"The path to the attainment of the common good
and to peace is above all that of respect for human
life in all its many aspects, beginning with its conception,
through its development and up to its natural
end. True peacemakers, then, are those who love,
defend and promote human life in all its dimensions,
personal, communitarian and transcendent. Life in
its fullness is the height of peace. Anyone who loves
peace cannot tolerate attacks and crimes against life.
Those who insufficiently value human life and,
in consequence, support among other things the
liberalization of abortion, perhaps do not realize
that in this way they are proposing the pursuit of
a false peace. The flight from responsibility, which
degrades human persons, and even more so the killing
of a defenceless and innocent being, will never
be able to produce happiness or peace. Indeed how
could one claim to bring about peace, the integral
development of peoples or even the protection of
the environment without defending the life of those
who are weakest, beginning with the unborn. Every
offence against life, especially at its beginning, inevitably
causes irreparable damage to development,
peace and the environment. Neither is it just to introduce
surreptitiously into legislation false rights
or freedoms which, on the basis of a reductive and
relativistic view of human beings and the clever use
of ambiguous expressions aimed at promoting a
supposed right to abortion and euthanasia, pose a
threat to the fundamental right to life."
Pope Benedict XVI
