On Tuesday, October 6, the Council of Ministers approved urgent processing of the royal decree regulating what is said to a woman before an abortion. That day, on the bishops’ radio station, the word “decree” was heard in one hundred ten different minutes of programming, almost always referring to the housing decrees approved by the same Council. The general strike received forty-five minutes and Ceuta forty-six.
The abortion decree, none.
The text, promoted by the Ministry of Equality under Ana Redondo, requires information on “the different methods” and on “accredited public and private health centers,” with “special attention” to minors under sixteen. “Public aid for pregnant women” falls under the voluntary section: it is explained only if the woman requests it, and receiving it “will never be a requirement.” No one registered as a conscientious objector, nor anyone who has been in the last three years, may sit on the clinical committees involved in medically indicated abortions (conscience, it seems, leaves a trace). The urgent procedure shortens deadlines, including the public hearing period, and for Wednesday the 14th the Interterritorial Council of the National Health System was convened by email with that single item on the agenda. Final approval, still without a date, once again falls to the Council of Ministers.
On the bishops’ radio station, the following days were the same. Neither the 7th, nor the 8th, nor the 10th, nor the 11th, nor the 12th, nor the 13th, nor the 14th: no news bulletin, no interview, no panelist, and no bishop. Nor did the programs the Church itself broadcasts on its station, which aired those days on other topics: El Espejo and La Linterna de la Iglesia on Friday the 9th, and Iglesia Noticia on Sunday the 11th. This newspaper reported the content of the decree on the 13th. On COPE, nothing.
The word appeared only once, on Friday the 9th, in the editorial at six minutes to six in the morning, and not about the decree. The text dealt with the death penalty in the United States, prompted by an inmate executed in Texas and a prisoner whom two lethal injections had failed to kill, and at one point it broadened the focus: “Abortion in particular is a legal practice in many democratic legal systems.” It later lamented that, once the unconditional nature of the right to life is accepted, “any exception or nuance that in practice distorts it is too easily admitted.” Of the decree the Government had approved three days earlier in Madrid, not a word (to talk about abortion, the bishops’ radio station had to go to the United States).
The sentence came on Thursday the 15th, at twelve minutes past six in the morning, in Carlos Herrera’s monologue. It came from the Moroccan frigates and the Defense Staff: “But it is clear that for the Government the urgencies are others, for example, another decree on abortion. One that requires informing pregnant women about available methods and clinics to have an abortion,” and not, he added, about public aid or possible psychological contraindications. He then moved on to José Félix Tezanos, “the little cook,” and his poll, to which he devoted more than a minute.
The decree received seventeen seconds.
It was the only time in ten days and in more than two hundred thirty hours of reviewed broadcasts. In those same hours, the bishops’ radio station aired the spots for a sexual stimulant (“Do you like sex?”, one of them asks) more than forty times, each lasting about eight seconds. The abortion decree, two.
“COPE, the bishops’ radio station” is a daily section of InfoVaticana. We listen attentively to the radio of our bishops and tell you what we find: advertising, guests, language, what is said and what is left unsaid. COPE is 75% owned by Ábside Media, the company the Episcopal Conference created in 2020 with its shares and those of most dioceses. In addition, the Jesuits and Augustinians are part of the shareholder base.
Everything that is broadcast on it is the personal responsibility of every Spanish bishop.
Read also
- Health Ministry says that having an abortion “is fine” and not a single bishop responds on the bishops’ radio station
- “Bloody hell,” “inflatable doll,” “do you like sex?”: the Spanish of the bishops’ radio station
- The Government speeds up the abortion decree: aid for pregnant women only on request and without ex-objectors