One of the great self-deceptions in the abortion debate lies in believing that the battle is won with a solemn declaration or a fulminating law, as if social reality would bend by decree. It’s a comforting illusion, but false. And, worse still, profoundly sterile.
International experience is clear and unsentimental: there is not a single case in the world where a widely abortionist society has shifted, from one day to the next, to maximum legislation with stable and effective results. Neither in Europe nor in America. Nowhere. All real victories have followed a long, uncomfortable, and unheroic path: first, a gradual change in consciences; then, partial legal advances; and only at the end—if it arrives at all—a broad and lasting protection of life.
Poland, Hungary, the United States. Different contexts, same pattern. No one started from the end. No one won on day one. And no one consolidated anything without first preparing the cultural, moral, and anthropological ground.
That’s why measures like the fetal heartbeat one are much more important than maximalists with slogans acknowledge. Not because they are the ultimate goal, but because they introduce a crack in the dominant narrative. They force us to look at what we want to hide, to listen to what we want to silence. They are the kind of step that doesn’t change a law forever, but does start to change a mentality.
And precisely for that reason, they generate so much discomfort. Not only on the left, but also in supposedly allied circles, which reacted with abandonment, lukewarmness, or open opposition—it’s enough to recall the role of COPE—when biological reality began to become audible. That detail should suffice to understand where our society really stands and how childish it is to demand instant solutions.
A law without a minimum social understanding to sustain it is a fleeting patch. It can end up as wet paper, be boycotted in its application, or reversed as soon as the political wind changes. Or worse: it can provoke a backlash that strengthens the abortion cause more forcefully than before. Maximalism without pedagogy is not bravery; it’s imprudence.
In this context, campaigns like those of HazteOír—demanding public proclamations when not in government and unable to legislate—reveal an interested confusion between moral testimony and profitable agitation. No one doubts the gravity of abortion. What is legitimate to question is the purity of intention of those who force gestures that save not a single life, but do generate noise, polarization, and, along the way, income.
HazteOír does not pay the price of its demands. It does not lose elections, does not block possible reforms, does not suffer institutional wear and tear. Its model is not to govern or transform, but to keep an indignation alive that sells well. The more the rope is stretched, the better. Even if that means weakening the only political actor that, with all its limitations, can open the way to real advances.
Politics, unfortunately for lovers of immediate epic, does not work on the basis of performative purity. It works by accumulating strength, changing frameworks, shifting consensuses. It demands patience, pedagogy, and a constant willingness to be accused of being lukewarm by those who assume no effective responsibility.
Defending life is not about shouting louder, but advancing when possible, even if little, so that tomorrow more can be advanced. It is not about demanding the maximum today to lose everything tomorrow, but preparing a victory that is neither symbolic nor reversible.
Those who do not understand this will continue to win applause on social media and donations in campaigns.
Those who understand it may not win the war today, but they will be building the conditions so that, when it comes, it is not a mirage.
And history—not Twitter—demonstrates that it is the only path that has ever worked.