A few hours after a vice president addressed the March for Life for the first time in history, President Trump signed an executive order on immigration which bars Syrian refugees and institutes a 90-day suspension of entry for seven countries where a majority of the population are Muslim. The executive order was immediately criticized, soberly and seriously by conservatives, and with unreserved outrage by progressives.

Many Americans responded to both the plight of the unborn and the refugee in similar fashion. Almost everyone believed, wittingly or not, that Christian teaching should determine American law and policy on both of these issues concerning the dignity of the human person, and the family. That is, both sides appealed to the justice owed to the human person, and both sides appealed to mercy, and to charity, those especially Christian ideas that resonate through the ages. That justice and mercy should kiss, the psalmist cried.