WASHINGTON — The March for Life is technically a secular event. But everywhere you look, religion is there.
Christian singer Jordan St. Cyr headlined the pre-march concert and invoked God in his music and between his songs. The Knights of Columbus printed and distributed their ubiquitous “DEFEND LIFE” signs. Most of the groups at the march, it seemed, were Catholic parishes, Catholic colleges, or Catholic high schools.
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The religious elements of the March for Life feed one particularly inapt criticism of the pro-life movement. Abortion defenders’ most common accusations against abortion opponents include the charge of “theocracy.” Pro-lifers are trying to “force their religious views” on others, which violates the “separation of church and state.”
Laws that limit abortion, the abortion-defending Left argues, are improperly imposing religion where it doesn’t belong — in public policy.
These arguments have always been tendentious and nonsensical. But these days, as a different sort of religious fervor overtakes the Left, the lectures about stripping faith from the public square are even more laughable.
First, it is false to chalk up the pro-life view on abortion as a religious view per se. The Fifth Commandment, that “thou shalt not kill,” is part of religion, right there in the Bible. Yet somehow, murder statutes do not amount to “theocracy,” and that’s not even a complicated question. So, why is this?
“The pro-life argument is a human rights argument,” said Father Emmanuel Mansford, a Franciscan priest from New York. “It’s philosophical. It’s based on the fact that a person is a person from the moment of conception. So, I don’t think we need to make it necessarily about God or not about God.”
Others at the march made the same argument.
“I’m Catholic,” said Emily Sullivan, attending the march in a wool hat of her alma mater, Thomas Aquinas College, “but I’m not pro-life because I’m Catholic. I’m pro-life because of science and because of basic ethics. All of us, whether you’re religious or not, seem to agree that you shouldn’t murder. I can make the pro-life argument purely based on philosophy. You don’t have to believe in the authority of the Pope or the Bible or pray a rosary to see that.”
But even that argument is unnecessary because the premise that faith plays or should play no role in public policy is incoherent.
“Religion needs to flow through everything you do — your work life, your play life, everything,” said Bruce, a middle-aged Tennessean who had come to DC for the march.
“Amen to that,” chimed in Dave, his friend, who wore a red hat emblazoned with “Make America Holy Again.” “It’s your moral compass. It’s the way you live. It’s who you are.”
“If your faith is genuine, it affects every part of your life,” said Mansford. “It’s not compartmentalized” into politics and personal.
This is an unpopular way to speak, but it is obviously true, even to the self-styled seculars. One’s religion, and one could put under that umbrella any basic belief system that doesn’t involve a god, helps inform one’s ideas of justice and duty, which in turn form one’s policy preferences and politics.
When President Barack Obama spoke of expanding the federal safety net, he regularly invoked Scripture, citing “Jesus’ teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” This is common on the Left. And frankly, it’s good.
There’s a broader point here, though: Politics’ brief experiment with secularism has ended.
The Left in America dressed up as secular for the 1990s and during the Bush era. But by 2022, it’s impossible to ignore the religious zeal that runs through the Left. I covered the Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd’s death, and they had all the elements of religious prayer services. The environmental movement has become a religious cause. Even the fight against COVID-19 has become a matter of faith and ritual.
All of the Left’s politics are infused with religious fervor and belief these days, oriented toward their idea of the sacred. It never made sense to dismiss the argument against legal abortion as a mere “religious belief.” It’s laughable now.
