Life Wins Protection in Dominican Republic

In a 167-32 vote Tuesday, the members of an assembly working on the constitutional reform approved Article 30, which establishes the right to life from conception till death. The clause will become No. 11 of the future constitution.

Prior to the vote, Cardinal Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez, archbishop of Santo Domingo, expressed his confidence that the legislators would not seek to legalize abortion in a country that respects life from the moment of conception.

"We trust and we believe in the great majority of our legislators, who are respectable people and opposed to the legalization of abortion, given that many of them have said that they consider it in their consciences a crime," the prelate said in a Mass he celebrated on Divine Mercy Sunday. "They know what the entire country wants, what the Catholic Church and other Christians want, and because of this we trust that they will not legalize abortion."