The pressing need to convince a broken world that human persons have a right to be respected from the beginning of their existence grows more serious with the passing of each day. All one needs to do is read the silly remarks of pro-abort leaders claiming that they speak for all Americans who, they say, are totally opposed to protecting innocent children prior to birth.
But the thing that is evoking such wild claims is the growing power of the drive to achieve total protection for all. Even pro-aborts know that the truth cannot be denied—though they refuse to admit it. Such people are, after all, ideologues whose agenda requires deception, denial and devious tactics.
Take Colorado for example. Personhood Colorado has become a target for the spewing of venom, yet personhood leadership has remained steadfast. As Gualberto Garcia Jones recently explained, grass roots’ organizing is key to a pro-life victory and, when the focus is crystallized for voters and they recognize that their decision is between life or death, personhood has the edge.
As we know, all life begins the same way; therefore, everyone can identify with the plight of the innocent preborn child if honesty is employed in the process. Personhood leaders and grass roots workers know this, and that scares their opponents to death!
Add to this mix the leaders of the Catholic Church who are becoming more and more vocal in their public pronouncements regarding what is at stake in this struggle for the restoration of moral integrity. Just recently in Rome, Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told his audience, “Today, the hardness of heart that grieves the Lord and the Church, has widely spread around the world: abortion and euthanasia have become socially respectable choices, and are even recognized as human rights, the human embryo is considered testing material, the rampant killing of innocent human lives increases.”
But Antonelli continued, “It is God that has raised and supports your efforts. Tonight we want to thank Him together because He has chosen you as his friends and collaborators, because He gives you strength, intelligence and perseverance to go against the dominant culture, the political power, the rampant corruption.”
And this is, indeed, what motivates every pro-life American toward the goal of personhood. It is not, after all, a human effort that will win this struggle, but the power of God working through us, His humble servants.
Archbishop Allen Vigneron, upon learning that the University of Michigan was pursuing the creation of a new human embryonic stem cell line, wrote “Embryos are the genesis of human life, and it is morally unacceptable to intentionally destroy them, even if the scientist is trying to cure a debilitating disease or parents are responding to a difficult challenge in their family life. The country we live in defends human rights at home and abroad. That defense must extend to the laboratory.”
Archbishop Charles Chaput in his Respect Life Month address to the Catholics of Colorado made a similar point, writing, “Abortion is not merely one among many other urgent issues. It cannot be forgotten or covered over for long, because it attacks the cornerstone for a whole architecture of human dignity. When we revoke legal protection for unborn children, we violate the first and most important human right—the right to life itself. And once we do that, and then create a system of alibis to justify it, we begin to put every other human and civil right at risk.”
It is this constant drumbeat focused on the human rights of the innocent preborn child, and led by the shepherds of the Catholic Church, that is beginning to resound with our fellow citizens. The crisis of truth is being confronted; it is being defined and the enemy has been engaged. Each day moves America one day closer to understanding the undeniable fact that every human being is precious before God. Therefore the intentional murder of a single person dehumanizes all of us.
We must fight for human rights for all—born and preborn. Human personhood now!