The so-called “Complaint for Non-compliance with a Fundamental Precept” (ADPF) 442 is a lawsuit presented by the Socialism and Freedom Party calling for the decriminalization of abortion up to the 12th week of pregnancy.
Filed in 2017, it is now before the Federal Supreme Court (STF) with the current president Judge Rosa Weber as rapporteur, who has announced her intention to review the matter before her retirement in October.
“We are in a situation that requires a lot of attention and prayer,” the CNBB letter says. “In fidelity to the Gospel, it is up to us to defend human life, opposing all discrimination and prejudice, especially of the strongest against the weakest, of adults against children, of the big against the small.”
“Not doing so is to join the culture of death, which relativizes and commodifies everything, including innocent human life,” the letter stresses, which was also signed by the bishop of Barreiras, Moacir Silva Arantes, and the auxiliary bishop of Curitiba in Paraná state, Reginei José Modolo, who are members of the CNBB Life and Family Commission.
“We are of the Gospel of life and life in abundance, from conception to natural death,” the letter affirms.
The prelates also requested that each diocese and if possible each parish “have [a] Commission for the Service of Life, so that wherever human life, at any stage of its development, from conception to old age, is threatened or degraded,” the commission can “articulately promote, defend, and care for it.”