In CHRISTIFIDELES LAICI, Pope John Paul II told people around the world that:.
"Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights--for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture--is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination." .
In this excerpt from his document about the vocation and mission of the church and the world, Pope John Paul II reminds us of our responsibility as Catholics in the world today.
This quote basically means that if the right to life, or being born, is not defended, it is foolish to defend the other human rights mentioned. If we are not letting children be born, why bother to secure their rights while they are living? It seems foolish to defend the right to health, if our society is allowing doctors to simply abort a fetus" life. Abortion has become a large problem in our world today. Children in America are growing up in a culture of death. One of the tragedies of abortion is that innocent children cannot be sheltered from the truth that one-third of their brothers and sisters, classmates and friends have already been aborted. Why do people justify abortion? Because they don't classify a fetus as a person, it is only "tissue." Yet if you were to murder a pregnant woman, you would be charged with 2 murders because it is assumed that the child would be born. In both cases, a fetus is killed, but in one its tissue, and the other, it's a child.
In the Bible, Exodus 20:13, God gave mankind the Commandment, 'YOU SHALL NOT KILL'. This means that we are not to take the life of the unborn child, the baby that has already been brought to life, or any other person for that matter. We are not to kill anyone. In the Bible, life is considered to be sacred from the moment of conception up through a person's physical death and beyond into eternal life in Heaven.
