mistreatment that can be done to a human life, which is its elimination?” Aído's response was issued almost six months later.
Salvador says that he plans to “ask for explanations for this thesis,” which he called “hallucinatory,” in a plenary session in the Spanish Parliament tomorrow.
Spain's government, which is currently led by the Spanish Socialist Worker's Party (PSOE) under Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, recently reformed the country's abortion law, permitting adolescents as young as 16 to obtain abortions for any reason, without their parents' consent. The law is seen as a contributing factor to the PSOE's plummeting approval rating. Recent polls have indicated that a substantial majority of Spaniards plan to vote against the party in this year's parliamentary elections.