Archbishop reminds Argentineans there is no right to abortion

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jun 16, 2008 / 16:23 pm

In response to a debate among local officials over the legalization of abortion, Archbishop Jose Luis Mollaghan of Rosario lamented this week that leaders forget “to protect the life of the unborn, the most defenseless human beings,” and that they do not consider that the unborn “also should be protected, like any other human beings.”

“If we want to honor and dignify life, if we are going to respond to the natural call and to grace to protect it and defend it from all evil and from every form of aggression, then each one of us, and society itself, should respect, protect and promote the dignity of each human person, in every moment and condition of his life from conception,” the archbishop said in a pastoral letter sent to the faithful.

“It is very interesting that our sensitivity for life and human rights in so many cases does not extend to a right that is primary and fundamental: the right to life,” Archbishop Mollaghan said.  “This right belongs to human nature as such, and through it to the person, who could not exist otherwise,” he added.

Archbishop Mollaghan stressed that respect for the life demands an “enthusiasm for this truth, as well as the proper ordering of science and technology towards man’s comprehensive development.” Human life, he went on, should not only not be suppressed; it should be protected with loving care.  “Abortion that takes the life of the unborn and euthanasia are unacceptable.”

The archbishop also addressed more difficult decisions in which people who reject a newly conceived life are not motivated by seemingly selfish interests or by convenience. Even in circumstances where the desire is to preserve other goods such as health, a decent life for other members of the family or because it is believed that it would be best that a child with a certain physical condition not be born, “even in such serious and dramatic situations, the deliberate killing of an innocent human being can never be justified,” he wrote.

He also stressed that the terminally ill also have the right to life even when in certain cases suffering can be difficult to endure or there exists a temptation to cut short one’s suffering by hastening death.

These assaults on human life take place when it is most vulnerable and defenseless, he added, and therefore “they demand our attention so that we may be wiling to love and protect life,” he said in conclusion.