AMERICA/PERU - “IN DEFENCE OF LIFE” : BISHOPS DENOUNCE GOVERNMENT POLICY WHICH THREATENS HUMAN DIGNITY AND LIFE

Wednesday, 3 September 2003

Lima (Fides Service) - The standing council of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Peru recently issued a statement entitled “In Defence of Life” in which they express profound concern for the population policy being introduced by the Peruvian government which, the Bishops says “fails to respect life and erodes the foundations of society”. This policy “is a threat to life and leads to a loss of values and the intervention of ideologies and interests contrary to the dignity of the human person” the Bishops’ Council says.
In its stance in favour of life, the Church in Peru lifts its voice to denounce that often these anti-life campaigns are “due to pressure and they are financed from abroad and in some cases are subordinated to economic and financial assistance.”.
The campaign which the Bishops denounce is the so-called “day after pill”, also known as “emergency oral anti-conception”. “The day after pill – the statement says – prevents the human embryo from embedding itself in the uterus and therefore leads to the expulsion and loss of the embryo and is therefore in actual fact chemically obtained abortion” . Therefore, the Bishops say: “it is neither intellectually coherent or scientifically justifiable to affirm that this is not the same thing” also because “anyone who asks for or proposes the use of the pill desires to produce the interruption of a possible pregnancy as in the case of abortion”. Pregnancy begins in fact at the moment of fertilisation and not when the fertilised egg embeds itself in the uterus as it is implicitly suggested.
From this point of view the Bishops launch an appeal to all professionals working in the field of healthcare to undertake “a moral objection of conscience and to bear courageous witness to the inalienable value of human life particularly in the face of this new form of aggression against the most defenceless and weakest of persons as the human embryo ”. “The Church – the Bishops say – cannot remain silent in the face of this serious injustice considered by some an element of progress in view of the organisation of a new world order”. (R.Z.) (Agenzia Fides 3/9/2003; lines 29; words 370).


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