The Church cares for the life and dignity of every human person, from conception to natural death. Pope Francis has reiterated this several times with force and clarity, including in the recent Apostolic Exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium”. There, we read in n. 213: «Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this».

 

«Frequently—the Pope continues —as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. Yet this defense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems. Once this conviction disappears, so do solid and lasting foundations for the defense of human rights, which would always be subject to the passing whims of the powers that be».
 

In n. 214, Pope Bergoglio recalls the fact that the Church can never change her position on the defense of unborn human life, from the first moment on, «precisely because this involves the internal consistency of our message about the value of the human person». «I want to be completely honest in this regard. This is not something subject to alleged reforms or “modernizations”. It is not “progressive” to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life», says the Pope, who also recognizes the need to «adequately accompany women in very difficult situations, where abortion appears as a quick solution to their profound anguish, especially when the life developing within them is the result of rape or a situation of extreme poverty».