“In my conception, I am favorable to the valuing of life,” Rousseff said. “And I am personally against abortion, which is violence against a woman.”

Rousseff made the statements following a meeting with various religious and political leaders, which was organized in apparent response to the dissemination of numerous internet texts and videos criticizing her and the socialist Labor Party for supporting abortion.

“I told the pastors that, from the point of view of the presidency, there are women who have recourse to abortion and they have to be cared for,” said Rousseff, referring to the Brazilian policy of giving medical care to women who have induced abortions, despite their illegality. “We respect and value life,” she added.

Asked if her position was in conflict with that of the pro-abortion Labor Party, of which she is a member, Rousseff clarified that “the government [of the Labor Party] has always had one position.  Now, we are a democratic party.”

However Rousseff also repeated the Labor Party’s public position on abortion, calling it a “public health” issue, a term commonly used by international abortionist organizations. She also said she opposed a plebiscite on the matter, which in strongly pro-life Brazil would lead almost certainly to a rejection of abortion.

Pro-life activist Julio Severo, who has strongly opposed the Labor Party’s reelection, told LifeSiteNews that Rousseff’s words indicate her “lack of ideological clarity and honesty.”

“She says that she is personally against abortion, and again emphasized that she ‘defends the treatment of abortion as an issue of public health’,” he added.

“Just like Dilma, [Brazilian President Luiz] Lula also declared himself to be a Catholic, said he was personally against abortion and defended the treatment of abortion as a public health issue,” said Severo. “In 2002, candidate Lula had also made an agreement to not allow his future government to promote abortion and homosexualism. But after his election, his government promoted abortion, at the national and international level, so much that we fear, in the best of hypotheses, that Lula had suffered some kind of attack of amnesia.”

Dilma Rousseff is widely viewed as the handpicked successor of President Luiz Lula da Silva, who, despite his pro-abortion position, is leaving office with an 80% approval rating.

Abortion is illegal in Brazil and is punished with criminal penalties in all cases except rape. Opinion polls indicate that over two-thirds of Brazilians oppose the further decriminalization of abortion.

Multiple complaints before various government agencies were filed in August against Rivera, his spokesman Hugo Valdemar, and Cardinal Juan Sandoval Iñiguez by Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard and fellow members of the socialist Party of the Democratic Revolution in response to statements they made denouncing the homosexualist and abortionist policies of the Mexico City government and the nation’s Supreme Court.

The complaint filed against Rivera with Contrapred is based on his statement denouncing the Supreme Court’s approval of homosexual “marriage,” calling it an “immoral legal reform,” and declaring that the Catholic Church “cannot cease to call evil, evil.”

“Such immoral activity can never be the equivalent of the sexual expression of conjugal love, because it endangers the dignity and the rights of the family that constitute the common good of the society,” he added.

In his official response to the complaint, Rivera maintains his ground, saying that his statements on homosexual “marriage” and adoption cannot be compromised because “our posture emanates from our religious creed, that is, from our conscience,” according to quotes published in the Mexico City newspaper Milenio.

Rivera reportedly denies the accusation of “discrimination,” and says that his statements made “use of religious liberty,” a right protected under the Mexican Constitution’s Article 24.  The government, he says, “cannot censure nor diminish our religious liberty.”

When “a person expresses his opposition, following the doctrine of his religion, to a particular regulation or reform,” writes Rivera, ”it is not possible to limit his religious liberty, and for that reason the minister of worship or layman has the right to express his opinions regarding religious matters, as long as they do not attack the security, order, health or public morals, or the rights or liberties of others” – conditions he says his statements have met.

Sigurdardóttir, who has lead Iceland since 2009, is a practicing lesbian who “married” her partner Jónina Leósdóttir in a highly publicized ceremony in June of this year.

Calling the presence of Leósdóttir a “provocation,” Member of Parliament Jenis av Rana refused to attend at dinner in honor of the prime minister.

“My party is formally against homosexual marriage,” said av Rana. “If I were to participate in the official dinner, it would be the same as saying that I support a union that is contrary to nature and condemned by the Bible. And that is something I will not risk under any circumstances.”

Although av Rana belongs to a more conservative Christian political party, his statement was echoed by Alfred Olsen, of the liberal Sambandsflokkurin party. “It is against nature for a man or a woman to live with a person of the same sex,” Olsen told the media.

The Faroe Islands are a semiautonomus territory of Denmark, which in 1989 was the first country in the world to create same-sex “civil unions.”  However, such legal recognition for homosexual relationships is rejected by the more conservative islanders, who also prohibit homosexual adoption, according to the Irish Times.

Martha Lucía Micher, chief of Mexico City’s Institute of Women (INMUJERES-DF), told an interviewer with MVS Radio that “really I don’t love [the Miss Universe pageant] and there are many women who don’t love to see how they exhibit us like cows.”

Miss Universe contestants exhibit their bodies to judges while dressed in extremely small string bikinis during the competition.  The swimsuit segment is regarded as one of the most important for determining the contest’s winner.

Micher’s comments were not well received in Mexico following the recent crowning of Jimena Navarrete, a 22-year-old Mexican, as Miss Universe. Following a public outcry, Micher appeared on Radio Formula to apologize profusely for her statements.

“I take responsibility for what I said. I think that I unintentionally caused damage, but it was never my intention to damage the dignity, damage the person of Jimena [Navarrete],” said Micher.

However, following complaints filed by various civil organizations, Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission (CDHDF) agreed that a possible human rights violation had occurred, and yesterday announced that it would initiate an investigation against Micher, according to the El Universal newspaper.

CDHDF has issued a press release stating that the case will be assigned to Guadalupe Cabrera Ramírez of the agency’s fourth investigative division.

Governor Juan Manuel Oliva has also announced a legislative initiative to reduce the criminal penalty for infanticide from 25 to 35 years in prison, to three to eight years.

The decision to release the women follows weeks of pressure by pro-abortion organizations, members of the socialist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and the national media, which repeatedly claimed the women were really imprisoned for “abortion.”

The PRD’s Secretary General, Hortensia Aragón Castillo, says she is not satisfied with the legal reforms proposed by Governor Oliva, claiming that it “evades the central issue at the core, which is the criminalization of the right of women to decide about their bodies.”

Investigations by the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, as well as the state’s human rights office commissioner, produced no evidence that the women had been convicted for abortions. However, pro-abortion forces have continued to insist that all seven women imprisoned for “murder in reason of parentage,” the legal term in Mexico for infanticide, are innocent of the charge.

Among those to be released is María Araceli Camargo, 26, convicted of infanticide after giving birth to her child and leaving it to die in a rural latrine.  According to the La Jornada newspaper, Camargo claimed that she thought she had diarrhea, but instead gave birth to an infant 53 centimeters in length, an average size for a newborn, while in the latrine.

La Jornada reports that Camargo cut the umbilical cord and left her baby, then went to her family claiming that she felt unwell.  Doctors at the hospital where she was taken immediately recognized that she had given birth, and alerted prosecutors, who found the child at the bottom of the latrine, with fecal matter in its respiratory system. Prosecutors concluded following an autopsy that the baby was born healthy, with a full life expectancy.  Camargo was sentenced to 26 years in prison, but will now be released after serving 8.

Alma Yareli, recently released by state judge Miguel Valdez Reyes, was convicted of infanticide after giving birth to her third trimester baby, which she had conceived in an adulterous affair.  Yareli claimed that she gave birth to the baby prematurely in a bathtub, where it was stillborn, and said she was motivated by fear when she placed it into a bag and left it on a street, according to the Guanajuato newspaper Correo.  Prosecutors concluded that Yareli’s child died of hypothermia following the birth.

Fourteen other women are currently being prosecuted for similar crimes, according to local media reports, although it is unclear what will now become of their cases.

Writing in the diocesan newspaper El Semanario, Sandoval Íñiguez states that “there was already a most serious error in having validated, from that level of the judicial power that is the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, the supposed ‘marriage’ between people of the same sex, a true attack against human nature.”

“And now,” Sandoval continued, “it is adding another error by having approved the adoption of infants by those homosexual couples, by which it has consummated, to say it a certain way, its treason against Mexico, the family, and the natural law.”

Sandoval reinforced his statements in a speech given at the close of the Archdiocese’s Third Matrimonial Crusade. Using the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as a model, the cardinal noted that “the world says something else, the fashions that come and go in this moment, everywhere, free love, express divorce, contraception, abortion, and similar things.”

Regarding complaints filed against Sandoval Íñiguez by the socialist mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, a spokesman for the cardinal told reporters that the cardinal will not retract his accusations made against Ebrard of having “fed” the justices of the Supreme Court to secure approval for his policies.

In an interview with the Cronica de Hoy newspaper, Archdiocesan spokesman Antonio Gutiérrez said that the cardinal would not retract his accusation, and that his attorneys have asked that “while they study the lawsuit we keep quiet so as not to ruin anything and so that they can respond better legally.” The Archdiocese has previously stated that the cardinal has proof to back up his claim.

Ebrard has called the cardinal a “liar” and despite his repeated actions against Catholic teaching, said this weekend that he regarded himself as a member of the Church.  He added that if he were excommunicated over his lawsuits that he would appeal to the Holy See.

In a press conference held Sunday in the state of Aguascalientes, Juan Sandoval Iñiguez blasted the justices, claiming that “Marcelo Ebrard (governor of Mexico City) along with international organizations, fed the magistrates of the Supreme Court, who received gifts” in exchange for their votes.

“I don’t doubt that they are very well fed by [Mexico City governor Marcelo] Ebrard.  They are very well fed by international organizations.”

He added that “for that reason I don’t doubt that the issue of gay adoptions is going to go the same way,” referring to the deliberations of the Court under way in the nation’s capital. The following day, the Court did as he had predicted, ruling that children could be given in adoption to homosexual couples.

Sandoval Iñiguez called the adoption of children by homosexuals “an aberration,” and asked reporters “would you like queer or lesbian couples to adopt them?”

The cardinal said that the justices of the Supreme Court were merely following a line established by international socialists and Mexico’s biggest socialist political party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, whom he accused of being in league with “the big capitalists.”

“All of this package of proposals is from the PRD or from the leftists of the world, [and] is proposed by the big capitalists,” he said, adding that “they are proposals of the PRD, but not only in Mexico.  Over there is Zapatero in Spain or in Italy also there are people who want to propose all of this against the family.”

“The Supreme Court is the supreme disappointment,” said the cardinal, “because it doesn’t know where it’s going, because one after another of its verdicts have been wrong and against the truth and against Mexico and the family.”

Mexico City governor Marcelo Ebrard, a PRD socialist whose party is largely responsible for instituting homosexual “marriage” in the capital, responded by threatening to file a complaint against Sandoval Iñiguez with the National Council for the Prevention of Discrimination.

The poll also found that English-speaking Hispanics were more likely to have liberal social views than their Spanish-only counterparts.

Overall, 39 percent of Hispanics said abortion should be mostly legal, while polls of the general population indicate that approximately 46-54% of Americans think abortion should be legal.

However, when American inculturation is taken into account, a gap appears.  The poll indicated that 49 percent of Hispanics who speak mostly English are in favor of maintaining the legality of abortion, while only 31 percent of those who speak mostly Spanish hold the same view.

A gap also appeared between Catholic and non-Catholic Hispanics.  Although the Catholic Church regards abortion as an “unspeakable sin” and equivalent to murder, a higher number of self-identified “Catholics” in the poll indicated that they wanted to maintain the legality of abortion,  41%, as opposed to self-identified Protestants, 26%.

The poll also indicates that Hispanic Americans also oppose same-sex “marriage.” Only 31 percent support it, and an additional 28% are in favor of allowing “civil unions.” Thirty-five percent of respondents oppose both.   However, Protestants were much more strongly against homosexual “marriage” than Catholics, again, despite the Catholic Church’s strong condemnation of all homosexual unions and homosexual acts.

The differences between Catholics and Protestants in the poll may be attributable to the more liberal attitudes that prevail in Catholic parishes in the United States, where the doctrines of the Catholic Church are often ignored or even denied with impunity.  Parishes in Latin America tend more often to uphold the Catholic Church’s social teachings on human life and sexuality.

In a 9-2 split between the court’s conservative minority and liberal majority, the court voted to require the states to accept gay ‘marriage’ based on the constitution’s article 121, which states that in “each state of the federation complete faith and credit will be given to the public acts, registrations, and juridical procedures of all the others.”

The same article goes on to say that “the laws of a state will only have effect in its own territory, and therefore, cannot be obligatory outside of it.”  Nonetheless, the Court ruled that Mexico City’s application of its marriage law to homosexuals will indeed bind the rest of the states.

Among the two dissenting judges was Guillermo I. Ortiz Mayagoitia, the Court’s president, who warned that forcing homosexual “marriage” on the states could “break with the harmony of the federal system.”

“In that sense, I regard the argument as well founded.  Now then, the argument being well-founded, is there the vice of unconstitutionality?” continued Ortiz Mayagoitia.  “Well, from my point of view, yes, I don’t find sufficient reason to introduce, by way of one of thirty-three components [of the federal system] a modification of such magnitude that it binds the rest of the components of the Federation.”

The ruling follows a series of rulings by the nation’s highest court, which have accepted as “constitutional” Mexico City’s homosexual “marriage” law, as well legislation permitting and even financing the killing of unborn children for any reason whatsoever during the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy.

The Court is scheduled to rule next on whether or not homosexual adoptions are constitutional. Opponents argue that such adoptions violate the rights of children, enshrined in international treaties of which Mexico is a signatory.

In response to the legalization of gay “marriage” in Argentina, Medina commented that “the homosexual tendency is a defect, as when a person is lacking an eye or a foot.” He also stated that if homosexual “marriage” were to be raised as an issue in Chile, the bishops would fight it.

Medina added that, just as alcoholics can be rehabilitated, so can homosexuals, and that he personally knows people who have been cured of their homosexual urges.

The comments were made at the opening of the newly restored Our Lady of Sorrows church in the town of Villa del Mar on July 25th, and reflect the Catholic Church’s traditional doctrine that homosexual sex acts are sinful, and therefore an attraction to committing such actions is, in the words of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “intrinsically disordered.”

Alejandro Goic, of Chile’s Movement for Homosexual Liberation and Integration (MOVILH), responded to the cardinal’s remarks, calling them “clearly offensive” and asking the Chilean bishop’s conference to clarify if the teaching is shared by the bishops of the country.