[75% Catholic] Uruguay to legalize abortion
CWN – September 27, 2012
In a 50-49 vote, Uruguay’s legislature has voted to legalize abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy. President José Mujica, an atheist and former guerrilla leader who was elected in 2010, has pledged to sign the measure.
Uruguay’s episcopal conference had issued a statement against the legislation, noting that science has established that a unique human being, distinct from father and mother, exists from the moment of conception.
The nation of 3.3 million is 75% Catholic, according to Vatican statistics.
Additional sources for this story: See www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=15742
Human sacrifice in honor of Moloc and Belial.
[Hat-tip to CultureWarNotes.com]
Uruguay President Vetos Abortion, Sparks Protests
Catholic congressmen threatened with excommunication
By Jorge Figueroa
Latin American Herald Tribune
10/20/12
www.laht.com/article.asp?CategoryId=12394&ArticleId=320478
MONTIVIDE0 — President Tabare Vazquez’s veto of a bill partially decriminalizing abortion in Uruguay set off a storm of protests Friday by feminist organizations, criticism in the ranks of the ruling coalition and cheers from the Catholic Church.
“The president is human, he makes mistakes and in this case he erred, among other things because he didn’t acknowledge the opinion of the congressional majority or even the views of several of his ministers,” said Sen. Alberto Couriel, a member of the majority sector of the leftist Broad Front coalition.
The CNS women’s organization said in a communique that “the will of the president does not represent the will of the people.”
The group called for a demonstration Friday in downtown Montevideo to demand what is “fair and democratic,” stressing that “faced with this situation, passivity and silence are not permissible options.”
As he had already said he would, Vazquez vetoed Thursday the Law in Defense of the Right to Sexual and Reproductive Health, approved earlier this week by Congress led by the Broad Front and authorizing abortion during the first trimester in cases where the mother’s health is at risk or the family is too poor to care for a child.
The presidential veto was announced to Congress Friday and if in 30 days the legislature does not rescind it, the president’s decision will stand.
It would require a three-fifths majority in both houses to override the veto, a margin the Broad Front doesn’t have, and opposition lawmakers voted against the original bill.
Lawmakers of the Broad Front will decide from next Monday the steps it will take.
“This is a matter of principles, of ethical and moral values that goes beyond politics and for that reason we are considering the possibility of taking it to a popular referendum,” Sen. Couriel said.
In a statement posted Thursday on the presidential Web site, Vazquez based his veto “on judicial, scientific and technical considerations, on philosophical identity and ethical principles.”
Vazquez, a practicing oncologist, said that a “special mention” should be made about the article referring to the interruption of a pregnancy when a woman’s life is in danger or when there is proof of “a pathological process causing congenital deformities incompatible with life outside the womb.”
“That in itself is a provision we could share and which should be legislated very soon,” the president said after returning the bill to Congress with his objections to the remaining articles.
“We couldn’t doubt what the president would say after he repeated it so many times,” the representative of the Catholic Bishops Conference, Monsignor Luis del Castillo, said on Friday, commenting on Vazquez’s decision.
While the bill was going through Congress, Montevideo Archbishop Nicolas Cotugno threatened Catholic legislators with “automatic excommunication” if they voted for the measure.
The bill sparked controversy in civil society as feminist organizations and religious groups carried out competing marches and demonstrations.
Even so, 57 percent of Uruguayans said they were in favor of legalized abortion and 63 percent rejected the presidential veto, according to a survey taken by the Interconsult company and released this week.