WASHINGTON, D.C. (Catholic Online) - I have had the privilege of calling Fr Frank Pavone my friend for several decades. He is a hero to me and millions of other people. There is no greater champion for our first neighbors in the first home of the whole human race, children in the womb of their mother, than this wonderful man. His courage, conviction, persistence and perseverance inspire and motivate me.  

When the official history of the great human rights movement of our age is written - and make no mistake it will be written - there will be several women, men, associations, movements and organizations holding a deserved place of honor. Right at the top of that list will be this indefatigable Catholic Priest and Champion for Life named Fr Frank Pavone and the vital association which the Lord of Life called him to found, Priests for Life.

The great human rights movement of our age is the struggle to restore to the Civil and positive law of this Nation - and the rest of the nations - the legal recognition of the fundamental Human Right to Life. This Right to Life is the foundation of all other rights and is revealed by the Natural Law which can be known through the exercise of reason. The Natural Law is binding upon all men and women.

Without recognizing this first Right to life there can be no recognition of any other derivative rights. In fact, the entire infrastructure of human rights is placed at risk. All true Human Rights are goods of human persons. When there is no human person there can be no rights endowed upon them or exercised by them. All the "rights talk" in the world will not change that.

Every procured abortion is intrinsically immoral because it takes an innocent human life. It is always and everywhere wrong to take innocent human life. Medical science confirms what our conscience has always known; the child in the womb is one of us, our neighbor. No positive law can change that fact.

When they seek to do so they are unjust laws which are not law at all. The great civil rights movements of the past two centuries have depended upon the recognition of an objective truth; every human being, at at every age and stage, has human dignity and a right to life. 

Civil Rights are those human rights which are first recognized - and then properly protected by - civil government. The American founders stood in the trajectory of Western civilization in their insistence that human rights are not given or bestowed by government but by the God in whose Image we have all been created. Truly just governments are instituted precisely to secure these human rights. The first among them is the Right to Life.

There is no more urgent work in the contemporary culture than the work of the movement called "Pro-Life". That is precisely because the Right to Life movement is the foundational human and thus civil rights movement. We have failed to hear the cry of our youngest neighbors in the first home of the whole human race. When we allow their killing for any reason and by any means - and then actually call it a "right" - we profane the very word. We also place our future survival as a Nation at risk. 

When we allow their innocent blood to be shed and then protect the evil act with the Police Power of the State we betray our claim to being a civilized people. When we deny them the Freedom to be born we undermine the very understanding of ordered liberty upon which our Nation was founded. Those engaged in the Pro-Life movement assert with the American founders that there are truths that are self evident - such as our equality before God - and rights which are inalienable - such as the Right to Life.

The Right to Life is the fundamental human rights issue of our age because without it there are no other rights. It is also the great freedom movement of our day because without the freedom to be born, there are no other freedoms. Forty years ago, with the stroke of a judicial pen, seven Justices of the United States Supreme Court consigned an entire class of persons, children in the first home of the whole human race (their mother's womb), to the status of property. We cannot, we will not, stop in our efforts to defend these children and to end this evil.

When we are victorious in this monumental struggle - and we will be victorious - there will be many heroes whose sacrifice and courage will be recounted in our history books. They will be celebrated by our children and grandchildren as Champions of Life who overcame the current culture of death, replacing it with a new Culture of life.  When recognition of the fundamental Human Right to life is restored to the Civil and Positive law, these heroes will be remembered, honored and imitated.

Right at the top of that list will be a Catholic Priest named Fr. Frank ...