LONDON (CNS): Britain’s two cardinals have reminded Catholic politicians that it is unacceptable for them to vote for abortion rights.
Cardinals Keith O’Brien of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scotland, and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor of Westminster, England, denounced the 1967 Abortion Act May 31 as the act approaches its 40th anniversary.
“I remind them to avoid co-operating in the unspeakable crime of abortion, and the barrier such co-operation erects to receiving Holy Communion,” Cardinal O’Brien, who is president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Scotland,said during a homily at St Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, to mark the church in Scotland’s Day for Life.
Cardinal O’Brien said Catholics must be “unwilling to give our vote” to politicians who supported abortion.
He urged Catholics to hold their elected representatives accountable and called upon “politicians to have no truck with the evil trade of abortion.”
Noting that 7 million unborn children have been aborted in Great Britain since the act was passed, Cardinal O’Brien said, “The scale of the killing is beyond our grasp.”
The cardinal compared the rate of abortion in Scotland to the equivalent of a classroom of children dying every day.
The Day For Life will be marked in England and Wales July 1.
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