"Freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth. This view of freedom leads to a serious distortion of life in society. The appearance of the strictest respect for legality is maintained, at least when the laws permitting abortion and euthanasia are the result of a ballot in accordance with what are generally seen as the rules of democracy. Really, what we have here is only the tragic caricature of legality; the democratic ideal, which is only truly such when it acknowledges and safeguards the dignity of every human person, is betrayed in its very foundations: 'How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted? In the name of what justice is the most unjust of discrimination practiced; some individuals are held to be deserving of defense and others are denied that dignity?' (Conference on the Right to Life in Europe,1987). When this happens, the process leading to the breakdown of a genuinely human co-existence and the disintegration of the state itself has already begun...to claim the right to abortion, infanticide and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance:that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: 'Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin (John, 8:34).'
--Evangelium Vitae (The Gospel of Life, 1995), Pope John Paul II
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