Madrid, Spain, Jun 19, 2009 / 14:36 pm
The executive committee of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference has issued a strongly-worded statement against the government’s proposed reform of abortion laws saying abortion is the murder of an unborn child and can never be considered a right.
In their statement the bishops said, “The most sobering aspect of this law is its pretention to label abortion as a right that must be protected by the State.”
The measure stipulates that up to fourteenth week of pregnancy, “the will of the mother becomes the absolute arbiter over the life or death of the child she carries in her womb,” the bishops said.
“However, the right to life is not a concession by the State, it is a right that precedes the State itself, which has the obligation to always protect it. The State lacks any authority to establish a span of time within which the practice of abortion would cease to be an attack on life,” they said.
“The inclusion of abortion within the means that are supposedly necessary to care for a person’s health is in and of itself gravely false. Abortion never heals, it always kills. An authentic health care policy should always take into account the health of pregnant women, but also the life and health of the child to be born,” the bishops said.
They went on to express their bewilderment that the proposed reform breaks pregnancy down into three periods that treat human life differently, saying that it is “irrational” to claim that “during a certain period of time the living being that is product of human fertilization is not human” and that life can be taken simply because a woman wishes to do so.
“It is like recognizing a right to kill an innocent being,” they maintained.
After denouncing the State for not helping women avoid the trauma of abortion and its consequences, the bishops pointed out that “eliminating a life is never a merely private affair. On the contrary, it is an act of great public transcendence. The life of the unborn is a fundamental element of the common good that demands special protection and promotion.
Policies that protect motherhood and fatherhood ought to be advanced” in Spain, they said, which is lagging far behind other European countries in this area.
“Each human being is, therefore, a sacred gift for their parents and for all of society,” the bishops stated. Life “must never be considered an object subordinate to the desire of others. It must never be left to the will of anyone, much less the state, whose most basic duty is precisely to guarantee the right to life of everyone, as a fundamental element of the common good.”