Our friends at the Brazilian web log Fratres in Unum send us the following text which we are honored to share - we ask news providers reading us, especially those of pro-life organizations, to spread it far and wide, urgently (no attribution of any kind needed):
A brief introduction to foreign Catholic brethren
A bill caled PL03/2013 was recently voted and approved by the Brazilian Congress. Originally, when presented back in 2002, the bill was about the emergency treatment of women victim of rape, but the text of the bill was changed on April 5th 2013 in a way that in practice will legalize abortion in Brazil. The bill was submitted to Congress in an urgency regime, requested by the Minister of Health of President Dilma Rousseff, Alexandre Padilha.
The minister stated that this bill was about the emergency treatment of woman victim of rape and that Congress should honor the 2013 International Day of Women, celebrated on March 8th, by passing this law. When some pro-life groups found out about the trap that was hidden in the wording of the bill it was too late, the bill was already approved by Congress (House and Senate) and since then the life of the unborn in Brazil is hanging by a thread, that thread being the full veto of this bill by the President Dilma Rousseff.
Back in the 2010 presidential campaign, when President Dilma's candidacy was at risk over recorded interviews where she stated that she was in favor of abortion, President Dilma signed a public document committing herself not to change the current abortion legislation in Brazil. She won the elections but despite her compromise her government is trying again and again over the years to legalize abortion using the tactics of trying to widen the interpretation of legislation.
The PL03/2013 bill is President Dilma's latest step to accomplish the goal of legalizing abortion in Brazil. The text that follows is a painful revelation that the CNBB, the Brazilian Episcopal Conference, is, in the best possible scenario, at least informing beforehand the enemies of life, in this case President Dilma Rousseff's government, about the content of a note that the CNBB intends to publish about the PL03/2013 bill.
The tone of the text is best understood if the reader takes into account the history of CNBB on many social issues over the decades, the English-speaking reader can't access all this information but a piece of that history concerning abortion can be found in an article published by the National Catholic Register here.
After reading the article above and the one below the reader will find that there's some reasoning behind the suspicion that many Brazilian catholics have about the CNBB's historical close connections to the Brazilian ruling party: PT (Labor's Party).
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Party Allegiance: Note about the PL03/2013 sent beforehand to the "appreciation" of the President Dilma Rousseff. How delicate! (Original link)
