I don't know where JamesR gets all this "WASP morality" business from. Traditionally Hispanics are quite socially conservative, particularly on life issues. Note that "Liberation Theology" and the like is generally about fiscal issues such as redistribution of wealth; anti-religious sentiment, such that it is present, has generally been expressed in anticlerical terms (which would make sense, given the enormous political power of the Roman Catholic Church in most Latin American countries), rather than as a rejection of religion-based morality altogether. Perhaps there is a split between the newer generation and the old, but even as recently as when I was James' age (~15 years ago), it would have been a huge scandal for any girl who got pregnant to do anything other than keep the baby. Case in point, of the dozen or so Hispanic girls I knew growing up who got pregnant in their teenage years, not one aborted. You could say that it is a harsh religious outlook that essentially strips them of their "choice", but knowing these girls and their families, I think it's better to say that they have a culture which values family cohesion over individuality, and the social support system that goes along with being part of a community that cares about children and elders, rather than treating both as some kind of temporary burden to be kicked out of the house at 18 or shuffled off to a nursing home. I mean, I know anecdotal evidence is not anything to base conclusions on, but even in my own family, we wouldn't put my grandmother in a nursing home ever. And she wouldn't go even if we wanted her to (she was even mad when she had to spend a few weeks in an outpatient care home recovering from shoulder surgery, thinking that we had abandoned her, even though it was the doctor she was seeing that ordered it). My uncle lived next door to her (actually, in one house, just separated by a wall that he built to make it into two, with a door in the side so that they could drop in on each other at any time) since the day he got married (1970; to his high school sweetheart, the only girl he ever dated, and he's still married to her -- how rare is that these days!), and took care of her until the day she died, about three years ago. You could say this is all part of the same impulse: We won't throw out our old people, just like we won't throw out our children (even if they're in their late 20s, like a lot of guys I grew up with; and the same goes for their sisters...if they're not married, they're not going anywhere). That's as traditional as it gets.
WASP morality...no mames, güey!
