The New Party of Life?

‘S pare him, because he loved us!”

Television pioneer and evangelist Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen believed that those who died to abortion would greet people who had been on the front lines of the pro-life movement during their judgment, pleading with God to let them into Heaven. He was encouraging pro-lifers not to grow weary of a cause that has eternal stakes.

The Democrats had long lost voters who had that kind of commitment to the pro-life cause. President Joe Biden reminded us of his loyalty to the abortion industry in a recent press conference, during which he named abortion policy as his primary reason for considering his vice president qualified to be president. Meanwhile, with the Republican Party’s changes regarding abortion in its platform, it’s hard to believe it is in the cause for the long haul — never mind eternity. The platform no longer calls for an end to abortion, opting instead for the leave-it-to-the-states position. This platform and Donald Trump have abandoned even a nominal claim to the moral high ground. Fifty years was enough, evidently.

This doesn’t stop the platform, or the party’s presumptive nominee, from bragging about ending Roe v. Wade, a tendency that ignores people of goodwill who have questions and concerns about the post-Roe status quo and yet do not subscribe to Democratic extremism on abortion. There are people who consider themselves pro-choice who simply want to know that a woman in a difficult situation would still have options.

The vice-presidential candidate for the American Solidarity Party, Lauren Onak, is a pro-life convert who recently talked with me not just about saving babies — which the mom is committed to — but also about the help many women need with their immigration status and with housing. If you are going to have an abortion because you don’t have anywhere to live, pro-life people want to offer help. That’s the work of civil society — even if it sometimes makes use of government resources.

For the pro-life movement, ending abortion is the human-rights cause of our lifetime. Ignoring women and their children in, for example, New York and California would be unacceptable. Chris Bell runs Good Counsel maternity homes in the New York metropolitan area. New York isn’t going to curb, never mind end, abortion anytime in the foreseeable future. But it should. Girls and women deserve better than the Planned Parenthood abortion conveyor belt. Oh well, the current Republican Party seems to say, if you’re in the wrong state.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Henry Hyde, the late congressman, acknowledged in 1987 something that remains true today: “The public debate over the abortion liberty remains deeply misinformed, disinformed, and confused.” And yet he took hope in conversion stories, such as that, notably, of Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who once performed abortions and was the founding leader of the abortion-rights movement before becoming one of its most prominent opponents. Hyde wrote:

Ours is not a society impervious to the moral cause we are urging. There are ears to hear, and some of them are even hearing. It means something that our call to conscience is heard. It means that the United States has not become indifferent to human suffering. It means that enough of us care. And from that caring, we take hope. . . .

The public virtue of hospitality has been grievously violated by abortion liberty,” Hyde insisted. . . . And so we must do better, and we must do differently. We must reclaim the heritage of public hospitality. We must become again become again a people capable of welcoming new life, weak life, dependent life, into our midst — and cherishing it. We must stop destroying our children waiting to be born. But we shall only stop when wd have rediscovered that heritage of hospitality for ourselves. . . .

The issue here isn’t the preservation of the world, but the possibility of American democracy in a situation in which the unborn have been stripped of legal protection. How does this experiment go on? It cannot go on amidst this cruel inhospitality.

Onak is running alongside presidential candidate Peter Sonski. While they do not seriously expect to have to move to D.C. come January, they have the right idea in wanting to stand for this conception of hospitality and offering an opportunity for Americans who feel politically homeless to vote in keeping with their values. While they aim to be ecumenical, their platform is largely based on Catholic social teaching.

The Republican Party of 2024 does not reflect this thinking. J. D. Vance, a Catholic convert and Republican senator from Ohio, has declared his support for abortion pills, which cruelly leave women and girls alone to see the demise of their unborn children. I listened to him at an Ohio March for Life event in October 2023, talking about the vulnerability of teen girls when it comes to abortion. He seemed to be communicating to the person who happened to be walking by, hoping for a potential convert. But that was at home. And Republicans now seemingly believe they have no responsibility beyond their home states. And maybe not even entirely there — Vance, in a Meet the Press interview, cited an erroneous interpretation of a recent Supreme Court decision, saying (as Trump has) that the Court approved abortion pills. The Court did no such thing, as its decision was a mere ruling on standing.

Hyde, in 1987, was speaking long before the end of Roe, but his words are relevant to Republicans who might want to base their positions on abortion on moral reasoning rather than on what Donald Trump wants and the next election. The American Solidarity Party has a winning ticket inasmuch as it captures something of the pro-life vision — loving and welcome — that is all too often lost today. At least someone is giving it a try, and maybe even keeping that chorus of voices never to be heard here in mind.