Benin, a small country in western Africa, voted Wednesday to legalize the killing of unborn babies in abortions.
AFP reports the vote in Parliament occurred Wednesday evening after an intense, heated debate about abandoning legal protections for unborn babies.
The new legislation allows unborn babies to be aborted in the first three months of pregnancy if the pregnancy likely would “aggravate or cause material, educational, professional or moral distress, incompatible with the woman or the unborn child’s interest,” according to the report.
The legislation still must pass a final hurdle to become law: ratification by the country’s constitutional court, Reuters reports.
Until now, Benin protected unborn babies from abortions in most cases. It only allowed abortions on unborn babies conceived in rape or incest, unborn babies with “severe” disabilities and abortions when the mother’s life was at risk.
Follow LifeNews on the Parler social media network for the latest pro-life news!
The Episcopal Conference of Benin mourned the news after urging lawmakers to support unborn babies’ right to life.
“Abortion not only destroys the life of the foetus but also that of the mother in many aspects,” the conference responded in a statement.
But pro-abortion health minister Benjamin Hounkpatin asserted Thursday that the legislation is “responsible” because it will protect women from dangerous abortions.
“This measure will be a relief for many women who face undesired pregnancies, and are forced to put their lives in danger with botched abortions,” Hounkpatin said in a statement.
He also claimed the goal of the legislation is to “save human lives,” and the “voluntary termination of pregnancies will remain a last resort.”
However, decades of evidence shows the opposite to be true. Abortion activists do not want abortion to be a “last resort,” they want society to accept the killing of unborn babies as normal, easy-to-get, un-stigmatized healthcare.
Legalizing abortion does not save lives either. The law will result in more unique, irreplaceable human lives being killed in abortions. Babies in the womb will be killed and their deaths justified as legal and “life-saving.” And the dangerous illegal abortions just become legal. What’s more, a vast amount of evidence from the U.S. and other countries indicates that better access to basic medical care is what really improves maternal health, not legalizing abortions.
Most countries in Africa protect unborn babies from abortion, but pro-life countries are facing intense pressure from world leaders to abandon their protections for unborn babies.
Recently, Culture of Life Africa founder Obianuju Ekeocha accused some western countries of pushing African countries to support abortion by linking the issue to international aid relief for COVID-19.
“Some Western donors, including government and international institutions, have used this as an opportunity to insert an ideological agenda focused on so-called ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ under the cover of COVID-19 humanitarian relief,” Ekeocha told the Christian Post late last year.
“This means that at a time when there is dire basic human needs like food and basic medicines, donors seem to be much more concerned with furthering the territories of the abortion movement …” she continued.
Pro-abortion groups, funded by some of the richest men in the world, are putting pressure on countries across Latin America and Africa to legalize the killing of unborn babies in abortions. Several years ago, documents leaked from U.S. billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations showed a multi-year plan to pressure pro-life countries to legalize abortions.
Argentina fell to the pressure in late 2020, voting to legalize abortion for any reason up to 14 weeks and later in a wide variety of circumstances. Less than four months later, a young woman died along with her unborn baby in a legal abortion.
Then in September, the Mexico Supreme Court dealt a blow to the rights of unborn babies when it ruled that a state law that include criminal penalties for abortion is unconstitutional.
Approximately 42.6 million unborn babies were killed in abortions across the world in 2020, according to Worldometer.
