Vatican Hosts Conference On The Right To Life

Tags: Currents Abortion, Catholic Family, Faith, Pro-Life, Vatican

Currents News Staff

As the debate for the right to life is continuing around the world, the Vatican is voicing its opinion with a conference called ‘Yes to Life!’

On May 23 the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life held the two-day conference, inviting speakers from around the world to speak on the right to life.

Conference topics including palliative care, prenatal hospice, abortion and euthanasia.

Two of the event speakers were Byron Calhoun, a specialist in Maternal and Fetal Medicine, and Mary Carroll Sullivan, the Chief Health Care Ethicist at the Archdiocese of Boston.

They especially spoke of the current, vocal abortion debate in the United States.

“If you look scientifically, life actually does begin scientifically at conception,” said Calhoun. “Perhaps that’s the biggest discussion that we can come to, at this point, in the scientific facts, not just the emotion on both sides.”

“When we look at this rash of legislation, you just have to ask yourself, ‘who is pushing this’ and why we’re being told that it’s a good thing for women,” said Sullivan.

“I’m here to say, as a nurse, it’s not been done and not been done for a reason,” she explained. “It strikes me that there’s so much potential danger to a woman to have to kill and then remove a baby that is full term. That is something that I won’t get too graphic here.”

The speakers did not only express a desire to protect mothers and children, but those who could have their life ended with euthanasia.

“We have examples in some countries where euthanasia is used for children and also for adults. Laws have been made in a quasi-legal manner,” said Giuseppe Noia, Founder and President of Il Cuore in una Goccia, or The Heart In A Drop, an Italian organization established in defense protection of maternal and fetal health.

“The result of this is a reversion backward. Management of the final phase of life is often done with the approximation and unimportance,” he said in regards to the practice of abortion.

The conference presented the Catholic Church’s belief to uphold the dignity of life by expressing the importance of those children born with serious illnesses. They desire that every person in his or her dignity has an opportunity to grow in love, in reciprocal care and in unity with others.

It was not only the ethical, faith aspects of safeguarding life that were brought up, but scientific facts presented evidence backing up each of the points presented, which is much more credible when enacting laws around the world.