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FOCUS: The story and mission of the pro-life movement

The story and mission of THE PRO-LIFE MOVEMENT

The pro-life movement is a source of light in our dark times but its very existence reveals more about this time than any other phenomenon. It tells us that something as basic as the right to life cannot be taken for granted. The fact that abortion – or the euphemisms that disguise it, such as reproductive health and rights – is championed as a human right by powerful governments and international institutions today, shows that so-called human rights have become fundamentally inhuman.

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In the language of numbers, last year about 140 million babies were born worldwide. At the same time, roughly 60 million children were aborted; to say nothing of the lives lost to abortifacient pills and devices or in IVF procedures. Legal abortion has killed more people than all wars in recorded human history put together and devastated families worldwide at their very bosom. A mother’s womb that should be the safest place for life, statistically, is the most dangerous. With these sobering figures in mind, there is no escaping the fact that most of us alive today, in one way or another, have survived abortion, an evil that has saturated our entire culture. And therefore, we must lend our voices to those who have none. We have no other option than to fight for a complete end to this evil: for every child is conceived to be born and not only born but also cherished and spared from all other attacks on life, both physical and spiritual, that threaten us between birth and death. Ultimately, we want all those who have received the gift of life on earth to be born in heaven and so we must remember that we are not just pro-life but pro-eternal life. For this reason, the mission of the pro-life movement to save lives is inseparable from the mission of the Church to save souls. And it is because of this intimate link that the deeper the crisis of the Church grows, the more extensive the pro-life fight becomes. From this perspective, one can easily see that the pro-life movement as we know it today exists because of the crisis in the Church.

In this FOCUS section, we look at the history and mission of the pro-life movement, in conversation with John Smeaton, who has dedicated virtually his entire career to it; we share some beautiful memories from the March for Life in Rome and delve into the critical factors that weakened the Church’s opposition to the culture of death and created the urgent need for a movement to fight for life.

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