On Sept. 20, Pope Francis met with members of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations and encouraged obstetricians to defend life, as Catholic News Agency reported.
"Life is always sacred and always of quality. And not as a matter of faith, but of reason and science," the Pope said.
"Each one of us is invited to recognize in the fragile human being the face of the Lord, who, in his human flesh, experienced the indifference and loneliness to which we often condemn the poorest, either in the developing nations or in the developed societies," he also said. "Each child that is unborn, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who, even before he was born, and then as soon as he was born, experienced the rejection of the world."
He added: "And each old person, even if infirm or at the end of his days, bears the face of Christ. They cannot be discarded, as the ‘culture of waste’ proposes. They cannot be discarded."