Still today, in many rich and poor countries, children are too often exploited and their dignity wounded. Their physical, psychological, intellectual, moral, and spiritual development is being impeded.

At the end of this millennium, the oppressive situations which victimize children are numerous. Recourse to abortion constitutes a criminal attack on life itself and on the dignity of all that is human, in particular of the tiniest children, with whom Christ identified himself. Handicapped children are made social outcasts. In their youngest years, some children are at the mercy of unscrupulous employers and, placed prematurely into commercial competition, they are subjected to degrading or harmful work which removes all possibility of their following schooling indispensable to their growth. Certain children do not have a home and must live in the street, in refuges, or in detention centers. Also, drug and pornography rings, traffickers in human organs and participants in armed conflicts knowingly involve themselves in despicable exploitation of unprotected youth. 

As you are doing, it is urgent to continue to denounce these situations vigorously. In this spirit, I invite civil authorities and all institutions which have a role in the protection and education of children to oppose these forms of oppression with the utmost energy and firmness. (Evangelium vitae, 10)