Pro-Life or Anti-Abortion?

1. Some of us are anti-abortion, but pro-death penalty, and we are not pacifists. Calling ourselves “pro-life” allows our opponents to taunt us with what they pretend is a hypocritical inconsistency. (They had this smug retort handed to them, let’s remember, by the late and unlamented Cardinal Bernardin with his “Seamless Garment” theory.) We cannot, they say, be against abortion while supporting the execution of killers, or the waging of wars. But we can, because we see the difference between an unborn child and a serial killer. And we can, because there are distinctions between just wars and wars of aggression, and we believe some things are worse than death. So does the abortion crowd; they just pretend that there are no such distinctions.

2. “Pro-life” does not capture the evil, the unspeakable ugliness, of what we oppose. “Pro-life” became tepid and meek for me the day I read descriptions of saline abortions and of partial-birth abortions. Anyone interested can find these descriptions on the Internet. By styling ourselves “pro-life,” we throw away the opportunity to remind others of what abortion really, truly is.

3. Calling ourselves “Pro-life” allows the baby killers to choose the terms of the debate, which Mr. Galloy’s article rightly deplores. Abortionists and their supporters, remember, wrap themselves in a mantle of sanctimony, claiming that they are not “pro-abortion,” merely “pro-choice.” Some of them even claim, with a straight face, that they, too, are “pro-life,” in the sense of wanting every woman to have a meaningful, rewarding life, a life that will be lost if she has to carry a “fetus” to term.