Why Pro-Lifers Should Vote Blue: Postscript

Last updated on: April 30, 2020 at 12:03 am by Gabriel Blanchard

Why Pro-Lifers Should Vote Blue: Postscript 2020-04-30T00:03:53-04:00 Gabriel Blanchard

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Intro; The Misters President; The Unsafety Net; The Catch

Closing out this series, I’d feel remiss not making a few remarks about the pro-life movement, as distinct from pro-life ideas.

As I’ve said, I am thoroughly pro-life. This does not stop at birth; it applies throughout life. I can discuss exceptions like self-defense, the death penalty, or war; I’m certainly not going to give any of those things my unqualified approval (1), but they’re conversations we can have. The moral guilt of an attacker does, in my view, mean that the more innocent party (if any) in an outbreak of violence deserves first consideration—but even then, the guiltier party must still be on the list, so to speak. I have always taken C. S. Lewis’ view in The Weight of Glory as essential background for these sorts of issues: “The lesser violence done to [an attacker] is always preferable to the greater, provided that it is equally efficient in restraining him and equally good for all concerned, including B, whose claim is inferior to all the other claims involved but not non-existent.” The point is, I am not here arguing that strict pacifism obliges all people, or all pro-lifers, or even all Christians. I’m not saying that it is intrinsically hypocritical to be pro-life and yet also think that some particular war meets the criteria of just war theory, or to be pro-life and legally carry a firearm while in a dangerous city. I’m not even saying (here) that it is intrinsically hypocritical to be pro-life and a capitalist.

But all of this is just in the abstract. The pro-life movement as it actually exists in America today is in my view thoroughly corrupt, and has been corrupted by its strategic alliance with the GOP.

The average Catholic in 1960 was reliably a Democrat, not although but because they were the party of the disadvantaged, including both the poor and racial minorities. (2) And don’t get me wrong, I am not looking back on this as some sort of Eden, whether for Catholicism or for politics. But I do think that siding with the downtrodden, politically as well as spiritually, is and ought to be the natural posture of any Christian. And we have a lot of downtrodden to think about as US citizens. We’re a superpower; most countries aren’t, and we’ve devastated more than a few foreign nations with war, whether directly or by funding and directing coups that served our interests. We’re obscenely wealthy by global standards—even in the midst of a pandemic quarantine—yet many of our populace have no access to health care or even to food and housing. We’re a nation that ran on slavery for over two hundred years, and runs now on the labor of undocumented migrants, whom we use to harvest our food and then throw away as scapegoats. We’re a colonial nation: that is, we immigrated here, forced the nations we found here off their lands, killed many of them by violence and spreading disease, and continue to treat their land and resources as our property even in the face of legally ratified treaties. (“We” personally? No, except for that last part of course; but we still live with and literally on the consequences of those actions, and that fact has moral implications.)

The Republican Party profits from all this, because it’s the party of big business. A lot of our wars are fought not on any basis of justice, but to further American financial interests, specifically the interests of the rich. Keeping the social safety net thin and weak prevents it from cutting into executive salaries—because when you raise taxes to fund things like health care, you don’t do it by raising the general tax rate on the populace, you do it by taking a bigger cut from the rich (because they’re the ones who actually have the money you need). Grappling with the oppression of First Nations would require us to do things like, I don’t know, not build gigantic oil pipelines that spill hundreds of gallons of oil into their water supplies. Grappling with our culture’s history of racism might require us to ask some uncomfortable questions about how we understand police violence, or whether the law really does treat every person equally even on paper; but if you make a point of putting racial minorities on an equal footing with whites, then life gets harder for white people, just statistically, because there’s an edge we don’t have any more in the competition. And that prompts other questions, too—like whom it is we’re competing against and who makes the rules. Better to keep the populace segmented, both economically and politically, so they’re too busy fighting each other for limited resources to pause and ask themselves how limited the resources actually are, when there are people with literally billions of dollars to invest in more luxuries than they could use if they spent their whole lives on it.

And we fell for it all. We, the pro-life movement, have been seduced into supporting every war, every assault on the well-being and human dignity of the poor, every rationalization of policies and rhetoric that demonize people of color, in the remote hope of getting laws against abortion out of the deal (never mind the fact that laws by themselves aren’t the whole answer in the first place).

The pandemic has at least ripped the mask off. People have been saying bluntly that human beings should be sacrificed for the good of the economy, because hey, people depend on the economy, so really you’re saving lives in the long run. The idea of taxing the excess wealth of billionaires and redistributing it is never broached. Because the idea of simply giving people things because they need them to live, of putting human beings first and property second in every case, is flat-out unimaginable to them. Even though that is exactly what a mother’s body does for her baby.

I was disgusted with the pro-life movement (as distinct from pro-life positions) long before Cardinal Dolan and many other members of the USCCB decided to collectively fellate the President’s ego; and they’d shown already that they only seriously object to fellatio when it happens between consenting adults and isn’t paid for in political favors, so I wasn’t exactly shocked. But as dismal as the future of a consistent pro-life ethic seems to be, it needs to be said that this is not pro-life. The truth must be restated, re-shouted, while it is being ignored by its own advocates. The historical decline and corruption of the GOP has not at all changed my belief that its original purpose—abolishing slavery—was the right thing then and is still the right thing now. Not only to bear witness to good-faith pro-choicers, but simply because it’s true, good-faith pro-lifers need to assert and reassert a consistent ethic of life: woven without seam from the top throughout.

(1) I do disapprove of the death penalty, and did even before Pope Francis revised the Catechism, though that act certainly gave me another reason to—since it’s an obvious exercise of his pontifical ministry which Catholics are bound in conscience to accept. That’s what the chief pastor of the Church revising an official statement of her teaching is. I can see how some Catholics have difficulty with this, since the Catholic Church and specifically the Papal States approved of and (in the latter) employed capital punishment. However, the Church’s teaching as expressed by St John Paul II said that the death penalty was licit if nothing else would suffice to protect the community (a specific application of the general self-defense principle of proportionate force). Pope Francis’ choice to call the death penalty “inadmissible,” as opposed to “intrinsically evil” for example, seems to me to imply not that the Church has always taught that it was wrong (which is false), but that the conditions which could make capital punishment licit don’t exist in the modern world. Given both modern rehabilitative techniques and modern prisons and surveillance technologies, that’s obviously tenable. Catholic authorities (clerical or lay) who do or should recognize this, but persist in defying the Holy See’s moral guidance, are acting in bad faith and should not be listened to.

(2) The fact that the Republican Party was originally founded to abolish slavery, and that the Democrats protected it, is no more pertinent to modern political discourse than the question of which party supported bimetallism versus the gold standard.

Previous Post

April 22, 2020

Why Pro-Lifers Should Vote Blue: The Catch

Next Post

May 6, 2020 SEX!

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abuse antifascism art bad Catholic celibacy chastity Church crucifixion culture war eros forgiveness gay gender homophobia ikons language liturgy peace poems politics Pope Francis prayer pro-life race recommendations reform repentance review sacraments saints satire scandal schism scripture sex suffering theology Uncategorized violence

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

I include truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, and the Spirit. What am I?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Spiritual weapons The shield of faith The armor of God The breastplate of righteousness