Funky Numbers Challenge a Woman´s Right to Choose

July 5, 2005 marked the 20th anniversary of the legalization of abortion in Spain. To celebrate this huge step in women’s rights, the free Madrid daily newspaper Qué! published an article with the headline, "There is an abortion every 6.6 minutes in Spain," printed above the picture of a fetus in its mother’s womb.

The article goes on to say that one in every six pregnancies is "voluntarily interrupted" and that since the day abortion was legalized there have been 850,000 abortions. It also claims that in the last five years the number of women seeking abortions has doubled and that 14% of them are under the age of 19.

Of course, one has to ask where these numbers come from. I always question an article that lists lots of numbers and percentages but lists no source. Especially when the article ends in the statement: "These numbers have caused the Institute of Family Politics to request that the Ministry of Health create serious campaigns to increase issue sensitivity." Not surprisingly, many of Spain’s religious and “pro-family” web pages that broach the subject of abortion give the exact same statistics.

It’s obvious that the article is biased against abortion, so I automatically question everything in it, but even if the figures are correct, rather than spending money on creating "abortion sensitivity," we should be teaching kids (and apparently adults) to use a condom! Make "the pill" and morning after pill more readily available to young adults. And families need to catch up with the times. I can’t tell you how many young women won’t go on the pill because they are scared their parents will find out they are sexually active.

We should also wonder how many abortions were being performed daily in back alleys with unsterilized instruments when abortion wasn’t legal. Prophylactics had to be nearly impossible to find in über-Catholic Spain prior to 1975, during the 39 year reign of reactionary dictator Francisco Franco. How many of those women were under the age of 19? I don’t think anyone honestly believes teen and premarital sex have only become a problem in the last 20 years. Also, how many of the abortions carried out in the past 20 years were due to rape, incest or to save the mother’s life?

All of these facts and questions are important to keep in mind because numbers can be very persuasive and very deceptive.