Bishop shuns abortion pill

Bishop Tomas A. Camacho said yesterday he was dismayed over reports that the Food and Drug Administration has recently approved an abortion pill which he described as an “assault on the sanctity of life and on individual unborn children.”

In a statement faxed to the media, Bishop Camacho objected to the sale and distribution of RU-486, or the mifepristone, citing the legalized abortion drug curtails the growth of innocent lives.

“How many more ways can we create to strike at the most holy of gifts God has given us, the ability to co-create new life? This is not just a question of choice, for an unborn child is not a mere appendage to the body of another. That child is a new life entrusting its very existence to that other,” the bishop said.

A report by the Associated Press said the RU-486 regimen was approved last month by FDA on conditions that doctors must sign an agreement to strictly abide to the approved regimen, and that patients must also sign a statement that they will regularly visit their doctors.

Under the FDA procedure, women use RU-486 within 49 days of their last menstrual cycle. Mifepristone, RU-486’s chemical name, blocks the progesterone, which allows an embryo to develop. Two days later, the report said, patients should return to their doctors to take a second medication, misoprostol, which causes contractions that expel the embryo.

Abortion is banned in this pre-dominantly Catholic island, and church leaders have strongly opposed efforts to revive talks on this controversial issue at the Legislature.

The bishop likened the FDA-approved regimen to state practices wherein the consent of a close relative is needed to decide whether a clinically dead person can be removed from life-giving support even if that person has signed a living will.

He also spoke of the unresolved debate about the “quality of life,” where it is various sects and organizations have argued about death penalty, the freedom to die with dignity, medical coverage for everyone, and etc.

“Still, armed with these consents, the supports are not always disconnected. But when it comes to an innocent nascent life, the state washes its hands by declaring that unborn child a “non-person” as it did in Roe vs. Wade,” said Bishop Camacho.

The Catholic church leader also stressed the church’s teaching that all Catholics have a duty to form their conscience according to the law that God has implanted within them.

“All forms of direct assault on the unborn with the intent to kill are against the laws of God and nature,” he said.