Is the Associated Press confused now? I’m not. Neither should you be.
Earlier today this post showed up on the AP. No doubt some are confused, others awkwardly changing their underwear after yesterday’s media frenzy about the Pope changing directions.
In an address to a group of Catholic gynecologists gathered by the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, Pope Francis said in part,
The cultural disorientation has affected an ambit that seemed unassailable: yours, medicine! Although being by their nature at the service of life, the health professions are induced sometimes not to respect life itself. Instead, as the encyclical Caritas in veritate reminds us, “openness to life is at the center of true development. […] If personal and social sensibility is lost to welcoming a new life, other forms of reception useful to social life are hardened. The reception of life tempers moral energies and makes possible mutual help” (n. 28). The paradoxical situation is seen in the fact that, while new rights are attributed to the person, sometimes even presumed, life is not always protected as primary value and primordial right of every man. The ultimate end of medical action always remains the defense and promotion of life.
The full text is here.