(LifeSiteNews) — While one might hasten to think that poverty means a lack of financial stability, we suggest that true poverty is the absence of selfless love for our fellow man. This recently came to our attention when we learned that the citizens of the Dominican Republic affirmed a total ban on abortion.

This news report suggested a factor that underscores a basic truth in life: faith in God helps us overcome the daily challenges that we face, including financial poverty. Monsignor Charles Pope wrote about this “paradoxical freedom of poverty and the enslavement of riches and possessions” and quoted St. John Chrysostom, who said:

Life to me means Christ, and death is gain. Exile? The earth and its fullness belong to the Lord. The confiscation of goods? We brought nothing into this world, and we shall surely take nothing from it. I have only contempt for the world’s threats, I find its blessings laughable. I have no fear of poverty, no desire for wealth.

I would like to think that the people of the Dominican Republic feel the same way, for they are people of faith; more than half of them are Catholic. Their families are very important to them, and while some might view that country as poor in worldly terms, they are rich in their love for one another.

The book of Proverbs says, “A friend is a friend at all times, it is for adversity that a brother is born.”

READ: Total abortion ban reaffirmed in Dominican Republic

In the Dominican Republic the majority of people rejected the pressure from outside sources to liberalize their abortion law. One writer told readers, “What makes the outcome extraordinary is not only the scale of the victory, but the imbalance of forces. The Dominican pro-life movement is modest in size, lean in resources, and largely ignored by mainstream media.”

And while it is not stated in the article, we have a feeling that, for these people, abortion is seen as the violent act it is, something that has no place in a civilized nation of law and order where family is first on the agenda.

The United States of America, said to be one of the wealthiest nations on earth, is today suffering from a poverty that is far worse than the lack of income experienced by the Dominican people and so many others around the world. In our nation, the poverty is of a moral nature. It is a desire to achieve material success at all costs, even when it means killing little babies and destroying families. It is the kind of poverty that slowly devours the soul and where the heart grows cold to the truth about human dignity and what it means for one’s eternal salvation.

If we cannot depend on our fellow citizens to cherish the most innocent and vulnerable among us, how can we ever hope to achieve the culture of life we work toward every day?

We applaud the people of the Dominican Republic, we respect their decision to choose life, and we remind ourselves of the words of the sainted Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “The greatest disease in the West today … is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for.”

Judie Brown is the president and cofounder of American Life League. For more than 50 years, she has fought for the protection and defense of the vulnerable. Judie is a three-time appointee to the Pontifical Academy for Life.