All of it.
All of it.
W hat would it take to come together for a consistent ethic of life in the United States?
As the former vice president Mike Pence announced his campaign for the Republican nomination for president, he talked about his commitment to the protection of innocent human life during a town hall on CNN. He’s the real deal when it comes to opposing abortion. He talked about adoption, which he consistently does now, just as he did when he was vice president. He even said he wouldn’t stop at paid family leave in his effort to help families flourish. Bravo.
But things changed when the topic became mass shootings. I was grateful he talked about the need to take mental-health policy seriously. But that wasn’t his first response. His initial comments were about expedited executions for mass shooters. When moderator Dana Bash pushed him on that, he insisted that executions could be a deterrent. Perhaps.
But I was in a mall one crazy night in New Jersey some years ago. Mercifully, the young man didn’t kill anyone but himself in the end. But in all the interviews with friends and family, it became clear that he was depressed. He wanted to die. He was not an outlier among such events. We have a problem, America, if so many of our young people a) want to die and b) it’s become not entirely uncommon for one of them to take a gun and take people — and sometimes precious children — with them. That our schoolchildren have to go through shooting drills should cry out to us about our national ailments.
There’s obviously a debate to be had about justice and deterrence. But one of the things that alarmed me, as a fellow pro-lifer, about Pence’s response on the issue of executions was the possibility that it undermines his credibility as he tries to win over people. This might be one of the primary things on my heart as we approach the first anniversary of the end of Roe v. Wade.
Pro-lifers believe, as Pence talks about, that human life is our treasure. Religious believers see each life as made in the image of God. I understand where Pence is going with his execution point, in the tradition of just war. But we live at a time when so many people seem to believe that their lives lack value. How can another’s life have value if you don’t even think that your own does? And isn’t it radical — in the tradition of Scripture — to believe that even the life of the murderer (or the thief being executed next to you) has value?
We hear so much about abortion in the news. And so many women have had abortions. So many men have led them to abortion. Other men wish that their partner had not gone through with one. The point is that there are a lot of people in pain. “Shout your abortion” is a thing in the culture today, but it’s not the truth for most people. Abortions happen because, as neighbors and friends and family and, yes, policy-makers, we have not done right by our fellow countrymen and women. Pro-lifers have long said that women deserve better than abortion. Their babies do, for sure. But the women do, too. The women are the ones who have to live with the decision, which all too often is not an actual choice they made but something they felt forced into by circumstances.
It often seems nearly impossible to have a conversation about abortion without everyone falling into their set positions — or without people being hurt by rhetoric that exacerbates pain. Even the fact that Pence was talking to Republican-primary voters on CNN was odd. CNN is surely not the preferred source of news for these voters. But being on CNN meant that Pence had the opportunity to talk to not only potential voters but also those who consider themselves pro-choice — but who might be open to a pro-life pitch.
This month, an unsympathetic man is set to be executed in Florida. The Florida Catholic bishops are asking Governor Ron DeSantis to keep him from state murder. Again and again, when you read the stories of people executed by the United States, you learn that they are people who had a horrible childhood. That’s far from an excuse for murder — or torture. We consistently see their stories of having committed heinous murders — as is the case with mass shootings and the terrorism they inflict on the people present and the families who lose loved ones and the witnesses who survive with memories that cannot be shaken.
The mere fact, however, that there are more than one or two or three children who are raised in the greatest nation in history — and we can still say it is the greatest, even with all our flaws — who commit such murder should be both an indictment and a cause for a cultural examination of conscience that includes but also surpasses politics.
What I’m suggesting is that, even as we’re getting into another campaign season, it doesn’t matter what you think about Mike Pence or Joe Biden or any other candidate. Consider life. I’m against abortion. I’m against the death penalty. Some of you agree with me on the former but not on the latter. It would do a world of good if we had more conversations together and worked toward some common cause. Can we insist that women actually learn what their options are when they are pregnant and not sure what to do? Can we insist that children not be left in foster care and that families not be excluded from fostering because they happen to adhere to traditional values that Barack Obama espoused a relative half second ago?
Being pro-life is not a slogan, it’s something all of us, in our hearts, are drawn to.
This summer, while we read about the indictments of our former president, and as we cough on Canadian wildfire smoke, maybe we can think through and talk over how we can leave a better legacy than anger.
Expedited executions aren’t a better answer than seeing the person in front of us and accompanying him in the crosses he must bear. And they are better than protecting the innocent before they lose their innocence and are drawn to unspeakable evil.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.