Each New Year brings hope. As we begin another year, I do not only think of what future lies ahead. I also reminisce the past. We are celebrating 30 years of the pro-life movement in our country. It was began by Sr. Mary Pilar Verzosa of the Good Shepherd Sisters. In spite of the tremendous odds and limited resources, she persisted.

Pro-life Philippines:1975-2005 Simple Vision, Bigger Mission

30 years is a long time, especially to children. But to us who have so many dreams and plans that we still wish to accomplish, 30 years went by so fast. Many people have asked me how I started the pro-life movement in the Philippines.

Here, though, we shall concentrate particular attention on another category of attacks, affecting life in its earliest and its final stages, attacks which present new characteristics with respect to the past and which raise questions of extraordinary seriousness. It is not only that, in generalized opinion, these attacks tend no longer to be considered as “crimes”, paradoxically they assume the nature of “rights”, to the point that the State is called upon to give them legal recognition and to make them available through the free services of health-care personnel. Such attacks strike human life at the time of its greatest frailty, when it lacks any means of self-defense. Even more serious is the fact that, most often, those attacks are carried out in the very heart of, and with the complicity of the family—the family which by its nature is called to be the “sanctuary of life”.

ACTION ALERT by Agoy Descallar

As we begin the year 2005, we wonder what is in store for us Pro-lifers when Congress resumes session in a few weeks. We may feel confident that the Arroyo government continues to profess that she is Pro-life but laws are made in Congress not in Malacañang.