Monday, February 23, 2009

Spain Legalizes Abortion

A big step forward for a country where the Catholic Church has substantial political power. The Vatican was fighting hard to block this.

I don't imagine that there's any easy way for non-Catholics to have a positive effect on the election of a new Pope -- I'm sure the Cardinals who vote would be suspicious of the intervention of outside groups on behalf of some candidate. But if there was some way to help potential Popes who were interested in helping poor people, rather than in making contraception and abortion unavailable to women, that'd be something to look into.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

One might point out that there's no easy way for Catholics to have a positive effect on the election of a new Pope either. You pretty much have to be high up in the Church hierarchy to count in these things.

Neil Sinhababu said...

What determines the composition of the upper church hierarchy then? From what I understand, the disappointing answer is that the Pope has a lot of power over that.