Vatican Cardinal calls Mexico to make commitment to life and not death

Mexico City, Mexico, Mar 20, 2007 / 08:42 am

As the Mexico City Legislative Assembly prepares to debate a bill that would legalize abortion in the Mexican capital, the President of the Pontifical Council for Health Care, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, has called on his countrymen “to be more committed to a better life and not to death.”

According to the Fides News Agency, during the inauguration of the 2007 Veracruz Health Expo on March 14, the Mexican-born cardinal condemned those who are seeking to legalize abortion and insisted that so-called “interruption of pregnancies” constitute “murder” as “they kill people.”

During his remarks Cardinal Barragan decried efforts in Mexico, Spain, Argentina and Italy to support abortion, euthanasia and same-sex “marriage.”

He noted that there is no basis for holding that life does not begin at conception and he emphasized that such a fact is not based on religious belief but on “scientific and biological questions.”

A few years ago the Mexico City’s Legislative Assembly legalized abortion in cases of rape, risk to the life of the mother, and fetal deformation.  Now it is debating a new measure that would allow for abortion up to the fourteenth week of pregnancy.

The Archdiocese of Mexico City announced that on March 25th, celebrated in many countries of Latin America as the Day of the Unborn Child, a pilgrimage against abortion will be held at the Basilica of Guadalupe, with a Mass celebrated by Cardinal Norberto Rivera.