Life: The Most Basic and Fundamental Right

Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on behalf of human rights -- for example, the right to health, to home, to work, to family, to culture -- is false and illusory if the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended with maximum determination.

- Pope John Paul II,
On the Vocation of the Lay Faithful (Christifideles Laici), 1988