Pro-Life Group Says Earth Day Environmentalists Should Oppose Abortion to Truly Respect Life
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 12, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — If the organizers of Earth Day truly want to protect human life, a Catholic pro-life group says they should oppose abortion and advocate the protection of human lives from things that destroy them both before and after birth. CatholicVote says environmentalists should use Earth Day to celebrate nature’s greatest gift — human life.
With bus ads starting today in Chicago and next week in San Francisco and Seattle, CatholicVote.org is encouraging Americans to rethink how they celebrate Earth Day, and how they go about fostering a culture that respects the environment.
“Our goal is to use Earth Day to get Americans to think more deeply about what it means to truly respect the Earth and creation. Prevailing environmental attitudes too often view humans as the enemy of nature," Brian Burch, the president of CatholicVote, told LifeNews.com today.
"We believe the human person is God’s greatest creation, and the Earth’s greatest resource. Building up a culture of life is the single most important way to build a culture that respects the environment," he said.
“The members of CatholicVote.org wanted to bring this balanced Catholic view of the environment to the streets,” said Burch, “and that’s why we’ve advertising on over 50 buses in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.”
While some environmental advocates have only jumped on the green bandwagon recently due to the popularity of environmental issues, Burch told LifeNews.com that Catholics have long cared for the environment — while taking a more consistent approach by supporting all human life.
He continued, "Respect for the God’s creation has a long history in Catholic teaching, long before it became popular with our secular culture."
Burch pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI has been very vocal in support of proper stewardship of the natural resources that all people share together. Newsweek even dubbed him “the green pope," he noted.
Earlier this year, in his annual address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, Pope Benedict said: “If we wish to build true peace, how can we separate, or even set at odds, the protection of the environment and the protection of human life, including the life of the unborn?”
The Pope has repeatedly emphasized that respect for the environment must be tied to a larger framework that understands that nature includes a plan of love and truth that comes from God. And the heart of God’s plan for creation is the human person.
In his recent encyclical, Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “If there is a lack of respect for the right to life and to a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational systems and laws do not help them to respect themselves.”
The bus ads, which can be downloaded at CatholicVote.org, will run for four weeks. This April 22nd will mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.
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