Madrid, Spain, Oct 28, 2008 / 12:26 pm
The president of the Institute for Family Policy in Spain, Eduardo Hertfelder, has demanded that the Socialist government publish the figures on the number of abortions that took place in 2007 and inform the public in order to put an end to the manipulation of the debate on the new law on abortion.
Hertfelder said that with abortion becoming the main cause of death in Spain, the government’s move to “kidnap” statistics on the practice and its insistance on an “obsolete and erroneous policy that has been shown to be a failure” was “unprecedented.”
He went on to note that the number of abortions in the Spanish communities of Madrid, Andalucia and Valencia have increased 11 percent since 2006.
Taking into account these statistics, he said, the numbers for 2007 are expected to be around 110,000.
Since 1985 the number of abortions that have occurred in Spain has reached 1,200,000, with 301 taking place each day. For this reason, Hertfelder demanded that the Ministry of Health “drastically reorient its health and sexuality policy,” in order to stop and diminish “this huge increase in abortions, which results in 300 taking place each day in Spain. New laws expanding access to abortion are not the solution, he said.