Father’s bid to halt 8th month abortion makes headlines in Colombia

The Cuban flag. / Steward Cutler via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Camagüey, Cuba, Jul 23, 2021 / 18:01 pm (CNA).
The Church is accompanying those protesting Cuba’s communist government, according to a priest of the Archdiocese of Camagüey.“I will s… […]

Popayan, Colombia, Sep 4, 2019 / 05:29 pm (CNA).- The secretary general of the Colombian bishops’ conference has deplored the assassination of Karina García, a mayoral candidate in the country’s southwest, and called for an end to the bloodshed in the country.

García, 31, was running for mayor of Suárez, in Cauca Department. She was killed in a Sept. 1 ambush along with her mother and four others.

Bishop Elkin Fernando Álvarez Botero, auxiliary bishop of Medellin, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, Sept. 3 that “as a Church we receive with profound sorrow this murder of one of the candidates for local office. We sent a message in the past few days with an appeal to avoid all forms of violence in the political campaigns, but this murder is a sign that we’re returning to those ways of violence which do not allow us to move forward.”

According to BBC World News Spanish edition, prosecutors indicated that the vehicle the victims were riding in was ambushed by another car crosswise in the middle of the road. Several men got out with high powered weapons, who fired on García and those accompanying her. They then pulled the bodies out of the vehicle and incinerated it.

The Colombian Liberal Party candidate had been warning for several weeks that her life was in danger. She began to get worried when unidentified persons began painting her campaign posters black.

Garcia also charged that fake news started to appear about her saying that if she becomes the mayor of Suárez, she would bring in paramilitaries and take away land from the people, accusations which she denied.

“I ask the other candidates and their supporters to not continue making, in face of these armed groups, irresponsible commentaries about my candidacy (…) For God’s sake, don’t be irresponsible! This could have consequences for me, even fatal ones,” García said in a video posted a few days ago.

Álvarez told ACI Prensa, “This is a very serious situation. Just as we are saddened by the death of this candidate we are also grieved by all the lives that are being ended in Colombia because of the violence.”

“We have to get back to valuing life as a gift from God.  Not just that of the community leaders, whose deaths are painful because they’re ending the hopes of the country, but of all human lives,” he said.

The bishop recalled the importance of participating in elections, and encouraged the candidates to run “political campaigns according to democratic principles that actually help and not divide.”

“The message we want to send to the candidates and the voters is let’s not polarize the country any more, let’s seek unity and let’s run principled democratic campaigns.”

Álvarez asked “those who still continue to take the path of violence, to be very aware that with violence, death and eliminating people, we’re not going to achieve anything for the country.”

“The violence has got to end. No more bloodshed,” he concluded.

Regional and municipal elections will be held in Colombia at the end of October. To be elected are governors for the 32 administrative districts representatives to the district assemblies, mayors of 1,099 towns, city council members, and members of the local administrative boards of the national territory.

The BBC also reported that different institutions maintain that between 200 and 400 community leaders have been killed in the last three years.

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CNA Staff, Jun 1, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Argentina’s digital March for Life May 30 drew 390,000 participants on Facebook alone, according to preliminary numbers from march organizers.

The pro-life effort came on the heels of a promise from Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez to again push for a bill to legalize abortion in the country’s legislature. That legislation was on the verge of being introduced in March when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in the country, forcing its postponement.

Current law in Argentina prohibits abortion, except when the mother’s life or health is determined to be in danger, or in cases of rape.

In a controversial move, Fernandez’ appointee as Minister of Health, Ginés González García, issued new protocols on abortion Dec. 12 2019, widening the circumstances for a legal abortion.

Speaking to ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, Senator Silvia Elías de Pérez, a pro-life leader in the country’s legislature, stressed that “today’s march has been very positive.”

The senator said that a 2018 bill that would expand legal protection for abortion in Argentina was defeated in part because of  “a huge number of Argentinians who throughout the country came out to defend their ideas, their rights, to say that in Argentina every life matters and that being born in Argentina should not be a right only for those who are wanted.”

Argentina’s May 2018 March for Life events drew an estimated three million participants in multiple cities across the country.

The 2020 digital march, Elías de Pérez said, can serve “as a new point of departure” helping pro-life groups to “get back on track again, back to work, because we have to take up the fight again.”

The senator lamented that “it is extremely sad, dramatic, that in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, in which we are fighting for people’s lives, it still occurs to a government to send (to the legislature) this kind of anti-life initiative.”

“So what’s important once again is to put our minds and passion at the service of this cause, which is the noblest of all because it means fighting for the preservation of the human race, understood as preserving life in all its stages” she said.

The digital march, which lasted about two hours on Facebook and YouTube, featured the participation of well-known pro-life leaders, including Mexican actor and producer Eduardo Verástegui.

The actor said that in all the pro-life forums he participates in, “the message I always give is to take the word pro-life to its fullest meaning.”

“Of course we have to defend life in the mother’s womb, defend the most important and fundamental right, the right to be born, because if you’re not born you can’t enjoy any other right,” he said. “But we pro-lifers don’t stop there, because after that, who’s next? Homeless children, there shouldn’t be one more child on the street, and that depends on us, on everyone,” Verástegui said.

The Mexican movie star also urged eradicating the crime of human trafficking as well as helping teens addicted to drugs and abandoned or abused mothers.

To be pro-life, he continued, is to care “for the lives of the sick who don’t have the resources to pay for a good doctor, for adequate treatment,” and to advocate “for the lives of those who are falsely accused and in prison.”

Defending life also means, Verástegui said, doing something for “the lives of the elderly who are abandoned in a nursing home, sad to death because not even their family members come to see them.”

“To be the voice of those who have no voice, to defend those who cannot defend themselves” is to be pro-life,” he emphasized.

A version of this story was first publish by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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