In the last part of his speech to the members of the Pro-Life Movement, the Pope mentioned the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. "Human rights must be respected as an expression of justice and not simply because the legislators’ will can make them respected", warned the Pope, who then insisted on what he said in his recent speech to the UN. Hence the "praiseworthy commitment in the political arena as a help and an urge to the Institutions, so that the word ‘human dignity’ is duly acknowledged". In this sense, Benedict XVI praised the initiative of the Pro-Life Movement with the Commission for Petitions of the European Parliament, which lays down "the fundamental values of the right to life since its conception, of the family based on the marriage of man and woman, the right of every conceived human being to be born and raised in a family of parents"; all values that are "consistent" with those the Church calls "non-negotiable principles". Then, the Pope renewed, 10 years later, John Paul II’s gratitude "for the service you have rendered to the Church and society": "How many human lives you have saved from death! Go on like this, and don’t be afraid exhorted the Pontiff , that the smile of life may triumph on the lips of all children and their mothers".
