By David Kerr
The United States has become the key battleground for the global pro-life movement at present, according to a leading pro-life figure based in Rome.
“The U.S. is a little bit ground central right now with the Obama administration pushing abortion. They want to push abortion as much as they can,” said Joseph Meaney, the Director of International Coordination for Human Life International, in a recent interview with EWTN News.
He says that the U.S. government’s new health care plan – which presently plans to force Catholic institutions into covering contraception and sterilizations as part of their health insurance – has opened up global debate on the issue of conscience in health care.
“The respect for conscience - that we don’t believe in this and we don’t want to support it financially or in any way - is being trampled upon,” said Meaney, an American who is a studying for his doctorate in bioethics.
The Rome office of Human Life International is situated in the shadow of St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s headed by a Uruguayan priest, Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro Carámbula. And he is also prepared for a trans-Atlantic tussle with the Obama administration.
“We will insist through all possible legal and moral means that the state, the government cannot force a Catholic to operate against his conscience. So, the state has no right to impose immoral procedures on a Catholic hospital.”
Msgr. Barreiro is also concerned about the health care reforms because they are “imposing on private businesses to buy insurance packages that will contain immoral practices.”
From the vantage point afforded by being at the heart of the Catholic Church in Rome, Human Life International says that pro-lifers in the United States should take heart from recent successes across the globe.
“In the US, it's a bit like trench warfare,” said Meaney. “Things don't change dramatically, because we have the traditional tyranny where the Supreme Court basically says you can't change the abortion law.”
“In other countries you can change the law,” he said pointing towards the example of Hungary which “came out this year with a new constitution that declares that the right to life begins at conception. So that now needs to be translated into legislation that would ban abortion. But essentially the constitutional basis is there.”
The Rome office of Human Life International both campaigns, researches and educates, which includes teaching bishops, priests and seminarians on all pro-life issues.
And that work gives them reason for great hope.
“I see hope because God sees hope,” says Msgr. Barreiro, “because God calls every newly conceived human being to be saved. In the moment of the creation of every individual soul, that soul receives a heavenly vocation. So, that's the fundamental reason for hope.”
But he also believes that the “culture of death,” by its very nature, is destined to collapse as “immoral things are anti-natural and something that is anti-natural cannot last forever.”
“If you dam a river, the water will keep growing and growing. Eventually the water will go over the dam and the flow will continue. In the same way, things that are grossly offensive against natural law cannot continue.”
