The Best Kind of Strike

Imagine this one for a second. The government sends inspectors to abortion clinics to crack down on illegal abortions and the pro-life movement steps up its protests and activism. In response, the abortion clinics do the unforeseen: they go on strike. This may sound like a pipe dream, but the New York Times reports that it is actually happening in Spain . While I have never heard of capitulation to one’s opposition as a form of protest, I can’t say that I mind.

To be sure, the insults, physical violence, and vandalism that some abortion providers report is not to be condoned. But much of the recent anti-abortion activity has come in the wake of the arrest of Carlos MorÃn, an abortionist who apparently agreed to a Dutch journalist’s request for an abortion during her seventh week of pregnancy while she was secretly filming him. Dr. MorÃn is now in jail, but his arrest put Barcelona and Madrid’s abortion clinics in the Spanish national media. Another video was released, this time of an abortion of a baby at 21 weeks, and later in December of 2007 a Dutch woman was arrested in the Netherlands for having a late-term abortion in a Spanish clinic.

So in light of publicity about the realities of abortion, chiefly illegal abortion, and in light of an increase in pro-life activism, Spanish abortion clinics close in protest. If only America could be so European.