Between October 6, the day the Government approved urgent processing of the decree requiring pregnant women to be informed of abortion methods and clinics, and November 3, the bishops’ radio station has broadcast about one hundred sixty hours of soccer. That is twenty-nine days of programming, and soccer has occupied nearly one in every four hours. In that same period, abortion has taken up twenty-five minutes and six seconds on COPE, measured from the broadcast transcript, day by day, and counted generously: any phrase counts, whether from an editorial, a guest, or a Washington correspondent.
Of those twenty-five minutes, twenty-two came all at once on Tuesday, October 20, at three thirty-four in the morning. It was a report on Red Madre, the foundation that supports pregnant women who are unsure, and it was not new: it had already aired on La Tarde on September 25 at six oh six in the evening and was replayed on Poniendo las calles, the program for those who work while everyone else sleeps. On the bishops’ radio, the space given to the unborn this month has been a late-night rerun (which, in audience terms, amounts to limbo).
Excluding the rerun, two minutes and forty-one seconds remain over four weeks. The October 9 editorial reached abortion via death row: it opened with a prisoner executed in Texas and, at five fifty-nine, devoted thirty-nine seconds to recalling that abortion is legal “in many democratic legal systems” and that this opens “a dangerous crack in the foundations of democratic coexistence.” It is the longest statement the station has made on the issue all month, and it was made before six in the morning. On Thursday the 15th, at six twelve, Carlos Herrera dispatched the decree in seventeen seconds, which this newspaper already reported. On Wednesday the 21st, Alejandro Macarrón, a guest on Mediodía COPE to discuss his report on the collapse of the family, spent twenty-five seconds on abortion (“I am one of those who think it is a horror”) before moving on to birth control in Africa. On Tuesday the 27th, the Council of Ministers approved €300,000 to expand the Quiero Abortar website, and the news received twenty seconds in the Mediodía COPE summary, between the farmers’ tractor protest and the Mbappé soap opera with Chinese television.
The rest are fragments. A neonatologist who, in an interview on perinatal palliative care, noted that when a fatal diagnosis is given, abortion is not the only option. A phrase from José Luis Restán on respect for life “from conception to natural death.” Six seconds of the Pope’s voice on October 20, in a recap of his June trip to Spain, asking whether a community that leaves the unborn child in the shadows can be called fully just. The abortion law, mentioned in passing as an example of how long the Constitutional Court takes. A line from the All Souls’ Day editorial on the “culture of death.” The word abortion in a Washington correspondent’s report. And seventeen seconds at dawn on El Partidazo, where a contributor recalled that in Germany in other times there were athletes who got pregnant to perform better and then aborted (“what a barbarity”). No Spanish bishop has uttered the word abortion on their radio in these four weeks; the only episcopal voice that touched on the issue was the Pope’s, six seconds, in a June archive.
If only daytime broadcasts are counted, between sunrise and sunset in Madrid, abortion has received one minute and fifteen seconds on the bishops’ radio in four weeks. A little over a minute: the addition of a first half with no incidents.
Soccer, meanwhile, has had everything. On weekends, with Tiempo de Juego, which presents itself as “the hottest hours of Spanish radio,” soccer has filled between eight and ten hours a day; during the week, El Partidazo closes each night until one thirty, and the bulletins carry the goals at all hours. The name Mbappé has been heard in 838 different minutes; Vinicius in 620; the Ballon d’Or in 406. Abortion, counted the same way, appears in 36, and 23 of those are the three-thirty rerun. Mbappé alone beats the issue twenty-three to one, which on the bishops’ radio is no longer a thrashing, it is the house style.
For every minute of abortion, the bishops’ radio has given more than six hours of soccer. If the late-night rerun is discounted, about sixty hours. No one is asking COPE to drop soccer (it is a radio station, not a seminary, and soccer pays the bills). What stands out is the schedule: of the twenty-five minutes this month, almost twenty-four aired at night.
The only lengthy statement the station has made about the unborn in four weeks was made when in Spain only street sweepers, bakers, and truck drivers were awake, on a program called Poniendo las calles. It is, at bottom, a method: sweep everything away before anyone gets up.
“COPE, la radio de los obispos” is a daily section of InfoVaticana. We listen attentively to our bishops’ radio 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 own shares and those of most dioceses. The Jesuits and Augustinians are also shareholders.
Everything that airs on it is the personal responsibility of every Spanish bishop.