Cardinal Keith O'Brien, archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, has responded to the latest abortion statistics in Scotland, published today. I reproduce his office's brief media statement in full below:
Reacting to the release today of the latest Scottish abortion statistics showing a total of 13,817 abortions in Scotland last year http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/1918.html#Tables Cardinal Keith O'Brien has described them as "inhuman and degrading". He said:
"The 2008 abortion statistics confirm the abject failure of the so called 'sexual health strategy' of recent years. They represent a human rights violation, in our midst, on a massive scale. We destroy 53 unborn children each day in Scotland. Were this carnage to take place among children lucky enough to have been born our outrage would be boundless. The victims of this inhuman and degrading violence are firstly the 13,817 Scottish children killed before they have been born and then the thousands of women who agree to their own off-spring being aborted."
Cardinal O'Brien added:
"[When i]n 2007 I claimed that 'we kill the equivalent of a classroom full of school children every day' many objected to the vehemence of my language. Grotesquely, since then we have seen classroom sizes in Scotland fall and abortion numbers rise. Today we abort over 50 children per day or two classrooms full. These statistics shame and debase us all."
Cardinal O'Brien concluded:
"I am haunted by the words of a surgeon who wrote to me the last time I criticised such statistics. He said: 'I feel powerless to halt the carnage and there is nothing more heartbreaking than seeing little arms and legs being sucked down a glass tube and binned for the sake of someone's lifestyle'. I hope we will all be haunted by these figures to the point where we act to halt them once and for all."
