N.Y., spoke at the Respect Life Banquet 2001 on Sunday at the
Amarillo Civic Center.
The banquet is the major fundraising effort for the Diocese of Amarillo
Respect Life Ministries, which provides services as crisis pregnancy support,
chastity education and Rachel's Vineyard, a spiritual retreat for women who have
had abortions.
Pavone asked people who were born from 1973 forward to stand up. After they
stood, he said he thought they would continue to be "effective witnesses for
life."
"Roe v. Wade is an insult directly to you - it's a personal insult," Pavone
said. "Because Roe v. Wade says of you that you were not a person when you were
in your mother's womb.
Under the law, he said, they were not recognized as individual persons when
they were in the mothers' wombs.
"So when you stand up for the unborn, you're standing up in a special way for
yourself," he said. "And you're saying, 'I'm a person today, I was a person when
I was born, and I was a person before that, as well.' You have a particular
message to give for Roe v. Wade in the pro-life movement today."
Pavone is the recipient of the 2001 Proudly Pro-Life award to be awarded by
the National Right to Life Committee in April. This award is shared by former
honorees such as Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II and former President Ronald
Reagan.
Pavone, who has preached against abortion throughout the world, said a lack
of respect of life can explain why school shootings have occurred in the country
in the last few years.
"When we have tragedies in the United States of America, where students are
shooting students all over the country, people get up and they begin to wonder
why," he said. "They begin to raise all these questions, all of these
complicated mysteries - why are our students killing one another? The answer is,
my dear friends: we have taught them to do so. Roe v. Wade has
taught them to do so. Children will not stop killing children until parents stop
killing children."
Pavone said people who believe in "pro-life" movement need to continue in
their "pro-life" work and to be more courageous about their views -- and make
them known to those who disagree.
"They will say to us, 'Look, you live your life, you let her live hers,'" he
said. "And what we stand up and say is, 'Don't tell us that that (unborn child)
is none of our business, because that child is not just her (the mother's)
child, that child is my brother, my sister. I am responsible for that life that
does not just belong to someone else.'"
