ENI — Austrian church leaders have accused retailers of devaluing human life after an abortion clinic opened alongside other stores at a new Vienna shopping mall.
“You can now drink coffee, watch a film, buy clothes and then have an abortion,” said Erich Leitenberger, spokesperson for the Roman Catholic Church's Vienna archdiocese. “This trivializes decisions about life and death, and I think a lot of people have got the message.”
The inclusion of the Venus Med clinic, advertising “abortion services” and “sexual therapy,” in the capital's shopping mall has provoked controversy in Austria, where Roman Catholics make up 74 percent of the population of 8.1 million.
“You don't have to be especially religious to see what a fatal vision of our consumer society this presents,” said Cardinal Christoph Schönborn. “To be able to shop and have an abortion under one roof suggests human life is being banalized in a dangerous, unimaginable way.”
