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| It never fails... |
In Deceber 2013, we wrote about the Spanish abortion bill that was proposed by the current party with a majority in Parliament. The previous Socialist government turned Spain in by far the most pro-death jurisdiction on abortion in all of Europe, and the purpose of the bill was simply to go back to the previous liberalization law, which still had made of Spain the "abortion capital of the continent." But the general idea was that, if the reform of the abortion law saved even a few lives and preserved the rights of parents, it would still be worth it.
Plus, as we also said then,
[I]t is, though surely a very timid measure, a healthy sign that the worldwide trend for abortion does not have to be always in the direction of more death and destruction, but can at times be reverted and even reduced. Measures to restrict abortion have been introduced or at least proposed in the past few years in nations as different as Russia and Turkey, and the Spanish example will hopefully show that a Western representative regime (not only a formerly proud Catholic nation, but a great Motherland of Catholic peoples if ever there was one) can enact pro-life measures, or at least halt the pro-death advances made in recent decades.
Instead, the Spanish prime-minister withdrew the bill from Parliament today, prompting the resignation of its main supporter, Minister of Justice Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, who also resigned his seat in Parliament and announced his complete removal from party politics. He, our Spanish sources tell us, had always been known as a liberal Catholic, but he now certainly places his name in a short list of politicians with a conscience.
For decades, in Spain as in many other countries in the West, "conservative" parties have tricked Catholics into voting for them because they alone could deliver some form of pro-life or pro-family measures. Instead, time and again, from Canada to Eastern Europe, they rarely do manage to deliver anything, even with solid majorities in parliament. When Socialists are in power they advance their pro-death and anti-family ideas, strongly -- when "conservatives" get majorities, no Socialist measure is undone... It was a tricky alliance: Catholics would support economic measures that are not exactly the best implementation of Catholic Social Doctrine (which, just to be clear, Socialist parties disrespect as well, despite the propaganda of their fellow travelers embedded within the Catholic Church), but at least they would be able to advance some measures of non-negotiable principles on family and the preservation of human life. Instead, what they get is neither one nor the other. Another curious betrayal, of course, happened in the United Kingdom, where a measure that wasn't even present in the parties' manifestos (the extension of civil marriage to homosexual "couples") was rammed through Parliament with full support of the Conservative-led coalition, whose slight hold on power had certainly been helped by the votes of pro-family Christians... And in France, the former president and leader of the main "conservative" party has just announced that he is not at all interested in revisiting the Socialist-imposed "same-sex marriage" law (that brought millions of Christians to the streets in 2013) when his party comes back to power -- he is only critical of the "humiliating" way in which it was passed.
If Catholic voters cannot get anything, not even what are slightly more than token measures, from sleazy deceiving "conservative" elected lawmakers, whither should they go? And what can they do when even their leaders, the Bishops, abandon them and are now more silent than ever on the most important issues of the day, surrendering as much as the lawmakers themselves to the prevailing Zeitgeist?
