O tempora, O mores!

On February 15, according to CNS, "Spain’s House of Representatives passed [a] new law on assisted reproduction, which allows a woman to have up to three embryos implanted in her uterus in order to increase the possibilities of a successful pregnancy. It also allows couples to decide whether to keep the left over embryos, donate them for research or to other couples, or to have them destroyed." This is in a country that, on January 1, banned all smoking inside public buildings. So here's the message: we're so concerned about people's health that we will fine people who smoke anywhere but on their own property, regardless of what they want; but we care so little that the embryo is a human life that we will allow people to flush it down the toilet, if that's what they want.

I call that contrast an irony; Bishop Jose Manuel Lorca Planes of Teruel called it "hypocrisy." I disagree with the bishop about that. Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue; there is no homage here. Anti-smoking Nazism is about fear of disease, not virtue. But I do agree with the bishop in calling the new artificial-reproduction measure a "monstrosity." To be sure, such a measure is logical in a country that recently made abortion-on-demand easy to get. But I've often wondered why people so concerned about reducing cancer risk are so little concerned about protecting the most innocent and vulnerable. I think I have the answer.

Spain now has the lowest birthrate of any country in the world. That country also recently introduced same-sex "marriage." (I insist on the scare quotes; God instituted and defined marriage, not the state; same-sex marriage is therefore a perverted ersatz.) Is it any wonder that a people who refuse to reproduce themselves see nothing untoward about umooring marriage from procreation? Moreover, the response of that country to the Madrid bombings by al-Qaeda, which killed scores of people, was to elect a government that promised to, and did, pull Spain's troops out of Iraq. Not what I'd call machismo. Unlike the Netherlands, of course, Spain has not yet licensed doctors to kill people deemed in bad-enough shape; but I'm sure we'll see that before long too. What do all these things have in common with anti-smoking Nazism? Simple: people who care nothing for the future of their civilization are generally very concerned to make their own lives as comfortable as possible, even if that doesn't mean as long as possible.

That will work only until they're doddering in nursing homes. In another twenty or thirty years, the native population of Spain will be in steep decline while its Muslim immigrants multiply like rabbits. It will be the Reconquista—in reverse and by demographics. Spain is one of the clearest, if not the clearest, example of the suicide of the West. Will we cut the noose before we hang limp from the rafter? I wish I knew. All I can do is raise consciousness about what is going on. Prayer is indispensable.