By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, Latin America Correspondent
MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA, August 26, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The government of Medellin, Colombia, is being inundated with email protests in response to plans to build an abortion center with millions of dollars in public money, according to the Catholic Spanish-language news agency ACI Prensa.
Medellin's Secretary of Health, Agudelo Suarez, as well as the mayor of Medellin, “has received tens of thousands of messages expressing the rejection of the use of 8 million dollars for the construction of the first clinic in Latin America with 'gender perspective,' that is to say, to promote the feminist anti-life ideology in one of the most traditionally Catholic cities in the country,” ACI Prensa reports.
The clinic, which is to be called the “Clinica de la Mujer” (Women's Clinic), is being billed as a center for “the integral care of women's health” by the Medellin government. However, critics observe that the real purpose of the clinic seems to be the furtherance of the radical feminist agenda. The clinic will provide no services to enable women to give birth, and instead will provide “sexual and reproductive health” services, a term used by the international abortion lobby to refer to abortion and contraception.
The actions of the Medellin government are consistent with the policy of Colombia's right-wing President Alvaro Uribe; the government is fining Catholic hospitals for refusing to do abortions in cases in which they are supposedly “legal.”
The basis of the pro-abortion campaign by the Colombian government is a decision made by the nation's Constitutional Court in 2006 nullifying criminal penalties for abortions in cases of rape or fetal deformity. Despite the fact that the ruling did not declare abortions a “right,” nor legalize them, the Uribe regime is seeking to force the procedure on all hospitals.
In reaction to the public outcry against the proposed clinic, Colombian feminists are initiating their own email campaign, ACI Prensa reports.
Contact information:
Medellin Secretariat of Health
María del Rosario Jiménez Gómez
[email protected],
[email protected]
Telephone: +57 385 5832
Secretaría de Salud
Mayor's Office of Medellin
Mayor Alonso Salazar
Other officials:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]