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Nicaragua: Bishop Condemns "Therapeutic" Abortion

MANAGUA, September 7, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bishop Abelardo Mata, the president of the Committee for the Family of the Nicaraguan bishops' conference, has sharply condemned the proposals of some politicians in his country to legalise so-called "therapeutic abortion". Speaking to the international Catholic pastoral charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), he stated that Nicaragua had no need of "therapeutic abortion" to protect the rights of its citizens.

The very use of the term "therapeutic" was an ill chosen one, he said, since in reality it was a matter of a "crime". The majority of people in Nicaragua were in favour of the protection of unborn life, and already a petition of 290,000 names had been gathered, opposing the proposed amendment. The Church was decisively opposed to the "obvious attempts to confuse public opinion", he added.

Carlos Polo, the director of the Latin America office of the Population Research Institute, told ACN that this was not the first time that the term "therapeutic abortion" had been used to undermine the legal protection of the unborn child. "We know precisely which international organisations are exerting pressure in order to ensure that unborn children are no longer protected under the law", he said.

This was a well-known strategy. First of all, exceptions to the law were secured, and then finally these exceptional provisions were misused, in order to legalise "every form of abortion", he explained. He congratulated the people and the rulers of Nicaragua on having thus far upheld the national ban on abortion, for in this way Nicaragua had "demonstrated its dignity and its independence as a nation".

So far all abortion is banned in Nicaragua, making this the country with the strictest abortion laws in Latin America. On September 13 a government commission will discuss whether abortion should be permitted when the life of the mother is in danger or the unborn child is found to be handicapped.

The Catholic charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) sees the protection of human life and of the family as one of its most important tasks. The founder of the organisation, Father Werenfried van Straaten again and again insisted vigorously, right up to his death in the year 2003, that a stop should be put to the killing of unborn life. ACN continues to support a number of projects for the protection of human life and initiatives for the support of the family. 

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