Mexico City, Mexico, Feb 2, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Speaking to reporters, Father Mariano Villalobos, coordinator of the Diocesan Billings Center of the Diocese of Durango, affirmed that “the morning after pill is indeed abortifacient.”
Fr. Villalobos, an expert in bioethics, emphasized that the Catholic Church has moral, religious and scientific arguments for classifying the morning after pill as abortifacient. The pill is being promoted by the Mexican Health Department as a non-abortifacient contraceptive method.
He also responded to those who accuse the Catholic Church of “distorting “the debate over contraception, saying that “no matter how much they try to define pregnancy as the implantation of a fertilized ovum in the wall of the uterus, scientific studies of genetics prove that a new life begins at the moment of fertilization.”
He also said that a fertilized ovum represents a new life because “the genome of a new human being has been completed.”
The leader of the Billings Center emphasized that scientific proof shows that one cannot speak of the “pre-embryo” as something distinct from the embryo—an argument used by abortion promoters—since the fertilized ovum, that is, the zygote or one-celled embryo, has a continuous, gradual and coordinated development without qualitative leaps.
In this sense, Fr. Villalobos pointed out that the effect of the “post-coitus hormonal contraception,” when it prevents implantation, is clearly abortifacient, in as much as it directly and voluntarily takes the life of a newly conceived human being.