News

November 14, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Two “human rights” organizations led by Catholic bishop Raul Vera Lopez are continuing to promote the legalization of abortion in Mexico even after the prelate was questioned by Vatican authorities over the matter in 2011, LifeSiteNews.com has learned.

Vera López, who is bishop of the Diocese of Saltillo in the Mexican state of Coahuila, was investigated by the Vatican last year in response to revelations by LifeSiteNews.com that the bishop was leading two organizations that endorse the legalization of abortion and even advocate its funding and provision by the government, facts that the bishop did not deny in a subsequent LifeSiteNews.com interview.

Vera Lopez was also investigated at that time regarding his sponsorship of a gay support group that endorses homosexual behavior.

Image

During a meeting with Vatican officials in September 2011, which was scheduled as a result of the reports, the prelate was reportedly admonished to “clarify” his views on human life and sexuality, although Vera Lopez himself played the meeting down as nothing more than a “dialog.” Over a year later, Vera Lopez has not issued any clarification of his views.

Follow us on Twitter:

A new pro-abortion declaration from Bishop Vera Lopez’s “human rights” groups

LifeSiteNews.com has now learned that Vera Lopez’s two organizations – the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center in the state of Chiapas, and the Fray Juan de Larios Human Rights Center, which is administered directly from Vera Lopez’s own diocesan offices – have their names attached to a new “human rights” report calling again for the legalization of abortion and its provision by the government. It also calls for the elimination of state constitutional amendments protecting the right to life in Mexico.

The document, which was submitted to the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in February of this year, and entitled “Additional information on the situation of discrimination suffered by indigenous peoples in Mexico,” claims on page eight that it is “the obligation of governments to adopt all appropriate means to eliminate discrimination against women in the area of medical attention (…) As various Rapporteurs and Committees of the United Nations have indicated, this means that the States should include the elimination of legal barriers as well as de facto barriers to access to the interruption of pregnancy in safe conditions…”

“In this sense, civil organizations in favor of the rights of women indicate that recent ‘antiabortion’ laws in 18 states are a violation of the right to health and do not permit it to be carried out in its full exercise,” the report continues. “For this reason, the Committee is exhorted to make a pronouncement regarding this and to recommend to Mexico that it eliminate the existing barriers to the access to the legal and safe interruption of pregnancy, in accordance with the recommendations made by the special Rapporteur regarding the right of each person to enjoy the highest possible level of physical and mental health…”

The report was produced by the pro-abortion “All Rights for Everyone” National Network of Human Rights Civil Organizations. This is a coalition of groups of which Vera’s two organizations are members, and which includes numerous other “Catholic” groups that claim to defend human rights as well, including the Jesuit-run Miguel Augustín Pro Júarez Center for Human Rights. They share membership with the pro-abortion “Catholics for the Right to Decide,” which has been repudiated by the Catholic Church for its opposition to Catholic doctrine on the right to life.

The names of Vera’s organizations, in Spanish, appear on pages 24 and 25 of the report as members of the coalition. In addition, the Fray Bartolome de Las Casas Human Rights Center is given special credit for its contribution to the report on page 24.

Bishop Vera Lopez responds with silence

The report’s militantly pro-abortion stance is in perfect agreement with the position on abortion given by the spokesman of the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center, Jorge Armando Gomez, in an interview with LifeSiteNews in August of last year.

“We are in favor of the depenalization of abortion because we are against criminalizing women who opt for that,” said Gomez, who also said that doctors should not be penalized for performing abortions.

“In this sense we say that the government should guarantee the right to health, because quite often abortion is done in Mexico in unhealthy conditions or in hospitals where women aren’t guaranteed a good service.”

“So the government should provide the service in that case?” LifeSiteNews.com asked.

“Yes, in the framework of the right to health, like with many other services such as births, care for when we get sick, in the same way this action of opting to abort should be done in good conditions and life should not be endangered,” Gomez answered.

While researching this article, LifeSiteNews.com again contacted Gomez to ask for his comments on the report bearing his organization’s name. Gomez responded that he cannot give us further interviews, and declined to state that his organization had changed its pro-abortion stance.  When this reporter asked Gomez if he could send him the information on the reports to give him an opportunity to respond, Gomez offered the email address of Bishop Vera Lopez himself.  However, neither Bishop Vera nor Gomez responded to a written inquiry about the matter.

Contact information:

Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
Palazzo della Congregazioni,
00193 Roma,
Piazza Pio XII, 10
Phone: (011) 39-06-6988-4217
Fax: (011) 39-06-6988-5303

Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193 Roma, Italy
phone: (011) 39-06-6988-3357
phone: (011) 39-06-6988-3413
Fax: (011) 39-06-6988-3409
E-mail: [email protected]
(fax and email are most effective)