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Parliamentary Front for Life Organizes International Pro-Life Meeting in Brazil

Rep. Chris Smith to speak about women's rights, abortion, and sex trafficking

By Matthew Cullinan Hoffman

BRASILIA, BRAZIL, February 20, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Brazil's Parliamentary Front for Life is holding an international conference in the nation's capital, Brasilia, today, which will include United States Representative Christopher Smith, co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus.

The meeting will bring together legislators and executives from national, state, and local levels of government, both from Brazil and foreign countries, to map out a strategy for defending human life throughout the country. The organization will also approve a political manifesto to deliver to the Brazilian President Luiz Lula, as well as the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies (Brazil's lower legislative body).

In addition to Rep. Smith, participants will include Senator Liliana Negre, president of the World Parliamentary Front for Life, and Jorge Tadeu Mudalen, president of the Social Security and Family Commission of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies.

Although Smith is in Brazil primarily to address the problem of sex trafficking, he agreed to speak as an advisor of the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues while in the country.

"Chris' basic speech is 'Human Rights and the 21st Century' and he speaks about how abortion is the ultimate human rights abuse of our time. He will portray abortion as the exploitation of women and parallel that to the exploitation of women who would be in sex trafficking," Marie Smith, President of PNCI, told LifeSiteNews.

Marie Smith emphasized the integral relationship between such issues as the right to life and the exploitation of women involved in prostitution, observing that women who become pregnant during their work as prostitutes often find that their child gives them the strength to overcome the problems they face in reforming their lives.

"If a woman is pregnant as a result of the sex trafficking work, the experience has been that that child actually gives her renewed life," said Smith. "Radical abortionists would say, 'Oh, she doesn't want to be bothered by it.' But it gives value to her life, now she must protect someone else. Where she's lost self-respect, it's now a new lease on life, because she has a new young person to care for."

Smith told LifeSiteNews that she thinks women's issues such as sex trafficking are often neglected by pro-lifers, to the detriment of the movement.

"One of my concerns is that sometimes pro-lifers are hesitant and very skeptical of other issues, such as the sex trafficking work or domestic violence, and if we don't engage in those issues we're just letting the other side take over the entire issue. So abortion becomes a component of the treatment of domestic violence. We need to be engaged in these issues and bring with it the pro-life perspective and that respect and dignity for women and for their children," she said. 

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