by JEFF DILLON
Using euphemisms “to make an evil sound good to lessen the evil of it” was
deplored by Bishop Emeritus Colin Campbell at a Mass during the Dunedin
stage of the Family Life International Pilgrimage for Life in opposition to new abortion legislation.
“If the unjust taking of a human life is a crime then isn’t that a matter of
justice not health?” he asked. “How can it be ‘health’ when it takes the life of a child and causes such trauma and angst to the mother?”
Speaking at a pilgrimage Mass in the chapel of the Sacred Heart Home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor in Brockville, Bishop Campbell said noted
Southland gynaecologist Dr Norman Maclean had told him of letting women listen to the heartbeat of their unborn baby of only a few weeks old, when the child is but a few centimetres in length.
The bishop said “our country is working on science that is quite unscientific” with the view that a human life only begins when it is born. That was 18th-century thinking.
He noted that the 1979 abortion law stated that decisions had to have “full regard for the rights of the unborn child”, but Dr Maclean had told him after about three years the situation became basically abortion on demand.
Bishop Campbell urged people to persevere in the struggle for life of the
unborn child.
About 70 attended the Mass, concelebrated by Fr Fredy Permentilla, MSP, with Bishop Campbell, Msgr Vincent Walker and Fr Mervyn McGettigan.
The next day the pilgrimage went to Sacred Heart Church in North East
Valley where Rosary was recited at noon and Fr Aidan Cunningham, IC, celebrated Mass at 7pm.
It then made its way to St Francis Xavier Church in Mornington for a midday Rosary and a 7pm Rosary before the pilgrimage headed north to Oamaru for its next stage.
