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Wednesday March 24, 2010


Peruvian Executive Defies Supreme Court to Distribute Deadly ‘Morning After Pill’

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent

LIMA, March 23, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The executive branch of Peru’s national government has decided to defy the nation’s Constitutional Tribunal and distribute the deadly “morning after pill,” which is billed as a contraceptive but which can cause abortions when taken in the first few days following sexual intercourse.

The decision to distribute the drug, which was announced on March 9, has been met by thundering denunciations from the Constitutional Tribunal (TC), as well as Catholic bishops, doctors, and pro-life organizations.

Carlos Mesía, Vice-President of the TC, denounced the decision as an “open noncompliance with a verdict of the TC that signals passage from civilization to barbarity and constitutes a coup d’etat.”

Oscar Ugarte, Peru’s Minister of Heath, shot back, calling the statement a “joke” and claiming that he was complying with the TC’s sentence against the drug laid down in October of last year, which he says gives him permission to proceed if he can show that it isn’t harmful to the unborn child.

Ugarte claims he fulfilled the requirement by consulting the World Health Organization (WHO), which responded to him that the morning after pill is not abortifacient.

Ugarte’s reasoning was roundly rejected by the National Association of Catholic Physicians of Peru (ANMEC), which says that the conclusions of the WHO were already rejected by the Constitutional Tribunal as inadequate.

The WHO defines abortion based on the termination of a pregnancy, and defines pregnancy as beginning not with the creation of a new human life, but with the implantation of the zygote in the womb of the mother. It therefore claims that the morning after pill does not cause abortions, because the pill prevents implantation of the zygote – despite the fact that it kills the same zygote.

In an official statement, ANMIC accused Ugarte of a “campaign designed from different angles to steer the population towards violating” the sentence of the court, reported ACI Prensa. “For the WHO, human life begins with implantation. The Constitution of Peru protects ‘he who has been conceived’ not ‘he who has been implanted,'” said ANMIC.

“We profoundly lament that the Health Ministry, in what constitutes a defiance of the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, has ratified Ministerial Resolution 167-2010/MINSA, rejecting the mandate of the jurisdictional organ in preparing the distribution of the morning after pill by the government,” wrote the Peruvian Episcopal Conference in a document entitled “Peruvians, Defend Life!”

Nancy Freundt, General Coordinator in charge of life issues for the Peruvian Center of Family Promotion and Natural Regulation of Fertility (CEPROFARENA), told the Catholic news agency ACI Prensa that Ugarte “is hiding the fact that this pill can even cause death [of the mother], because there are cases known of people who have died, intense hemorrhaging, because it is a hormonal bomb that the woman is taking.” She observed that the pill contains a dose of hormones between 50 and 70 times that of the normal contraceptive pill.


Previous LifeSiteNews coverage:

Majority of Peruvians Oppose Attempt to Depenalize Abortion in Rape and Deformity Cases: Poll

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/oct/09102003.html

“Stop Funding Pro-Abortion Groups in Our Country”: Peru Bishops to Canadian Bishops

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09060911.html

“Human Rights Watch” Expresses Frustration over Peru’s Refusal to Decriminalize Abortion

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jul/08071710.html

US Pro-Abortion Organizations Begin Major Assault on Peru – Part 1

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/jul/07071605.html

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