The Gospel of Life.

Editor's note. The following are excerpts from Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life), Pope John Paul II's magnificent 1995 encyclical. The numbers refer to the section numbers in the encyclical itself. Where a number is repeated, it means more than one quote is taken from that section.

20. ...To claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance; that of absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom....

27. In view of laws which permit abortion and in view of efforts, which here and there have been successful, to legalize euthanasia, movements and initiatives to raise social awareness in defense of life have sprung up in many parts of the world. When, in accordance with their principles, such movements act resolutely, but without resorting to violence, they promote a wider and more profound consciousness of the value of life, and evoke and bring about a more determined commitment to its defense.

57. ...As far as the right to life is concerned, every innocent human being is absolutely equal to all others. This equality is the basis of all authentic social relationships which, to be truly such, can only be founded on truth and justice, recognizing and protecting every man and woman as a person and not as an object to be used.

58. ...Especially in the case of abortion there is a widespread use of ambiguous terminology, such as "interruption of pregnancy" which tends to hide abortion's true nature.... Perhaps this linguistic phenomenon is itself a symptom of an uneasiness of conscience. But no word has the power to change the reality of things: procured abortion is the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth.

60. ...[T]he Church has always taught and continues to teach that the result of human procreation, from the first moment of its existence, must be guaranteed that unconditional respect which is morally due the human being....

62. ...Given such unanimity..., Paul VI was able to declare that this tradition [of the evil of abortion] is unchanged and unchangeable. Therefore by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the Bishops... I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being.