Madrid, Spain, Jun 6, 2008 / 16:15 pm
The president of the Spanish Forum on the Family, Benigno Blanco, said this week that Spain’s Health Minister, Bernat Soria, should listen “to those who up to now have not been taken into consideration,” to the “thousands of women who have been abandoned and are alone and have considered abortion because of a lack of solidarity and positive alternatives.”
In response to Soria’s announcement that a “commission of experts to study reform of the law on abortion” would be created, Blanco said the plan was cause for “grave concern” and simply an effort by the Health Minister and the current government to use the panel of experts as cover for their own complicity in abortion.
Blanco said that rather than listening to a panel of experts, Soria should instead listen to the “thousands of women who have been abandoned and are alone and have considered abortion because of a lack of solidarity and positive alternatives.”
She added that the Health Minister should listen to those who for years have been reaching out to such women “with zero support from public officials,” and to “those committed to defending life and the rights of the unborn and the mother.”
Blanco also said Soria “should remember that the life of the unborn is protected and shielded by article 15 of the Spanish Constitution.”
Since 2006, the Forum has sponsored 17 legislative initiatives to secure assistance for pregnant women, including financial aid and a support network that would offer “24 hour counseling, psychological, medical and gynecological help, communication with family members, employment and educational opportunities, housing assistance and child care.”