Catholic universities in Argentina call on courts to defend the unborn from abortion law 

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug 3, 2021 / 16:01 pm (CNA).

An organization of Catholic universities in Argentina has issued a declaration demanding that the legal system protect the unborn from the nation’s abortion law, enacted less than a year ago.

The Argentine Network of Catholic and Catholic Oriented Universities reaffirmed their identity “with the culture of life” and demanded that “the legal order protect human beings from conception to natural death.”

The network stressed its “commitment to the exercise of fundamental freedoms, working tirelessly with fidelity and trust for the sacred right to life of all human life.”

In their statement, the universities pointed out that the abortion law passed by the National Congress Dec. 30, 2020 is an “offense to the constitutional legal order” and to the “scientific foundations” of the humanity of the unborn child that were refuted during the legislative debate “with only ideological arguments.”

Argentina’s abortion law regulated the “supposed ‘right to abortion’” and was imposed as part of “the public order” throughout the country “not only against the right to life of the unborn child,” but also  contrary to “the constitutional provisions”  that make health and education laws the domain of the provinces, not the national state.

“From the outset, this extremely unjust law has been the subject of numerous legal claims that are being processed in the courts in different provinces, as well as strong calls for immediate repeal,” the universities stated in reference to legal challenges to the constitutionality of the law filed in Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Salta, and other provinces.

“This law does not pass the necessary tests of constitutionality, conformity to international conventions (signed by Argentina) and legislative consistency within common law,” they stressed.

The organization said that pro-life advocates “must be very courageous and trust” that the courts will decide that this “grave and manifest incompatibility with our constitutional order makes this law unfeasible.“

Instead what should prevail is “the objective recognition of the protection of the life of the human being from the conception, the protection of freedom of conscience, respect for the rights of the provinces in matters of health and education and the infeasibility of trying to impose laws like this one with as part of the ‘public order.'”

The universities also criticized that along with the legalization of abortion, the so-called “thousand-day law” was passed, a program to provide support to pregnant women and their children up to three years of age, which experts considered a deceptive strategy.

“That law doesn’t offset,” the abortion law because “legalizing abortion also implies recognizing the failure to protect maternity,” the Catholic universities pointed out.

Instead of this unjust abortion law, what Argentine society needs is to agree to “formulate proposals that would protect pregnant women in vulnerable situations and the unborn child, before and after birth, without discrimination or valuing one person over the other, inspired by the principle of equal and inviolable dignity of every human being.”

Society could reach that kind of agreement “coming from a culture of life, that we don’t doubt, the vast majority of the Argentine people share, whatever their religious or moral convictions.”

“The dignity of all human life” should then become “a meeting point rather than a profound division in our society. We are committed to promoting this,” the Catholic university network concluded.