Gaining clarity on abortion and the death penalty

Ahead of the announcement of plans by Cardinal Blase Cupich to honor U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., with a lifetime achievement award, Pope Leo XIV answered a question about what it means to be “pro-life.” As WORLD Opinions contributor Daniel Suhr has already noted, the prize for Sen. Durbin became so controversial that Durbin declined the award. But questions and confusion about the new pope’s understanding of the pro-life cause remain.

“Someone who says, ‘I’m against abortion,’ but says, ‘I’m in favor of the death penalty,’ is not really pro-life,” said Pope Leo XIV. “Someone who says that, ‘I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhumane treatment of immigrants who are in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life.” As veteran Vatican commentator John Allen Jr. concludes, the United State represents a unique environment within which to discuss the applications of Catholic social teaching to the question of abortion. “For many Americans, what Leo said about being pro-life seemed a bold political stance,” writes Allen. “Yet for him, and for all those Catholics whose instincts and outlooks have been forged outside the United States, it was classic Catholic social teaching.”

That tracks with what the pope himself said. On the one hand, speaking about abortion, the death penalty, and immigration, Leo observes that these are all “very complex issues.” He continued, “I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them but I would ask first and foremost that there be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as human beings, in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics to say we need to you know really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward in this church.” But, concluded the pope, “Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear.” So the issues are “very complex” but church teaching is “very clear.”

One way of understanding the pope’s comments is to observe that church teaching itself is, in principle, very clear, while the prudential application and explication of this teaching require more nuance and responsiveness to concrete context and particular details. This resonates with the traditional understanding of the positive law as a determination of, and in some cases an accommodated expression of, the natural moral law.

So perhaps we have to grapple with the details and practical considerations that go into policymaking when looking at issues like abortion, immigration, and criminal justice. History matters, as do the facts of the concrete situation in which political authorities are tasked with making policy. We might assume that the pope is right about the clarity of his church’s teaching on these issues. And so we can, for the sake of argument, accept that as a starting point.

Does it then follow that abortion and the death penalty are comparable moral issues? Both involve serious moral weight and have, quite literally, grave significance. But even if the two issues in the American context in principle are of equal moral significance, surely then something like the scale of the moral evil being committed must inform our evaluation of the situation and lead us to emphasize one or another with our limited resources of time and attention.

If we are to take into account the complexity and nuance of the real world, then the moral equivalence of abortion and the death penalty simply evaporates. How many people were executed in the United States last year by political authorities? The answer is 25. How many people were aborted in the United States last year? The answer is an estimated 1.14 million.

With this context in place, it does seem like equating both the clarity and the significance of abortion and the death penalty confuses and conflates important moral considerations. And that’s without even entering into a debate about the status of the church’s teachings concerning the death penalty, which have a more recent provenance, and in some cases seem to be grounded more in philosophical commitments than scriptural exegesis or theological analysis.

There is undoubtedly a certain logic to what has been called the “seamless garment” pro-life teaching defended by many faithful Catholics, also called the “consistent life ethic.” Such teaching understands that the human person has inherent dignity, from birth to death and from the womb to the tomb. With that dignity come inalienable and absolute rights, which must be respected. This applies to the embryo as well as to the inmate. It also applies to the elderly and the disabled as well as to the young and to the healthy.

It is of course also reasonable to say that human lives are incommensurable. Each person is a unique and irreplaceable gift. In that sense the scale of the injustice done shouldn’t really matter for our moral evaluation. But in another sense, the details about the frequency and scale of an injustice really should be determinative for where we place our emphasis and where our moral concern ought to be focused. And in that important sense, despite the pope’s comments, there really is no comparison between abortion and the death penalty.