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SACRED CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH
Declaration on abortion

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  • DECLARATION ON PROCURED ABORTION
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5. "Death was not God's doing, he takes no pleasure in the extinction of the living" (Wis. 1:13). Certainly God has created beings who have only one lifetime and physical death cannot be absent from the world of those with a bodily existence. But what is immediately willed is life, and in the visible universe everything has been made for man, who is the image of God and the world's crowning glory (cf. Gen. 1:26-28). On the human level, "it was the devil's envy that brought death into the world" (Wis. 2:24). Introduced by sin, death remains bound up with it: death is the sign and fruit of sin. But there is no final triumph for death. Confirming faith in the Resurrection, the Lord proclaims in the Gospel: "God is God, not of the dead, but of the living" (Mt. 22:32). And death like sin will be definitively defeated by resurrection in Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 15:20-27). Thus we understand that human life, even on this earth, is precious. Infused by the Creator,[5] life is again taken back by Him (cf. Gen. 2:7; Wis. 15:11). It remains under His protection: man's blood cries out to Him (cf. Gen. 4:10) and He will demand an account of it, "for in the image of God man was made" (Gen. 9:5-6). The commandment of God is formal: "You shall not kill" (Ex. 20:13). Life is at the same time a gift and a responsibility. It is received as a "talent" (cf. Mt. 25:14-30); it must be put to proper use. In order that life may bring forth fruit, many tasks are offered to man in this world and he must not shirk them. More important still, the Christian knows that eternal life depends on what, with the grace of God, he does with his life on earth.




5. The authors of Scripture do not make any philosophical observations on when life begins, but they speak of the period of life which precedes birth as being the object of God's attention: He creates and forms the human being, like that which is moulded by His hand (cf. Ps. 118:73). It would seem that this theme finds expression for the first time in Jer. 1:5. It appears later in many other texts. Cf. Is. 49:1-5; 46:3; Jb. 10:8-12; Ps. 22:10; 71:6; 139:13. In the Gospels we read in Luke 1:44: "For the moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leapt for joy."






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