40 Days for Life: ‘changing hearts and minds’ about human dignity

On a chilly February morning with light snow falling, hundreds of parish representatives gathered in Coquitlam at Our Lady of Lourdes Church for a planning meeting over coffee and conversation. Volunteers shared their hopes and strategies for this year’s 40 Days for Life campaign, energized by a shared commitment to prayer, witness, and defending life. 

“We’re not organizing an event for one day but a movement that takes place over 40 days and involves hundreds of people,” said Father Larry Lynn, pro-life chaplain for the Archdiocese of Vancouver. “It is certainly unique in that regard.”

The meeting set the stage for what Father Lynn says has been an encouraging start to the campaign. As the largest coordinated pro-life effort in the world, 40 Days for Life unites people from all walks of life in a mission to affirm the dignity of human life and resist cultural forces threatening to dehumanize it.

“It is a stand against the killing of innocent human life in all its forms, starting with abortion and euthanasia,” said Father Lynn. “But it also includes actions that reduce the dignity of human life through torture, murder, human trafficking, slavery, and any other form of violence or neglect.”

Unfortunately, many see abortion or euthanasia as “positive, even necessary actions,” he said. “If you have a basic understanding of Catholic social justice teaching, you would be able to respond that we are the Imago Dei. We are made in the image and likeness of God, and we are all equal in dignity, no matter our circumstances.”

Over the past several decades, a “politics of progression” influenced by philosophers who deny the existence of God has taken hold, he said. “Their ideas have been infused into how society thinks and speaks about human life.” Talk about “reproductive rights” fails to acknowledge that life in the womb “is as worthy as any other.”

Statistics bear out his point. According to the World Health Organization, about 73 million abortions are performed worldwide each year. In Canada alone, there were 97,211 abortions in clinics and hospitals in 2022, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Meanwhile, euthanasia accounted for 15,343 deaths in Canada last year, representing five per cent of all deaths. Since euthanasia was legalized in Canada in 2016, there have been 60,301 deaths by assisted suicide.

That’s why prayer is at the centre of pro-life efforts, Father Lynn said. “It’s about changing hearts and minds.”

A focus of this year’s campaign is shedding light on how modern medical and technological advances, such as commercial surrogacy, fetal farming, in vitro fertilization (IVF), gamete donation, and cryopreservation (freezing embryos), increasingly commodify human life.

Those technologies not only kill but also “lead to the breaking down of the human experience into discrete parts that benefit a commercial agenda,” he said.

The result is dehumanization, “creating a moral disconnection,” he said. 

“If the embryo, the gamete, the fetus, the comatose, the disabled, the person with Down syndrome—if they are dehumanized, they become fair game to eliminate, to kill.”

A Catholic response based on the inherent value of human life is to “work with them and help them. Let us share in their suffering.”