Salvadoran president urged to oppose proposed pro-abortion constitutional changes

San Salvador, El Salvador, Sep 15, 2021 / 18:01 pm (CNA).

Seventy-five pro-life and pro-family organizations on Monday asked the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to oppose the changes to the constitution promoted by his vice president, Félix Ulloa, which would open the doors to abortion, euthanasia, and gender ideology, and would threaten religious freedom.

In a petition delivered Sept. 13, the organizations explained that the reform contains proposals that are “attacks against the right to life, the family and freedom, inasmuch as they impose an ideological agenda contrary to the values and cultural identity of Salvadorans.”

The organizations explained that the reform “is opposed throughout its text to the Constitution of the Republic, international treaties, and other laws of the country.”

The organizations noted that the reform “opens the door to abortion on demand” since Article 1 of El Salvador’s constitution states that the country “recognizes every human being as a human person from the moment of conception” but the proposed reform would alter the text to read “every human person in general,” using “an exclusionary and selective term.”

The proposed change then adds “in turn, the right to life of both the unborn and the pregnant person (an ideological term used for mother) is recognized,” which is “unnecessary and redundant … since the current wording of the constitution already includes those rights.”

However, the proposed text “is contradictory because it adds that ‘in the event of a collision of rights, the law will establish what is pertinent.’ In other words, although the right to life of all born and unborn Salvadorans is protected in the Constitution, they want a secondary law, and even a regulation, to decide whether to kill the unborn baby.”

“This obviously opens the door to legalize abortion with pretexts such as the mental health of the mother or deformities of the baby, among others,” they stated.

The organizations’ petition also points out that the “supposed ‘collision of rights’ to life does not exist” since “when there is a high-risk pregnancy, currently the Criminal Code in Article 27, which regulates the exclusion of criminal responsibility, includes in nos. 3 and 6 of said article the principle of double effect, allowing doctors to intervene with the aim of saving the lives of both patients, as it should be and not choosing one life over the other. If one of the two dies, the doctor does not commit a crime.”

The organizations explain that the reform “opens the door to ideological colonization” since “Article 3 includes the prohibition of ‘non-discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression,’ giving constitutional recognition to dangerous ideological terms, which constitute a means to indoctrinate minors, despite the fact that these terms have no scientific basis.”

In addition, they noted that the reform “opens the door to euthanasia” because “in Article 65, an alleged right to a ‘previously consented dignified death’ is proposed, a term used worldwide to refer to euthanasia, even though its express name and identification is obviated.”

The organizations warned that the reform “redefines marriage and reinvents the family” since “Article 32 states that any legal bond will be considered a family and Article 33 refers to ‘various types that make up a family’”.

“This promotes the legal recognition of (LGBTI) lesbian-homosexual, bisexual, transsexual, polygamic, incestuous unions, etc.” as well as the adoption by “these groups, which constitutes a very serious violation of children’s rights.”

The reform also “violates the right to religious freedom: Article 26 proposes to create a secondary law to regulate the legal recognition of religions.”

“In our country, freedom of worship is not negotiable and must be maintained in the way that the current Constitution regulates it. In no way can this be regulated by a secondary law, but rather it must maintain its Constitutional status,” the organizations stressed.

The reform “violates parental rights” with Article 57, which “proposes that education in official educational centers should be exclusively secular, thus violating the right of parents as the first, primary and irreplaceable educators of their children to decide the education that they consider most appropriate” they said.

“This will also directly affect the Catholic or Christian Students Educational Councils that work with state aid to cover marginal and rural areas,” they pointed out.

In addition, they warned, “adding the term ‘secular’ in that paragraph limits the right to the free exercise of religion, giving rise to the practice of banning expressions of faith, as has happened in other countries with the proliferation of secular ideologies.