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The scandal:
On Friday morning in Madrid, Spain, two feminist activists chained themselves half nude to a crucifix on the altar of Almudena Cathedral, in protest for the rights to free abortions for women.
The General Council of the Judiciary (GCJ) held a plenary session on Friday morning to make a decision over its report of the draft law on abortion.
The government has approved a draft law to stop women from having abortions on demand up to 14 weeks of pregnancy. It has not yet been received into parliament for a vote however, due to dissent within Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party.
At around 9:30am the two activists broke into the cathedral, took their shirts off and attached themselves to the giant crucifix. Across their nude torsos were painted the words “freedom to abort” in black ink. They were both wearing black skirts and crowns. As they committed the sacrilegious act, they shouted “abortion is sacred” and “illegal abortion, let’s take the altar."
The protesters were arrested by the police on grounds of offense to religious sensibilities, a clause contained in the Spanish Criminal Code.
Now for the Miracle:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you" (Jer 1:5)
In stark contrast to this fight for the destruction of life, here is an epic video of a true miracle: the first moments of human life, or more precisely, the first trimester, revealing the divine ingenuity, the complexity, the sheer beauty and marvel of God’s greatest creation: us.
InEvangelium Vitae Saint John Paul II wrote that the human person has “been given a sublime dignity, based on the intimate bond which unites him to his Creator: in man there shines forth a reflection of God himself.”
He says that our life is given to us by God, "it is his gift, his image and imprint, a sharing in his breath of life,” and therefore, God is “the sole Lord of this life: man cannot do with it as he wills…no one can, in any circumstance, claim for himself the right to destroy directly an innocent human being."
Saint John Paul II also talked about the need for the Church to sound its voice against this injustice of the violation and destruction of human life:
“Today there exists a great multitude of weak and defenseless human beings, unborn children in particular, whose fundamental right to life is being trampled upon. If, at the end of the last century, the Church could not be silent about the injustices of those times, still less can she be silent today, when the social injustices of the past, unfortunately not yet overcome, are being compounded in many regions of the world by still more grievous forms of injustice and oppression, even if these are being presented as elements of progress in view of a new world order.”
Number of reported abortions in 2013:
USA: 765,651 in the CDC survey (reported from 45 states), and as many as 1.6 million reported by Guttmacher Institute (Planned Parenthood’s research arm).
England & Wales: 185, 331
Scotland: 11,777
The World Health Organization estimated that in 2008 there were 43.8 million abortions performed worldwide.
And today we celebrate...