Kanlungan ng Buhay
7441 M. Santillan St., Makati, Metro Manila
The Right to Life – the Greatest of all Human Rights
by Tony Roxas
LIFE is a gift of God and not an endowment
granted by the State. As such, therefore, the
relationship between God, the Giver of life, and
man, the receiver of life, is a most profound
moral and spiritual relationship over which no
power on earth nor any man-made law can pre-
vail or alter, much less breach.
This is one of the underlying reasons why the
United Nations declared and guaranteed the
freedom of religion and conscience in its Decla-
ration of Human Rights in 1948. This is also
why it declared in Art. 16-3 of that document
that “The family is the NATURAL and FUNDA-
MENTAL group unit of society and is ENTITLED
TO PROTECTION by society and the STATE.”
(underscoring and italicization ours).
Our own Constitution in Sec. 12, Article II
states that “The State recognizes the sanctity of
family life and shall protect and strengthen the
family as a basic autonomous social institution.
It shall equally protect the life of the mother and
the life of the unborn from conception. The
natural and primary right and duty of parents in
the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the
development of moral character shall receive the
support of the Government” (italicization and
emphasis ours)
Unfortunately, these fundamental human rights
are now being violated brutally by some foreign
governments, ironically through the unauthor-
ized initiatives and cooperation of certain U.N.
agencies, WHO, UNFPA and others, without
the approval of the UN assembly itself.
The True Nature and
Value of Authentic Human Rights
Human rights exist only because human life ex-
ists. If there were no human life, there would
not be any human rights to champion, protect
or even speak or think of. In short, it is
the reality of human life that makes all other
rights exist.
Therefore, if all human rights were to be gath-
ered and arranged in their natural order of im-
portance and value, it is the Right to Life that
would reign supreme because it is the all-
encompassing right and the very source of exis-
tence of all other human rights. Compared to
the greatest of all rights – the Right to Life – all
other rights are less in importance and value.
And since what is less cannot prevail over what
is greater, especially if it is the greatest of rights,
it can never be morally right for anyone to claim
that his or her right to freedom of choice or
right to freedom from unwanted pregnancies
can prevail over the right to life of an unborn
child.
Hence, there can never be any valid moral justi-
fication for abortion rights which so many laws
the world over have enforced, only to be proven
wrong and self-destructive by the vengeance of
nature’s laws that have exacted heavy tolls and
painful lessons on governments and countries
that aggressively promote family planning
through the use of artificial contraceptives and/
or abortion. The fast dwindling and virtually
irreversible extinction of entire races of people
that showed no respect for the right to life is a
lesson from which we Filipinos must learn.
Furthermore, any so-called “rights” that deny,
weaken, defile, endanger, or violate the Right to
Life do not have any authentic moral existence,
and because non-existent and unjust per se, can
never become the basis for enacting a valid and
just law!
The Fatal Consequences
of Moral Relativism
Moral relativists who deny the objective exis-
tence, permanence and universality of the pre-
cepts of natural moral law must necessarily –

deny the existence of human rights because
such rights are rooted in and spring only
from the natural moral law;

deny the validity of all human rights aspects
found in the Bill of Rights enshrined in our
Constitution for the same reason;

deny the validity of the rules and treaties of
the Geneva Convention on the humane
treatment of prisoners of war as these pre-
suppose the existence of human rights;

deny the legitimacy of the United Nations
and the binding force of its policies and direc-
tives to its member nations because the U.N.
was founded only on the natural moral law
as its bedrock, as its history and its adoption
of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights of 1948 confirm.

deny the objective precepts of civilized moral
behavior and the obligation to avoid outright
savagery, which numerous tyrants and dicta-
tors have been guilty of, as history shows;

deny any objective moral justification for a
democratic government to exist, a dangerous
ideology that has inspired tyrants and dicta-
tors to exterminate hundreds of millions with
impunity in the history of mankind.
Clearly then, it is the natural moral law that
compels the conscience of mankind to uphold
and abide by the norms of natural justice, the
first obligation of which is to hold sacred and to
nurture and protect the Right to Life, the great-
est of all human rights.
Conscience and the Separation
of Church and State
Invoking the separation between Church and
State as a conscientious ground for passing the
RH bill into law is neither a valid nor legitimate
moral justification. The reason is that even if a
public official chooses to ignore or violate the
teachings of his religion on some public issues
such as artificial family planning methods and
the RH bill, no educated and civilized person
can exempt or liberate his conscience com-
pletely from the compelling force of the natural
moral law, the only law invoked and enforced
during the historic Nuremberg trial of Nazi war
criminals because of its binding force on the
conscience of mankind.
In short, every educated and civilized person is
bound to uphold and protect the Right to Life of
any human being by reason of the natural moral
law, even if he chooses to disobey the teachings
of his own religion in this regard. The reason is
that the natural moral law is prior to and tran-
scends all religions, including the greatest relig-
ions of the world, Christianity, Mohammedan-
ism and Judaism. It is the law that has been
written in the hearts of all men since the first
man walked the earth and it is this same law
that shows the way to peace and harmony
among men of all faiths and beliefs.
Finally, if the Catholic Faith or any other faiths
choose to adopt the natural moral law as part of
their teachings because they see in it God as its
author, this will in no way diminish the compel-
ling force of the natural moral law on con-
science. On the contrary, such religions will
even increase its binding force on their faithful.