“It’s clear that abortion is not a question that can be reduced just to the intimacy of a person’s religious belief”, declared José Paulo Carvalho, MP of the CDS/PP party and President of the Portuguese Pro-Life Federation, commenting on some interpretations given to the words of Cardinal José Policarpo, Patriarch of Lisbon, on the referendum on abortion that should be held in Portugal in January 2007. The cardinal had affirmed that the question of abortion is “primarily an ethical, and not a religious, question”. Considering what the cardinal meant to say as “something that leaves Catholics free to decide how to vote in the referendum” is, according to Carvalho, “a contradiction of what he said”. “My interpretation – concludes the President of the Pro-Life Federation in a statement published on the website of the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference – is that the cardinal’s intention was to open up the question, not reduce it to a Catholic question but one that concerns everyone”. Meanwhile the Portuguese pro-life movements have announced that they will draw up a strategy for the referendum only after the debate in Parliament on 19 October, which will decide whether the referendum should be held or not. Américo López-Ortiz, international president of the World Apostolate of Fatima which recently held an international congress of prayer for life, pointed out that what is at issue is not just abortion, but also the problem of euthanasia, and appealed to the Portuguese people “actively to express its opposition to abortion and forcefully reaffirm its Catholic personality”.
