The twentieth century has certainly witnessed unparalleled genocide. Two world wars – the first causing the loss of some 20,000,000 lives; the second, anywhere between 50 and 60,000,000 lives. Dozens of lesser wars since 1946 have added at least 5,000,000 more to the total and genocide in Germany and USSR (the Jews, the Poles and the Ukrainians) at least 10,000,000 more.

Topping all of this has been the war against the unborn. This has claimed 60,000,000 victims each year for the last 25 years. This horrifying number is equivalent to one world war every year since 1968 – all through the appalling torture of abortion.

And now, at the UN International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo this September, one hundred and eighty-three governments will decide whether it is in mankind’s best interest to give this yearly carnage a much wider scope, and a much greater permanency. By legitimizing abortion and imposing it upon al countries of the world, the UN is attempting to make genocide an all-present feature of our culture.

In response to this, Pope John Paul II has stated, “it is not lawful for you…” to kill (Mt. 14:4). “I found it [the draft paper for the Final Document of the forth-coming Cairo Conference] a disturbing surprise. The innovations which it contains… (give) reason to fear that it could cause a moral decline resulting in a serious setback for humanity, one in which man himself would be the first victim”

A few months ago, the Pope said, “I am returning to the Vatican to combat the UN project which wants to destroy families. I am telling them simply, no, reconsider it, convert! If you are the UN you cannot destroy the family.”

This is indeed what is at stake in Cairo: an inexorable opposition between two ideals of life. One – hedonistic – pushes contraception, abortion, sterilization and even homosexuality (because of its intrinsic infertility) to become integral parts of out lives. The other – centered upon the loving God of the Gospel. – remains committed to the Christian values of the dignity of the human person. It asserts the sacred character of human life from conception to natural death, and the primacy of Man’s natural rights over any other consideration – constitutional, political, social, environmental or economic.

How did we get to such narrow straits in the United Nations? How is that we can now without apparently as much as a ripple, envisage such mass murder? This is genocide and we are preparing to discuss such a monstrous idea in the quiet elegance of a diplomatic conference in Cairo.

Is a society which kills 60,000,000 unborn lives in the world every year for the last 25 years, and which is about to put to death its old people and disabled through euthanasia any better than Nazi Germany – which we are so proud to have overcome 50 years ago last month?

If we, the electorate, do not intervene in the debate in Cairo, through our elected MPs, our democracy will collapse, as did Nazism, Fascism and Communism.

We must not give in to this culture of death.