Colombians March in More Than 70 Cities to Defend Life, Reject Abortion

Large cities with marches included Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bucaramanga, Pereira, and Manizales.

March for Life 2022 in Baranquilla, Colombia.
March for Life 2022 in Baranquilla, Colombia. (photo: Courtesy photo / Unidos por la Vida)

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people dressed in light blue and carrying banners and flags marched in more than 70 cities in Colombia to defend the life of the unborn child and to say no to abortion.

Jesús Magaña, president of United for Life, the platform that organized the event, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister news agency, that on April 30 some 200,000 people attended the marches in 78 cities in the country.

Large cities with marches included Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cartagena, Bucaramanga, Pereira, and Manizales.

A Manifesto for Life written by United for Life was read at this 16th National March for Life in Colombia, stating that the Colombian people “are outraged by ruling C-055 of 2022 in which four judges of the Constitutional Court and an alternate judge sentenced unborn babies up to six months of pregnancy to a cruel death penalty without any grounds.”

“Therefore, throughout the country, we are peacefully demonstrating our rejection of this unconstitutional and criminal decision of the Court. We want to tell the world that Colombia is a country of life and that it will not rest until the right to life is restored and guaranteed from the moment of fertilization until natural death,” the text adds.

United for Life said that “all legal, political, cultural and social means” will be used “to restore precisely the right to life, which has been systematically violated for years by the Constitutional Court."

The pro-life platform asked the four aforementioned judges of the court to resign from their positions and to “answer judicially and socially to the people for this abuse of power.”

The manifesto also invited Colombians to “rethink this type of action by the Constitutional Court, since it has become a body that breaches the balance of powers, destroys the democratic system, deforms the Constitution with its reinterpretations.”

The candidates for president of the country were asked to sign the Pact for Life “as a sign of their commitment to put forth actions and public policies that protect and promote all human life.”

“Colombia is a country that loves and respects life, that doesn’t want new violence and the extermination of human beings worked out in the offices of the Constitutional Court, especially which allows and promotes the massacre of our unborn babies. We will continue to mobilize until this massacre is stopped,” the manifesto concludes.

Father's Plea to Halt 8th Month Abortion Makes Headlines in Colombia

In a Feb. 11 statement, the Colombian bishops' conference said that “in addition to the pain of knowing that Juan Sebastián was already past seven months gestation and that he was in perfect health, we have been perplexed by how the institutions of this country did not guarantee the rights of the father who persistently and tenaciously fought for the life of his son through the applicable channels.”