A huge demonstration “For life, women and motherhood” and against the abortion policies of Spain’s government flooded the streets of Madrid on Saturday afternoon. Estimated by the Madrid regional government at 1.2 million people, it was one of the largest public protests since anti-war rallies held in 2003 and 2004.

Numbers are, of course, very political. A Reuters report published in the New York Times spoke of “tens of thousands of anti-abortion campaigners” and noted, “There was no independent assessment of the crowd’s size.” Evidently the Madrid local government could not be trusted to know how many people fit into its central square and feeder street. There was no picture in the Times. My own local paper, the New Zealand Herald ran a small picture of one woman and a caption -- that’s all, but it did mention “hundreds of thousands” in the march.

There are 48 million people in Spain, 308 million in the US. Imagine the world headlines and pictures if the equivalent number of people -- around 6 million -- had marched through Washington…

This is not the first massive protest against the liberalisation of abortion being pushed by Prime Minister Zapatero’s government, and judging by the response of his Equality Minister Bibiana Aido (“nobody has a monopoly on morality”) it won’t be the last. The socialists want to pass a bill that would allow abortion on demand up until the 14th week of pregnancy -- including for girls from the age of 16, with or without parental consent. Abortions would be available until the 22nd week on grounds of maternal health or fetal deformity, and later where the fetus had a “serious or incurable medical condition”.

Current laws prohibit abortion except in cases of rape, fetal malformation, or where the continuation of the pregnancy would cause physical or mental harm to the mother.

The media like to “explain” such demonstrations with stock phrases such as, “the overwhelmingly Catholic country” and “Spain’s traditionally Roman Catholic electorate”, the implication being that the Church still has some kind of a hold over the “peasants” while an enlightened political class carry the banner of liberty and human rights.

Yet two new polls show that the country is split down the middle over this issue: A poll by Spanish digital newspaper ABC said 42 percent of Spaniards believed there was no overwhelming popular support for the reforms, with 38 percent saying that there was overwhelming support for them. Another, by Instituto Noxa published in La Vanguardia, showed that 44 per cent of respondents support the proposed changes, while 46 per cent oppose them.

These polls suggest that Spain is now underwhelmingly Catholic when it comes to matters of substance, but it is certainly pro-life enough to make any really democratic government rethink its policies on human life.

There are several videos on YouTube. Here is one.