Marco Tosatti
La Stampa
June 11, 2016
Is the Vatican commending abortion and contraception? It’s a legitimate question after the representative of the Holy See’s intervention at the U. N.’s World Health Assembly [in Geneva] where some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at ensuring “healthy lives” are [normally] approved.
Now, one of the objectives included in the commendation, in particular objective 3.7 asks for: “universal access to sexual and reproductive health services.” At the Cairo Conference in 1994, the United Nations clarified what these terms meant: to provide women with the instruments of “modern contraception” and “family planning” with recourse to “safe abortion wherever it is permitted by law.”
Monsignor Jean-Marie Mupendawatu, Secretary to the Pontifical Council for pastoral and health care, declared to the Assembly: “The Holy See delegation welcomes the vital emphasis on the dignity of the human person and the strong focus on equity expressed in the pledge that “no one will be left behind.”
However, instead of laying down reservations about the universal access to legal abortion Monsignor Mupendawatu said to the Assembly that more was needed to be done “to combat climate change and its impact on health”. LifeSiteNews asked the prelate if the commendation expressed at the Assembly covered contraception and abortion as well, but it hasn’t received any reply [yet].”
[Translation: contributor Francesca Romana]
