Mons. Argüello has done well in recalling an uncomfortable truth: while some Western governments legislate with growing sensitivity to avoid animal suffering, they allow—and expand—the systematic elimination of innocent human lives through abortion. The recent decision of the United Kingdom to prohibit boiling live crabs and prawns contrasts painfully with the figure of more than 250,000 abortions registered in England and Wales in 2022 and with the subsequent expansion of their decriminalization. Pointing out that moral contradiction is not demagoguery: it is a duty.
However, the reflection is incomplete when looking only outward. Because abortion is not an exclusively British problem. It is also a Spanish problem. And a serious one.
The official data admits no euphemisms. In Spain, the number of abortions keeps growing. In 2024, more than 106,000 were performed, compared to just over 94,000 registered in 2015. The rate per thousand women between 15 and 44 years has gone from 10.40 to 12.36. At the same time, the number of centers that perform voluntary interruptions of pregnancy has increased. More supply, more ease, more normalization. All this while the birth rate plummets and the country advances, without disguise, toward a demographic winter with profound social consequences.
That is why the question is inevitable: why denounce abortion clearly when it occurs in other countries and show oneself more prudent—or directly silent—when the drama is also national? The defense of life cannot be selective or geographical. Either it is a firm moral principle, or it becomes a comfortable denunciation, without cost or consequences.
Today, December 28, the Church commemorates the memory of the Holy Innocents, the children murdered by order of Herod out of fear of losing power. The liturgy does not recall an archaeological episode, but a logic that repeats itself. Herod still has many faces. Remembering the Holy Innocents is a call to name evil by its name and not to get used to it. Because a society that zealously protects animals, but accepts the elimination of more than a hundred thousand children a year before birth, is not more compassionate: it is more incoherent. And a Church that denounces that drama only looking outward stays halfway in its prophetic mission.