Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Bogota (Fides Service) - “The situation in this country with regard to crimes against life is most concerning. We are grieved and concerned for criminal actions which happen day after day: homicide, violent deaths, assassinations, young people killed in sports stadiums, innocent children beaten and abused … these acts put us to shame before the world as one of the countries where there is least respect for human life”. With this sad affirmation Cardinal Pedro Rubiano Saenz, archbishop of Bogota and President of the Colombian Bishops’ Conference began a message to the people underlining the need to defend life against a move to legalise abortion by declaring the article of law which penalises abortion ‘inapplicable’.
The Archbishop said the Church in Colombia raises its voice once again because the constitutions says at article 11 that “the right to life inviolable. Death sentence is illegal”. So why “does the Constitutional Court called to observe the constitution in spirit and letter declare ‘inapplicable’ article 122 of Law 599 passed in 2000, which punishes abortion in Colombia ?. Why accept an anti-human practice when the idea of human rights appears to win universal and unconditioned recognition? Why do some Christians, even people of elevated moral condition, think that norms on human life should enter the game of necessary compromises of political life? What is even more serious, how can legislation make a right become an injustice and a crime?”.
Abortion, said Cardinal Pedro Rubiano Saenz, is not even remotely a solution for evils such as impoverishment, forced migration and unequal development, nor does it reduce the high percentages of adolescent pregnancy and maternity. The right to choose maternity and paternity- the Message said - “must be understood in the sense that men and women are free to generate a child but not to decide once the baby is conceived whether it lives or dies”.
The Cardinal called on all men and women to value to gift of maternity and paternity and to live their sexuality with responsibility and the awareness that human actions lead to duties which cannot be shirked. He also recalled that according to the teaching of the Church “nothing and no one can authorise the death of a human person, and certainly not when the person is helpless and unprotected ”. The document ended with a prayer to the God of life to help Colombia fight the culture of death and take steps to keep on the path of life.(R.Z.) (Agenzia Fides 28/5/2005, righe 33, parole 473)
