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The Constitutional Court of Bolivia has upheld the country’s laws protecting unborn children despite international pressure from the UN. The court held that unborn life must be protected, though it expanded a rape exception, and opened the door to embryo destructive research and the morning after pill. The case has been highly publicised in Bolivia, and was pending in the courts for two years. President Evo Morales reportedly weighed into the debate last year saying that “any abortion is a crime.”

Abortion-on-demand should never be permitted, the Court determined, and abortion is a crime during the later stages of pregnancy. Of note to abortion groups will be how the court disregarded the recommendations of two UN committees that asked Bolivia to de-criminalise abortion last year. Most courts in Latin America, including the high courts of Mexico, Peru and Chile, have now declined to follow the recommendations of UN monitoring committees on abortion.

While the court inflicted a stinging defeat on the pro-abortion groups working in the country, it did not leave them entirely empty-handed. The Bolivian justices followed the lead of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in determining when life begins. In a ruling about the legal status of embryos, the Costa Rica-based Court decided that human life does not begin at conception, when an embryo is formed, but when the embryo is implanted in the uterus.

Source: LifeNews.com

BIBLE STUDY: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

PRAISE: God that these Latin American countries have resisted the UN call to impose abortion. Pray that there may be a growing recognition of the unborn’s right to life all around the world.