Pope reinforces Church stance on abortion

The Vatican has released a book of speeches by Pope Benedict XVI, given when he was still a cardinal. He rejects the view that the Church and society should accept abortion as a given, suggesting that such a position would be tantamount to moral surrender:

In one section of the book, the Pope asks rhetorically why the Church should not accept that abortion is legal in many countries. "Why don't we resign ourselves to the fact that we lost that battle and dedicate our energies instead to projects where we can find greater social consensus?" he writes. Because this, he says, would be a superficial and hypocritical solution. "Recognizing the sacred nature of human life and its inviolability without any exceptions is not a small problem or something that can be considered part of the pluralism of opinions in modern society," he writes. "There is no such thing as 'small murders'. Respect for every single life is an essential condition for anything worthy of being called social life."

That pretty much sums it up.