You Can't Be Pro-Life and Anti-Healthcare

Here's something that'll make you uncomfortable: If you oppose abortion but don't support universal healthcare access and food assistance programs like SNAP, you're not pro-life. You're pro-birth. And there's a massive difference.

The American "pro-life" movement has been hijacked by partisan politics to mean one thing and one thing only: opposing abortion. But the Catholic tradition—the actually weird, radically consistent tradition—insists on something far more demanding: a seamless garment of life from conception to natural death. And that includes making sure people can eat and see a doctor.

The Consistent Life Ethic Isn't a Political Buffet

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin introduced the "consistent ethic of life" in 1983, and it made both political parties squirm. Why? Because it refuses to let you cherry-pick which lives matter based on your voter registration card.

You can't oppose abortion on the grounds that every human life has inherent dignity—and then turn around and say a single mother doesn't deserve help feeding her kids. You can't claim to defend the vulnerable in the womb while supporting policies that deny healthcare to the vulnerable after birth. That's not pro-life. That's just pro-birth with a conscience that conveniently shuts off after delivery.

SNAP and Healthcare Are Pro-Life Issues

Let's get specific. SNAP—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—feeds 42 million Americans, including 17 million children. These aren't abstract policy statistics. These are human beings made in the image of God who need to eat.

If you're pro-life, you should support SNAP. Full stop. Because children starving after they're born is just as much a life issue as children being protected before they're born. The catechism doesn't say "protect life in the womb, then you're off the hook." It says care for the vulnerable, period.

The same logic applies to healthcare. The United States is the only developed nation where people go bankrupt from medical bills, where diabetics ration insulin, where treatable conditions become death sentences because someone couldn't afford a doctor. If you believe life is sacred, you cannot shrug at a system that treats healthcare as a luxury good instead of a basic human right.

"Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me." — Matthew 25:40

Notice Jesus didn't add an asterisk: "*Except if helping them requires taxes or government programs."

Why This Makes Both Parties Uncomfortable

A truly consistent life ethic doesn't fit neatly into American political tribes, and that's precisely why it's authentically Catholic. It's weird.

• It makes conservatives uncomfortable because it demands economic solidarity with the poor, robust social safety nets, and healthcare as a right—not charity.
• It makes liberals uncomfortable because it refuses to compromise on the dignity of life in the womb, opposing abortion as incompatible with human rights.
• It makes libertarians uncomfortable because it insists the common good sometimes requires collective action through institutions, including (gasp) government.

If your life ethic perfectly aligns with your political party's platform, you've probably domesticated your faith. The Gospel is supposed to afflict the comfortable, not confirm your priors.

The Scandal of Particularity

Here's where it gets even weirder: Catholic social teaching doesn't just say "be nice to poor people." It demands structural change. It's not enough to volunteer at a soup kitchen (though that's good). The Church calls for economic systems that don't create mass poverty in the first place.

Pope Francis put it bluntly in Evangelii Gaudium: "Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills."

An economy that excludes people from healthcare kills. An economy that lets children go hungry kills. If you're pro-life, you can't ignore that.

The Inconvenient Truth

Being truly pro-life is expensive. It's politically inconvenient. It can't be reduced to a bumper sticker or a single-issue voting guide. It demands:

• Supporting pregnant women with healthcare, childcare, paid leave, and housing assistance
• Ensuring every child has access to nutritious food through programs like SNAP and WIC
• Guaranteeing healthcare as a human right, not a luxury
• Opposing the death penalty
• Welcoming refugees and immigrants
• Addressing systemic racism and poverty
• Caring for the elderly and disabled
• Opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide
• Protecting workers' rights and dignity

And yes, opposing abortion. Because all of these are life issues. They're all part of the seamless garment.

So What Now?

If you call yourself pro-life, ask yourself: Do I support policies that actually help people live? Or do I just oppose policies that end life in the womb while remaining indifferent to suffering after birth?

A consistent life ethic is uncomfortable because it refuses the easy partisan answers. It demands we care about the immigrant mother afraid of deportation and the unborn child. The prisoner on death row and the refugee fleeing violence. The minimum-wage worker who can't afford insulin and the elderly person pressured toward euthanasia.

This is the scandal of Catholic social teaching: it takes the dignity of every human person seriously. Not selectively. Not politically. Every person. Every stage of life.

That's what makes it weird. That's what makes it true.