Archbishop praises Constitutional Court for ruling on abortifacient pill

Arequipa, Peru, Nov 5, 2009 / 01:55 am

Archbishop Javier Del Rio Alba of Arequipa praised a ruling by Peru’s Constitutional Court on the controversial morning-after pill and explained that the “right to life” has “triumphed, because that is what the law and medicine demand.”

“The ruling of the Constitutional Court is absolutely correct, both from the legal and medical point of view,” the archbishop said.

Archbishop Del Rio underscored that the court’s ruling “deserves the praise of the Peruvian people, as it constitutes a masterpiece of jurisprudence and scientific knowledge by being founded upon 21^st century medicine, the primacy of the Constitution, the country’s legal order and the respect for International Conventions ratified by Peru.”

The archbishop noted that “other courts in South America have ruled against the morning-after pill” in recent years and that last week “it was outlawed by the Honduran Congress.”

Ironically, he pointed out, “the attempts by organizations to interfere in the health policies of our country by distorting the truth and promoting abortion actually contributed to the court’s ruling, as it was reported during the previous months that the number of abortions and teen pregnancies increased during the six years that the State allowed the pill to be used.”

He called on Peruvians not to be fooled into thinking that the ruling by the Constitutional Court was the result of “pressure from the Church,” or that “without the pill the number of unwanted pregnancies would increase.”

“The justices have acted on the basis of legal arguments and the testimonies presented by the various parties involved in this process,” the archbishop said. “And in the end, the right to life and the health of unborn children and of their own mothers has triumphed, because that is what the law and medicine demand,” he said.