In their 2023 introductory note to Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, the US Catholic bishops taught, “The threat of abortion remains our pre-eminent priority because it directly attacks our most vulnerable and voiceless brothers and sisters and destroys more than a million lives per year in our country alone.” It is worth reflecting on what grounds this prioritization. After all, the bishops also recognize that many other issues are of vital importance: “Other grave threats to the life and dignity of the human person include euthanasia, gun violence, terrorism, the death penalty, and human trafficking. There is also the redefinition of marriage and gender, threats to religious freedom at home and abroad, lack of justice for the poor, the suffering of migrants and refugees, wars and famines around the world, racism, the need for greater access to healthcare and education, care for our common home, and more. All threaten the dignity of the human person.” So, given all these issues of great importance, why do the bishops think that abortion is the preeminent priority?
First, abortion is a foundational issue. As the bishops note in Living the Gospel of Life: A Challenge to American Catholics, “Any politics of human dignity must seriously address issues of racism, poverty, hunger, employment, education, housing, and health care. . . . If we understand the human person as the ‘temple of the Holy Spirit’—the living house of God—then these issues fall logically into place as the crossbeams and walls of that house. All direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundation.” Unless individual human beings are alive, concerns about their education, or their immigration status, or their poverty are moot. To take away a person’s life is to also make it impossible for them to exercise any of their legal or moral rights.
A person who is aborted cannot enjoy any of the goods of life.
Second, abortion harms the unborn in a maximal way. By contrast, harming someone in terms of their immigration status does not harm them maximally. A person who is unjustly deported can still enjoy other goods of life like gaining new insights, making friends, or enjoying beauty. A person who is aborted cannot enjoy any of the goods of life.
Third, abortion harms someone in a way that is irreversible. Unlike many other harms, the harm of death is not remediable. We could help a person who is unjustly deported to return. The person who was given an unjust wage could get a raise. But we cannot bring an unjustly killed person back from the dead.
Fourth, to kill an innocent person is an intrinsically evil act that is wrong in all circumstances. In Evangelium Vitae, Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “By the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, and in communion with the Bishops of the Catholic Church, I confirm that the direct and voluntary killing of an innocent human being is always gravely immoral. This doctrine, based upon that unwritten law which man, in the light of reason, finds in his own heart (cf. Rom 2:14–15), is reaffirmed by Sacred Scripture, transmitted by the Tradition of the Church and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium” (EV 57). He continued, “Direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being” (EV 62). As I argue in my book The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice, the impermissibility of abortion is not simply a matter of faith but is a truth that all people of good will can come to understand. To abort someone is always wrong in all circumstances. By contrast, deporting someone could be justified in some circumstances. So, in terms of intrinsic evil, abortion and immigration are not symmetrical issues.
Even among issues involving life and death, like assisted suicide, abortion is a preeminent priority. It involves killing a greater number of human beings than those killed through assisted suicide. For example, in Washington state in 2022, 363 people died from the legal permission of assisted suicide and 20,193 people died from legal abortion. Moreoever, the law requires that those killed by physician-assisted suicide have a terminal diagnosis of only six months or less to live. By contrast, abortion deprives someone of the future goods of a lifetime—an average of more than seventy-five years. Finally, unlike cases of assisted suicide, those killed in abortion have not given consent.
How can we compare abortion and the death penalty? In the United States in 2023, there were 24 people killed by capital punishment, but there were 1,026,700 abortions. With the death penalty, the individual has been found guilty of a capital crime by a jury of peers. With abortion, the individual has never committed a capital crime and is entirely innocent of any wrongdoing.
Finally, the bishops point out that human beings in utero are the most vulnerable and voiceless of victims. In most all other cases of injustice, the threatened human beings can speak out for themselves and have at least some power to defend themselves. Those on death row can proclaim their innocence, change defense attorneys, and appeal to the governor. In cases of unjust immigration policies, those who are threatened can call politicians, engage in rallies, and post on social media.
As the bishops point out, “As Catholics we are not single-issue voters. A candidate’s position on a single issue is not sufficient to guarantee a voter’s support. Yet if a candidate’s position on a single issue promotes an intrinsically evil act, such as legal abortion, redefining marriage in a way that denies its essential meaning, or racist behavior, a voter may legitimately disqualify a candidate from receiving support” (Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship 42).