ANGOLA, August 25, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A political battle is heating up in Angola over an attempt to eliminate criminal penalties for abortions in a variety of circumstances, including all abortions performed in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.
The proposal has arisen in the nation’s congress as part of an overall reform of the penal code.
Article 144 of the code applies criminal penalties for all abortions except those done to protect the life of the mother, and the nation’s constitution in article 30 states that “the government respects and protects the life of the human person, which is inviolable.”
The proposed change would allow abortion on demand in the first weeks of pregnancy, and depenalizes the deadly procedure for up to 24 weeks in a variety of other circumstances, including rape, fetal deformity, and danger to the “psychic integrity” of the mother.
The Catholic episcopal conference of Angola, as well as the country’s second-largest political party, UNITA, have expressed their opposition to the proposed change to the code. However, the position of the country’s ruling party, the socialist MPLA, is unclear.
The leader of UNITA, Isaías Samakuva, told the news agency Angonoticias that they would not accept the proposal.
“First, they’re destroying life, a life that God created, they are going to kill it, it is a sin,” he said.
Angola’s Catholic bishops have issued a statement condemning abortion as a “grave moral crime” and a “sin.”
“We ask, in favor of innocent life, that [the change to] article 144 be removed,” wrote the leaders of the nation’s episcopal conference. “We are not ignoring the suffering that some women in some cases experience who are involved in situations that they believe have no other exit. To recognize these situations and the anguish that they bring with them does not permit us, however, to say that in these cases abortion ceases to be the destruction of another: of an innocent and defenseless life.”
During his trip to Angola in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI warned against attempts in Africa to “promote abortion as a form of ‘maternal healthcare’.”
“How disconcerting the claim that the termination of life is a matter of reproductive health!” Pope Benedict said.