Council #2917
Our Order’s steadfast defense and promotion of a Culture of Life is grounded on our ultimate assurance that in the natural law written in the heart of every person is the recognition that human life is sacred from its very beginning to its end. In the depths of our consciousness, human intellect knows that the very source of its existence—i.e. human life—ought to be protected and celebrated. In that regard, the message of the Knights of Columbus extends far beyond our Order and our religious creed; it is a universal message that every person of good will can come to affirm.
The right to life is unlike any other right. It is the most basic right and the condition of all other personal rights, constituting the foundation of every human community and the political community itself. St. John Paul II famously noted that if human life itself is not respected, then respect for all other rights—for example, the right to health, to marriage, to culture, to religion—is “false and illusory.” Human rights of every kind are “incomprehensible” without the right to life. Our Order, therefore, joins the universal Church in acknowledging the dignity of human life and in its efforts to achieve legal and constitutional protection for every human person at the international, national, state, and local levels.