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In
response to a ruling by Colombia’s Constitutional Court making the
country the first in Latin America to legalize abortion, the country’s
bishops said Thursday that civil disobedience may be necessary to
resist the new immoral law. Likewise, Bogotá’s Archbishop, Cardinal
Pedro Rubiano Saenz is threatening excommunication against the
responsible lawmakers.
The president of
the Bishops’ Conference of Colombia, Archbishop Luis Augusto Castro,
rejected the Court’s decision to legalize abortion in certain cases and
said it was a crime against human life. “A door is being opened
toward the elimination of the innocent lives of so many children who
will not be allowed to live, we have always said this is wrong,” the
archbishop said.
“We continue to say that this is an act against the life of the unborn and it is immoral.”
Likewise,
Cardinal Rubiano told Columbia’s El Tiempo newspaper that “all those
who commit the crime, the sin of abortion, will be excommunicated
immediately."
“This applies as
well to those who foster or assist abortion,” he added, insinuating
that the justices who passed the ruling to allow abortion in some
cases, might be included in this excommunication, without mentioning
them explicitly.
Cardinal Rubiano
lamented that the justices did “open the door” for a broader
legalization of abortion. “Draw your own conclusions,” he added,
stressing that abortion is “a deliberate murder in the womb of the
mother.”
For his part,
Archbishop Castro said that “We must have a two-fold perspective, that
is, to see the situation of the mother and help her in every way, but
also look after the child, because nobody does it…Nobody looks after
the baby, there is no consideration for a child that has been
conceived, who tries to move forward in this world but has his
possibilities cut off.”
The archbishop
noted that in the conception through rape, “the child is innocent…the
criminal should be punished and put in jail for a longtime, but the
child should not have to pay for the sins of another. He is an
innocent baby. In this sense we defend the life of the baby as well.”
While Archbishop
Castro underscored that a child conceived through rape is “the result
of a deplorable action,” he emphasized that what exists in the mother’s
womb is a child who committed no crime. Many women who have
conceived through rape, he noted, “accept their babies because they
understand that the child is one thing, and the person responsible for
the rape is another.”
The bishops of
Tunja and Engativa decried the Justices for taking the easy way out and
they noted that “not everything that is legal is moral.” They
said Colombians should question the legitimacy of the ruling.
“It is sad that
the Justices have chosen the easy way, which is the path to crime,”
said Bishop Hector Gutierrez Pabon of Engativa. “In the Catholic
Church, there is no such thing as a first, second or third class
citizen and it should be this way also in society.”
“Many people will think that because it is legal it is okay. No! What is legal is not always morally licit,” he added.
