January 13, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Jesuit priest and professor with a history of support for abortion and contraception has published an article in the Spanish newspaper El Pais arguing that there may be occasions “in which it’s irresponsible not to interrupt a pregnancy, before it’s too late to do it without it being unfair to the fetus.”
“If an abortion is the unjust and irresponsible interruption of a pregnancy,” wrote Fr. Juan Masiá, “not every voluntary interruption of a pregnancy constitutes an abortion in the negative moral sense.”
Fr. Masiá is of Spanish origin and is currently professor of Bioethics in the faculty of Theology of the University of Sophia and the University of Bunkyo in Tokyo.
In the past, he’s served as Theologian Consultant for the Association of Catholic Doctors of Japan and also as professor in the Pontifical University of Comillas, Madrid, all the while writing against Catholic teaching in Spanish publications.
According to Fr. Masiá, “There are cases in which the decision to interrupt a pregnancy is made precisely to avoid an abortion.” Specifically, he cited the case of “severe malformation,” when the abortion is performed early in pregnancy.
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The article was published on January 1st in the blog section of the Spanish newspaper El País. It came days after the country's conservative government introduced a new bill that would restrict abortion in the country.
The article outraged readers, with some even wondering if the article was a practical joke.
Dr. Enrique Jaureguizar, president of the Spanish association Doctors for Life, responded to Fr. Masiá, sayign: “Any human being is equal in dignity and deserves to be guaranteed the right to life.”
Jaureguizar reminded the priest that “science and the Church coincide in that life starts from conception.”
“Any malformation incompatible with life can never be diagnosed with a 100% (certainty),” declared the doctor. Adding: “no medical doctor can make an attempt on the life of any human being.”
This is not the first time Fr. Masiá has spoken publicly in favor of abortion. In 2012 he published an opinion article, also in El País, under the title “Abortion and newborn life with malformations,” in which he declared: “the abortion of an anencephalic (baby) is not the abortion of a human being.”
He urged readers to “respect the responsible and conscientious decision that the person made after evaluating alternatives, and chose the least harm.”
“If we don’t morally condemn it, we also won’t accept for it to be legally penalized,” he concluded in that article.
On that occasion, Dr. Esteban Rodriguez, president of the Gynecologists Commission for the Right to Life, reminded Masiá of the case of baby Faith, a girl born with anencephaly who lived what her mother called “the best 93 days of my life,” and on whose case LSN reported.
Last year, Masiá wrote a piece in which we said that “conception is not a mechanical moment,” telling readers to make a distinction between “protection life in general… the live matter of a human species (blastocyst before implantation), and an individual human life (the fetus after week eight).”
Also last year, he published an article in plazapublica.com, titled “Go forth always, multiply only when convenient,” in which he promoted the used of contraception.
He has also written for Redes Cristinas, a pseudo-Christian web site among whose members are Catholics for the Right to Decide and several homosexual organizations. In it, he has called Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI “intransigent” in matters regarding contraception.