By John-Henry Westen
BOGOTA, March 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – His Eminence Pedro Cardinal Rubiano, Archbishop of Bogota, the capital of Colombia, has pleaded with pro-lifers world-wide to join in a massive prayer effort to stop abortion from being legalized in the country. In a letter addressed to Dan Zeidler, the U.S. representative of the Caracas-based Latin American Alliance for the Family, the Cardinal said, “we ask for the support of all of the people in the entire world who care about life to join with us in crying out to heaven for the success of these efforts.”
A case before the nation’s Constitutional Court is to decide on whether abortion should be legalized in the country.
Zeidler explained, “All Latin American countries, except for Cuba, through their constitutions and other laws protect the right to life, sometimes explicitly from the moment of conception. Abortion is generally prohibited. This life-respecting legal system has been under attack by strong internationally-supported abortion forces for the past few decades.” Virtually all legislative attempts to eliminate or weaken these life-protecting laws have been defeated, until now.
“Their latest strategy, similar to that of pro-abortionists in the U.S. in the seventies in Roe v. Wade, is to go to the Courts to try to throw out pro-life laws,” Zeidler said.“Currently, in Colombia, South America, the pro-abortionists have brought a case to that country’s Constitutional Court where they think they have enough support among the court’s judges to declare unconstitutional parts of Colombian laws prohibiting abortion. The court, after hearing from both sides, is now in the final stages of issuing a decision.”
The gravity of the situation was explained in the letter from the Cardinal.“The future, not only of Colombia, but of all of Latin America is at stake,” he wrote.“The loss of one country will substantially weaken the pro-life fabric of all of Latin America. What begins as a small hole will end as a huge tear allowing much evil to come in. We would no longer be a solid bloc protecting and loving all of life.”
The Church is organizing what they hope will be massive march of hundreds of thousands of Colombians to “show their love of the Lord and their rejection of the culture of death.”