Lima, Peru, Oct 19, 2009 / 15:38 pm
In a statement released last Friday, as Peru's Congress debated a new law that would legalize abortion in some cases, the Peruvian Bishops’ Conference called on lawmakers to always defend life. The prelates also reminded them that the defense of the unborn “should not allow for any exceptions or doubts of any kind.”
In their statement, the bishops underscored that “the Universal Declaration of Human Rights decidedly opts for the defense of life. Our current constitution also recognizes and protects human life from its beginning: conception.”
They went on to note that there should not be any room for exceptions or doubts when protecting the unborn. “From conception, life begins to develop and should not be interrupted for any reason. The value of life and its defense from the moment of conception cannot be altered without causing very serious harm to the most genuine commitment to the human being and his rights.”
“Thus we affirm that there is no situation or human difficulty that authorizes the killing of an innocent child. If the unborn are denied their right to life,” the bishops continued, “we fall into the very serious risk of losing the coherence that our legal order must have.”