The only pro–life approach is a nonselective approachWorkshops at annual conference cover a wide range of respect life issues. 
JEAN GONZALEZ | FC Posted: 10.20.09 LAKE MARY | Workshops of the Florida Respect Life Conference challenged participants not to be selective in their pro-life stance and to consider every aspect of the respect life spectrum. Father Gabriel Ipasu, who is from the Democratic of the Congo in Central Africa, serves as parochial vicar of Resurrection Parish in Lakeland and is founder and president of Mercy For Children Inc., which aids the dire needs of orphaned, abandoned and neglected children of his native country. His experiences included fleeing for his life, and ministering to refugees –rescuing orphans, finding refugees refuge, and burying them and their loved ones. The people of Africa have a human face to the Congo native. As part of his presentation, Father Ipasu highlighted different African countries that have either suffered or still suffer from war, civil unrest, dire financial problems, devastation and genocide. His background includes the following countries: • Sierra Leone and Angola, where lives are sacrificed for the diamond mining; • Nigeria, Africa’s most populated and diverse country, but also most polluted from the oil industry, where lives are destroyed everyday with repeated civil wars that have occurred since 1960s; • Sudan, the most famous scene of genocide of Darfur where 350,000 to 400,000 have been killed; • Rwanda, an area still boiling with civil unrest and bloodshed, where some 800,000 or more have been killed and Burundi, where there is a similar situation, but on a smaller scale; • Congo, the third-largest country and one of the most unstable countries in the world. The escalation of the genocide in Rwanda led both refugees and those who sought to murder them to cross Congo’s borders. As a result, some 4 million people have died in the Congo because of the civil war (more deadly than World War II) and it has left some 13 million orphans. “You would not believe what we do not know in the United States,” said Father Ipasu, who gave the example that when roads are nonexistent, government officials buy four-wheel drive vehicles or small planes instead of fixing roads. “Anybody who tries to address the issue of fixing roads, is an enemy. Most of the planes and pilots come from the West. You have an extremely organized exploitation of Africa by the West.” While there are many stories from Africa that can enlighten Americans about situations there, so much of the continent’s hardships do not focus on the human element. “Decades of conflict, death and tragedy – coverage of issues in Africa have often been ignored. Either over simplified or excessively focused on limited aspects,” Father Ipasu said. “The media brings images of naked and starving, can you see the dignity of human life in such a message? You cannot. A deeper authentic analysis needs to be done where the human person is the center.” Father Ipasu said he is an advocate of a “global, comprehensive, non-selective respect life approach. To say you are pro-life, you must be so across the board. “If you stand against abortion, but don’t care about the migrants, whether legal or illegal, or you don’t care about the death penalty, guess what? You are pro-choice,” he said. “A selective approach is no better than those we call pro-choice.” Dr. John Bruchalski, founder of the Tepeyac Family Center in Fairfax, Va., spoke on health care and said there is a crisis in medicine in which health care professionals have not challenged each other enough. Instead of drawing a line in the sand between social justice point of view and health care from a respect life point of view, Catholics should encourage others to understand that respect life and social justice go hand-and-hand in the health care debate. “It’s both, not either or,” said Bruchalski, who founded his clinic in 1994 out of his basement in order to provide affordable health care to woman, in particular those with crisis pregnancies. “This is the time of the Holy Spirit.” Bruchalski did not always have a Catholic view of health care. He used to perform first-trimester abortions. He believed in the philosophy, “My body, my decision.” But then he had he said, “the plank” was pulled out of his eye. He believes Catholic professionals can band together and educate both the left and the right about how social justice and health care that respects life complement each other. “We have all swallowed the Kool-Aid, but it is time for that change,” he said. “We need a reawakening.”
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