by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman
BARCELONA, SPAIN, May 4, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - Although the Cardinal Archbishop of Barcelona, Lluís Martínez Sistach, has long denied that abortions are taking place in the diocese’s Catholic hospitals, pro-life activists have never accepted his reassurances. Now, they have more reason than ever to doubt his word.
The Catholic news agency ACI Prensa is reporting that it interviewed a young woman, whose name has not been disclosed, who went recently to Barcelona’s Sant Pau hospital to receive a treatment involving an anti-inflammatory drug. Instead, she was repeatedly told that the medication was incompatible with a pregnancy and that she would have to have an abortion if she became pregnant.
After nursing staff made such statements to her twice, she says, she asked to consult a doctor. He told her that if she were to become pregnant, she would need an amniocentesis to check for birth defects, and then abort her child if the results were positive.
Asked if the Sant Pau hospital itself could do the abortion, the doctor reportedly replied “it would be necessary to look at it, but it could be here.”
The report appears to confirm what Barcelona priest and pro-life activist Fr. Custodio Ballester told LifeSiteNews.com in an exclusive interview last October: that a priest on the board of directors of the hospital, Fr. Josep Forcada, had confirmed to him that eugenic abortions had been done at the hospital for years, and the institution would continue perform abortions in cases of “danger to the health of the mother.”
The “mother’s health” criterion is used worldwide to justify abortions for virtually any reason, including “psychological health” or the presence of fetal deformities.
LifeSiteNews has also reported that the hospital’s chief gynecologist functions as an “expert” on a website run by pharmaceutical company Janssen-Cilag for the purpose of convincing women to use the abortifiacient contraceptives it manufactures.
The abortions and distribution of abortion-inducing drugs at the Sant Pau Hospital and other Barcelona-area Catholic hospitals came to light in 2010, when the Spanish newspaper ABC reported (www.lifesitenews.com/news/catholic-hospitals-in-spain-accused-of-providing-abortions) that such abortions had been recorded in official documents published by the government of Catalonia. The abortions were confirmed, according to ABC, in interviews with hospital officials.
Although Barcelona’s Cardinal Archbishop Lluis Martinez Sistach initially stonewalled and then denied such reports, archdiocesan sources eventually stated that the Sant Pau hospital had been ordered not to perform abortions.
Pro-life activists, however, have not accepted the claim, and have continued their protests at the Sant Pau hospital on the 25th of each month.
The Catholic Church condemns abortion as murder, as well as “formal cooperation” in the killing of the unborn.
Contact information:
Archdiocese of Barcelona
Sergi Gordo Rodríguez (General Secretary and Chancellor)
Calle del Obispo 5
Barcelona, Spain 08002
Tel: (34) 93.270.10.10
Fax: (34)93.270.13.03
Click here for email.
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Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
Palazzo della Congregazioni,
00193 Roma,
Piazza Pio XII, 10
Phone: 06.69.88.42.17
Fax: 06.69.88.53.03
William Cardinal Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193 Roma, Italy
phone: 011.3906.69.88.33.57
phone: 011.3906.69.88.34.13
Fax: 06.69.88.34.09
E-mail: cdf@cfaith.va
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