Pope Francis: Climate Change and Abortion 'Interrelated'

Pope Francis: Climate Change and Abortion Are ‘Interrelated’ Key takeaways from the Vatican’s encyclical on climate change.

Population Control Is Not the Answer

For Pope Francis, caring about the environment goes hand in hand with taking a strong stand against abortion. “Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion,” the encyclical says. “How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties?”

Francis suggests that efforts to slow population growth are misguided and a distraction from the underlying cause of the world’s environmental crisis—the hoarding of the Earth’s resources by the rich and powerful. “To blame population growth instead of extreme and selective consumerism on the part of some, is one way of refusing to face the issues,” the encyclical says.

This Isn’t Just About the Environment

While the encyclical is centered around climate change and the environment, the overall message takes broad swipes at the consumer culture and calls for humans to cut back. “We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something that we have created ourselves,” Francis writes, one of several times he warns about the dangers of technology created without a thought to its long-term impacts.

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Credit : http://www.nationaljournal.com/energy/pope-francis-climate-change-and-abortion-are-interrelated-20150618

Key takeaways from the Vatican’s encyclical on climate change.

BY CLARE FORAN AND JASON PLAUTZ

National Journal