Can Catholics Vote For Pro-Choice Politicians?

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“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.