(LifeSiteNews) — Half a million pro-life Colombians marched in 70 cities on February 27 in protest of the recent ruling that liberalized abortion laws in the country.
Colombia’s highest court ruled on February 21 that women could obtain abortions through the first six months of pregnancy. That’s led to calls for the resignation of the five judges who unilaterally overrode the pro-life laws on the books.
“Their immediate resignation is being demanded,” the group United for Life told Catholic News Agency (CNA) in a statement March 1.
“Jesús Magaña, president of United for Life, told ACI Prensa … that on Feb. 27 around 500,000 people marched in some 70 cities in the country,” CNA reported. “In Bogotá’s Plaza de Bolívar alone, between 70,000 and 100,000 citizens gathered.”
United for Life’s “Manifesto for the Defense of Life” declared that Colombia “will not rest until the right to life is restored and guaranteed from the moment of fertilization until natural death,” CNA reported.
“The Colombian people will fight for this disastrous ruling to be annulled,” the manifesto states. “We will use all the legal, political, cultural and social means that the rule of law offers us to precisely restore the right to life, which has been systematically violated by the rulings of the Constitutional Court for decades.”
The country’s political and Catholic leaders have criticized the ruling.
“We are facing a decision that concerns the entire Colombian society, and five people cannot propose something as atrocious to a nation as allowing a life to be interrupted up to six months of gestation,” President Iván Duque Márquez previously said.
“Protecting the supposed right to take an innocent human life puts at risk the very foundation of our social order and the rule of law,” the country’s bishops said in a joint statement.