Medical facilities that practice voluntary pregnancy terminations are expression of a “culture of death”.
The Catholic bishop of Dunedin, Colin Campbell urged believers to rally against abortion clinics, starting from the ones that have recently opened in Southland.
In a message that was read aloud in all the parishes of the diocese the bishop recommended initiatives such as “Movement for Life” as models for the protest.
He condemned abortion as “ the most serious threat to human rights” and exhorted Catholics to make their voices heard both publicly and in private.
Mgr. Campbell mentioned the moral teachings of the Church, and said that human life is sacred because, from its beginning, people are “hand-drawn by the Creator” and remain for ever in a special relationship with him, their only aspiration and end. Only God is the Lord of life from its beginning to the end. No one, in any circumstance, can take upon himself to directly destroy an innocent human being. Human life must be wholly respected and protected from conception: “From the first instant of existence, a human being must enjoy the same the rights as all other people, among which is the unassailable right of any innocent person to live”.
The catechism of the Catholic Church explains how from the first century the Church denounced the moral malice of any voluntary abortion “This teaching has not changed. It cannot be changed. Direct abortion, chosen as an end or a tool, is a grave act against moral laws”.
Formal cooperation with an abortion constitutes a grave sin and the Church punishes with excommunication this affront against human life. Whoever provokes an abortion and is successful will suffer “latae sententiae” (sentence already passed) excommunication according to Canon Law for having committed this crime.
Benedict XVI has often deplored the seriousness of such crime, the irreparable damage to the innocent life taken, to the baby’s parents and the whole of society. Consequently, following the pope’s example, the Catholic bishop of Dunedin, Colin Campbell, called for New Zealand to take action. Abortion in truth is one of the most common causes of death and it is not even recorded in official estimates.
The relation between abortions and births is one to six, in other words “one child in six is denied the right to live”. About 95% of all deaths of children under nine years of age happen when babies are still in their mother’s womb and in various nations there are approximately 50 abortions per day.
Only 10% to 30% of women who want an abortion have financial problems, moreover voluntary abortion rates have increased in the very nations where terminating pregnancies has become legal.
“Movement for Life” reported that nowadays, across the world, approximately 50 million children die each year due to voluntary terminations. This number equals the number of all the victims of the Second World War put together and, as happens in all wars, the victims of abortion are the most “innocent and helpless”.
Many women do not want to give up their right ‘over their womb’ and do not want to give up their comfortable lifestyle because of an unwanted pregnancy. This has provoked a total war, masqueraded under a humanistic façade.
It is not a war against other powers, or armies, or terrorists, but against harmless children.
This is why the Catholics in New Zealand are demonstrating against the construction of new abortion clinics.