Chile’s president says country’s respect for life mandated great efforts to save lives of Chilean miners

I see that 26 of the rescued Chilean miners have just been welcomed to Manchester United by football legend Bobby Charlton.

Back in October my wife heard an astonishing interview about their rescue on Radio Five Live’s Drive programme.

Reverend Alfredo Cooper, chaplain to Chile’s president, spoke to presenter Peter Allen and gave an amazing testimony about the role prayer and faith had played in the whole drama.

I found the interview on ‘Listen Again’ later that night and transcribed it on this site.

Others copied and pasted the words and a recording of the interview appeared on you tube and on other websites.

Later a friend pointed out to me that one of the miners was wearing the CCC logo of Campus Crusade for Christ on the right shoulder of his T-shirt and the Jesus Film ‘Jesus’ on the left shoulder. The front of the shirt carried the Chilean Flag with the words ‘Gracias Senor’ (Thank you Lord!)

You can see the pictures on this site.

I have just this last week received word of another video featuring the miners titled Chile, The Miners, and Respect for Life.

The six minute video features video footage of the rescue along with interview clips but then goes on to give a prolife message and show some fascinating Chilean government adverts on marriage, family and pregnancy.

Chile has a strong judicial-legal system with their Constitution and civil, criminal, juvenile and health codes protecting the life of the unborn.

Chile’s president, Sebastián Piñera, apparently said that Chile’s respect for life mandated the great efforts to save the lives of the miners. A few days later, Cabinet Minister Carolina Schmidt publicly linked the Chilean effort to save the lives of the miners to their great respect for human life including protection of the unborn.

Schmidt had also previously announced a few months before at an international UN-related meeting in Brasilia, Brazil, that Chile’s new government is pro-life, and therefore would not accept abortion. As a result, some other Latin American countries followed Chile’s example, and subsequently made similar clarifications.

Chile is a pro-life model for the world in other ways too. It has the lowest maternal mortality rate in all of Latin America. This has been reduced by over 50% from 43.7 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 21.1 in 2008 placing it at 46th in the world just 7 places behind the US and primed to overtake.

This relationship between abortion rates and maternal mortality is important to note because abortion promoters are pedaling the false notion that legalising abortion reduces maternal mortality as a way of promoting abortion in developing countries.

This is one of the myths highlighted in CMF’s submission to the Department For International Development’s (DFID’s) recent consultation on maternal mortality.

Maternal deaths worldwide have in fact fallen from 500,000 to 343,000 between 1990 and 2008. This has nothing to do with abortion.

Our report concludes that the real solution to reducing maternal mortality is multi-level: addressing social attitudes, education and empowerment of women, good quality obstetric/midwifery care and better birth spacing.

Furthermore this is best achieved through positive engagement with religious leaders, communities and faith based organisations (FBOs).