.- Responding
to an announcement by Chile’s Heath Minister, Maria Soledad Barria,
that the government would make the morning-after pill “universally
available,” Auxiliary Bishop Cristian Contreras Villarroel of Santiago
slammed the announcement saying, “Equality should be sought out for
those situations that are good for the human being.”
Last week,
Barria said the morning-after pill would be made available for all who
request it. He added that this was not new, but part “of the
government’s plan.” “The issue”, he said, “is about improving
equal access to an emergency contraceptive, together with counseling,
sexual education, etc.”
“At heart is the
scientific discussion about its abortifacient nature,” Bishop
Villarroel said in response. “And since this is about the life of
a human person, from the moment of conception, I would like to suppose
that we are all sensitive to the right to life and that nobody would
use euphemisms like ‘termination of pregnancy’ to refer to abortion, as
I suppose nobody would confuse ‘euthanasia’ with ‘avoidance of
therapeutic cruelty’.”
He also
countered that “the argument about ‘equality’ in this context is
questionable because the explanation being given is socio-economic and
does not take into account the dignity or the potentiality of the human
person.”
“If the issue is
equality,” he continued, “and if we mean to show that by pointing out
the access a young girl from a rich neighborhood has to the pill versus
girls from poorer areas, then I think there are other needs, in matters
related to peoples’ health care, that our leaders ought to be
addressing.”
He used for
example, “the scandalous discrimination between rich and poor in
patients with serious illnesses. To me this is real issue that
needs to be dealt with, along with other situations of true injustice.
Equality should be sought out for those situations that are good for
the human being,” the bishop said.
Chilean bishop slams government’s announcement to distribute morning-after pill
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