What Greed Does

Last month we began to denounce the vulgar, multimillion-dollar advertising campaign for the “emergency contraceptive.” Many fathers and mothers have been outraged by the insistence with which an ad that goes against morality, against the health of our girls and teenagers, and that also attacks life, is repeated constantly in every medium, including movie theaters.

The scandal has been so great that in almost every parish in the country our priests have spoken about this pill, explaining that this “contraceptive” is abortifacient. At the Mass for La Chinita we heard the Bishop speak about it. Our Cardinal did so too at the Mass enthroning the Virgin of Coromoto as Patroness of Caracas.

Today I am sharing again the link (http://www.cev.org.ve/noticias\_det.php?id=3741) where you can read in full the strong statement issued by the Bishops’ Commission for the Family and Childhood on the emergency contraceptive pill. Here is a summary of its main points.

The bishops say that, committed to defending the dignity of the person, the right to marriage and family, and the fundamental right to life, and alarmed at the serious confusion the promotion of the so-called “emergency contraceptive pill” in some media may cause in public opinion, they feel obliged to warn Venezuelan society and especially the Catholic people. They are gravely concerned that people are being encouraged to use a product made of levonorgestrel (0.75 mg) whose mechanisms of action, according to the National Therapeutic Formulary, include changes in the endometrium that prevent implantation. That effect, they explain, is not contraceptive but interceptive: it intercepts the embryo before it nests in the mother’s womb, halting the normal development of the human embryo and causing an early chemical abortion. Citing John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, they recall that abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means, of a human being in the initial phase of his existence, from conception to birth. Interception is therefore a form of abortion, which Venezuelan law punishes as a crime in the Penal Code, and it is also gravely immoral, because every human being, from the moment his existence begins, has a dignity and the right to have his life guaranteed and respected by the State, society and the family, as the Constitution and the child protection law establish.

The bishops call on parents, as the first and principal people responsible for educating their children and protecting their moral development, to instill in them respect for the value of life, and on the State, which proclaims the right to life among the highest values of its legal order, to take action in this delicate situation. They ask why commercial interests, through this advertising, are being placed above the right to life of the unborn and the health of Venezuelan women, and why it is possible to buy this abortifacient drug without restriction over the counter in pharmacies. This warning, they conclude, is not a matter of religion or ideology but a call to respect the first and most important of all human rights, the right to life, which must be respected and promoted from the moment it begins at conception.

Greed has so blinded those who market this drug that it seems we can do nothing to defend our girls and teenagers and the unborn child. As an outraged mother, like many others, I looked up on the Internet the list of products this laboratory sells, wrote them down on a piece of paper and put it in my purse, so that every time I set foot in a pharmacy I buy absolutely nothing from that laboratory. And if there are Catholic lawyers in this country willing to defend life, here is a very good case to take on. I’ll leave you with that!