Bishop González said what is at risk is that fundamental rights, which today are enshrined in the current constitution, could end up being “very poorly configured or insufficiently assured.”
"What’s important is that the State recognize that the religious factor in any of its aspects is a relevant social factor in the life of a country," he stressed.
Parents' right to choose their children's education
Initiative 4102 for a "free and diverse education" calls for freedom of education and the preferential right of parents to educate their children, and seeks to ensure a quality education with universal access.
The proposal states that education should be an "integral good of the human person in the different stages of his life, both in his bodily and spiritual dimension.”
Therefore the state should be responsible for "fostering and financing said development from the communities of families" without "imposing a single vision on the human person, society and the world, nor a single understanding of human rights.” On the contrary, it must help and support parents in their role of “educating, raising and training their children, as well as the right to choose the educational establishment for them.”
Ingrid Bohn, of the group Con Mis Hijos No Te Metas (Don’t mess with my children) and also a member of the Free and Diverse Education group, explained to ACI Prensa that although 15,000 signatures have already been gathered, today work is being done across the country to gather more, because “the initiative must have a lot of citizen support.”
"We support this proposal and sponsor it together with other organizations of parents, guardians, teachers and students because we are the ones who know our children best and who should have the freedom to choose between a variety of educational projects," she said.
The right to life
Organizations such as Always for Life and the NGO Community and Justice created Initiative 4138 on the "Right to Life.”
The initiative proposes that the right to life have constitutional protection from the moment of conception, "regardless of age or stage of development," because "if the laws and the Constitution do not recognize that we are all equal in dignity and rights, it can contribute to the social problem of arbitrarily discriminating against the unborn.”
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The proposal is based on biological, philosophical, and legal arguments from international law.
"It is inconceivable that a Constitution that seeks, precisely, to protect the dignity of all people, without arbitrary discrimination, were to leave a group outside of this protection, just because they were not born," the initiative states.
Even so, since September 2017, Chile has a law decriminalizing abortion on the grounds of rape up to 12 weeks of pregnancy, and with no gestational limit for both fetal inviability and risk to the life of the mother.
Verónica Hoffmann, executive director of the United Chile Foundation, dedicated to supporting mothers with crisis pregnancies, encouraged citizens to sign the initiative “so that the Constitution of Chile continue to protect the right to life and the physical and mental integrity of the person, and that the law protect the life of the unborn.”
“We must take part since the right to life is the dignity of every human being, it’s inviolable, from the moment its existence begins. It is essential that this right be recognized for all human individuals, without distinction, and continue to be present in the Chilean Constitution," Hoffmann told ACI Prensa.