Pro-Life Means All Life
“Pro-life” is generally understood as political shorthand for the belief that the government should impose legal restrictions on abortion. In recent years, some within the pro-life movement have successfully expanded the definition of pro-life to include opposition to embryonic stem cell research and end-of-life issues like assisted suicide and euthanasia. But for Catholics, this narrow take on the pro-life agenda overlooks a host of other moral concerns which bear – directly or indirectly – on the life and dignity of the human person. In deciding how to vote in ways that are consistent with the Church’s teaching on life, Catholics must cast a very wide net.
In its 2007 document Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship , the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops lists a host of direct threats to human life that deserve primary attention from Catholic voters. In addition to abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia, these evils include racism, torture, genocide, and the intentional targeting of noncombatants in war. Catholics, we are told, can never support or engage in these actions, no matter what the reason.
The Bishops also decry threats to life like nuclear weapons, the death penalty, poverty, and lack of health care. They remind Catholics that we must resort to war only when all other options have been exhausted (indeed, on the eve of the Iraq War, Pope John Paul II and the U.S. Catholic Bishops pleaded with U.S. leaders to seek alternate means of resolving conflict in the Middle East) and call for just immigration policy that respects the dignity of all human beings, regardless of national origin.
The late Cardinal Joseph Bernadin of Chicago often spoke of a “consistent ethic of life,” in which no one issue can serve as a substitute for the fullness of Church teaching on human life. The U.S. Catholic Bishops affirmed this notion in Faithful Citizenship, reminding Catholics that although not all issues are morally equivalent – that concerns like abortion, racism, euthanasia and torture do deserve higher priority in public life – using “these necessary moral distinctions as a way of dismissing or ignoring other serious threats to human life and dignity” distorts church teaching.
This “seamless garment” approach, as it is often known, means not only recognizing the breadth of issues that bear on human life but the essential connections among these issues. Poverty, in addition to being a pressing concern in and of itself, serves as a primary contributing factor to many other social ills. War, crime, drug abuse, immigration, terrorism, and abortion all can trace their roots to the harmful effects of poverty and wealth inequality. Catholic voters who are serious about building a culture of life should place tremendous stock in policies that seek to remedy the injustice of poverty.
It is doubtful that any political candidate will ever align perfectly with the Catholic Church’s comprehensive understanding of what it means to be pro-life. It’s because of this that each Catholic must make a determination – a judgment – about how to vote in a way that promotes and defends human life.
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You are correct that prolife means all life. HTe ideologies of both political parties falls woefully short in comparison to the whole of Catholic social justice teaching. And while all these issues are of great importance, the right to live is the abosolute and fundamental foundation of all Catholic socail justice teaching, and as such, must take precedence over other concerns.
The crux of Roe v. Wade is that it denies personhood to the unborn child. We can argue this way and that way about when "life" begins. But the truth is, regardless of faith or anything else, it is scientific fact that life begins at conception. We can have theological debates about how and when a soul enters the body, whether we have a soul at all, etc. But we know that all human beings begin as a single complete cell when egg and sperm unite to form a new and unique human DNA chain. We know that this cell is alive. It takes in nutrients and disposes of biological waste, and it immediately sets about reproducing itself in an attempt to form the human person its genetic instruction tells it to become. This is the beginning of human life. It is inarguable, biological fact.
The question that remains before us then, is when does it constitute a person that should have protection under the law? IF you broadly interpret the intentions of our nation's founding fahters when they wrote those opening words to the Declaration of Independence, it is the moment of conception. INdeed the Church's teachings on social justice and life issues hinges on this point: It is our humanity, not our utility or sentience, that should determine rights and protection under hte law. And if we do not have the right to live and breathe, universal health care is an absurdity, for it cannot be universal. The alleviation of poverty becomes moot, for those impoverished can simply be disposed of rather than fed at the crack of a gavel on a judicial bench. The ideals of personal freedom, the right to free speech and the practice of religion become an farce, for there are those who have not been allowed to choose. Life is the fundamental right from which all other freedoms and our dignity as human persons flows. If we do not take steps to universally guarantee it, then the only freedom we have is pure fantasy. Therfore, the protection of the right to life must take precedence over all other issues in Catholic social justice teaching, for without it, all else is meaningless.