Mexico City, Mexico, Sep 16, 2011 / 11:56 am
The Bishops’ Conference of Mexico has issued a statement emphasizing that society should not be surprised by violence when the unborn are allowed to be aborted.
“The multiple expressions of violence in the different fields and stages of the lives of persons and of society” should not be surprising if the lives of the unborn are destroyed through abortion.
In a statement issued Sept. 9, the bishops also rejected practices such as in vitro fertilization. “Children should be welcomed by respecting the truth of the conjugal act, which is at once unitive and procreative, and by avoiding any means that distort it,” they said.
“We hold that according to God’s plan, children are a true gift and never an individual right of anyone,” the bishops added. For this reason, “technological assistance for procreation should always respect this truth and avoid substituting the logic of love with the logic of production,” they said.
“Aware of the pain that infertility and sterility entails, we encourage the efforts of those who work to overcome them by searching for appropriate therapies that are respectful of the value of human life."
They went on to say that euthanasia is not a solution when the end of life approaches. “We consider the only appropriate response to this issue to be palliative care that gives quality of life to a terminally ill patient,” they stated.
“The desirable end of life is one that respects authentic human dignity by surrounding the terminally ill patient with the love and care needed to alleviate his suffering and providing him with vital sustenance so he can end his existence in this world in a natural way,” the bishops said.