Emma's Mixtape

The Archbishop of Granada, Javier Martínez, recently compared the new Spanish Abortion law - which had been passed in the Spanish Parliament with the votes of the majority - to Hitler’s crimes and added that if a woman has a termination, men are entitled to abuse her. “Si la mujer aborta, el varón puede abusar de ella”.

The Archbishop has now declared that he was being misunderstood and that he had actually meant to say that abortion provides males with an excuse to abuse women. Well, excuse me, but since when have rape and sexual abuse become excusable. Rapists and abusive men do not need a reason or an excuse for their behaviour, they are dysfunctional individuals who are in dire need of therapy. There is absolutely no behavior that would justify rape or abuse – whether a woman has had an abortion, whether she is wearing red lipstick, a mini skirt, or whether she’s into pole dancing – absolutely nothing should make you a potential victim of sexual harrassment or rape.

Through his statement, the Archbishop of Granada is giving every rapist and every male that displays aggressive and dysfunctional behaviour towards women carte blanche. At the same time Martínez reduces all males to helpless slaves to their sex drives who cannot control themselves in front of a woman.

This type of attitude towards women has been predominant in the Catholic Church ever since Eve’s original sin. Discrimination and crime against women have a long history in the Catholic Church – how many women were burnt alive during and after the Middle Ages? The Archbishop of Granada makes no exception to the rule, as he perpetuates the very same attitude. Seemingly, in the mindset of the Catholic Church, women are not supposed to make decisions with regard to their own bodies, while men are at the same time entitled to claim dominion over these bodies of ours.