Around this time last year, published an essay offering a mild criticism of Lila Rose for appearing to undermine the Church’s traditional teaching on the proper relationship between Church and state. This wasn’t really her fault—nor is it the fault of so many Catholics today who remain largely unaware of what the state is actually required to acknowledge regarding the Church and the world’s true Lord, Jesus Christ.
Recently, I had another occasion to reflect on this after watching her latest debate with the streamer and podcaster known as Destiny. As expected, the two traded the usual arguments on the pro-life issue. And, also as expected, Destiny did what most pro-choice advocates do in these settings: he reduced Lila’s pro-life position to a purely “religious” argument.
This is a classic tactic. Pro -choice advocates (and their secular allies more broadly) love to insist that religion is the one kind of worldview uniquely disqualified from shaping legislation or receiving any official endorsement by the state.
Pro-lifers like myself have been trained to counter this tactic. Over the last several decades, leaders in the pro-life community have taught us to escape the “religious” box as quickly as possible. It is never put quite like that, of course. Instead, we are told to make natural-law arguments because these supposedly appeal to the public square more broadly. Religion, which is no longer shared, cannot be appealed to. And so we go on, year after year, offering natural-law apologetics with God entirely left to one side.
That was my own practice. When I began teaching over fifteen years ago, both in and outside the classroom, I would always go out of my way to make this exact point. I would tell my audience that, although the Bible supports our position, we don’t actually need the Bible—or even need to appeal to God—to make our case, because science has already shown that life begins at conception.
But about a decade ago it occurred to me that something was deeply wrong with this approach. I can illustrate the problem by briefly analyzing Lila’s argument in her debate with Destiny.
Arguing about whether life begins at conception is one kind of debate. Arguing for the legal and moral protection of that innocent life once its humanity is established is an entirely different debate. Lila and Destiny were not really debating when life begins; they were debating whether, if it does begin at conception, that life should be protected by law and why.
So Lila’s task was not finished once she proved—through science and reason—that life begins at conception. Her real work began when she had to argue that all innocent human life deserves protection. How did she do that?
“By belonging to the human species, all humans have a right to life,” she said. That was the essence of her argument.
I am not familiar with everything Lila has written or said, so I suspect this was a deliberate tactic deployed in anticipation of exactly what Destiny would do—and did do—by painting her as a religious fundamentalist.
Anticipating that move, Lila tried to outflank both Destiny and the broader secular sensitivities of the audience by arguing: if you belong to the human species, you ought to be protected and you have a fundamental right to life.
No appeal to God. No reference to the Bible. No argument from Church authority. This is the classic pro-life approach we have been taught for decades. A few things need to be said about it.
First, it has done immense good. Over these decades it has been clear that the Catholic Church—and Christianity more broadly holds the high ground with regard to both science and natural law. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Catholic moral theology knows this. The natural-law arguments leading up to and following Roe v. Wade were so tight and well-articulated that any Catholic paying attention should rejoice over those who wielded the weapon of reason in defense of the unborn and the Church’s teaching on life. Nothing that follows in this article should be read as detracting from the glory or effectiveness of those arguments in saving countless lives.
Nevertheless, Lila’s core argument—“membership in the human species confers an inalienable right to life”—is not securely grounded. To say the least, it floats in mid-air, looking for something, anything, to anchor it to a solid foundation. What does it even mean to “belong to the human species”? And why would that alone be sufficient?
It is sufficient only if it is anchored to one further truth: man is made in the image and likeness of God.
The existence of God has never been merely a matter of faith or supernatural revelation (though both confirm it). The existence of God can be—and historically always was—proved by reason, just as the humanity of the child in the womb is proved by science. Therefore, to ground Lila’s “human species” premise properly, far from keeping God out of it, the only way to succeed in such a debate is to assume, and if necessary demonstrate, that God’s existence is certain.
Here is what I wrote to Lila in the comments of one of her X posts about the debate:
“@LilaGraceRose did great here! She is such a strong voice for the unborn and deserves honor for her hard work. I’d like to share some thoughts below about this debate as characteristic of the pro-life movement in general and suggest a possible pivot in a more helpful direction. It will not take away from anything good that has been done so far, but rather builds on and strengthens it. Before I share these thoughts, remember that while Lila’s critics find it easy to sit back and point out disagreements, it takes real virtue to do what she does defending the unborn in public with so many lives hanging in the balance. I share the Church’s gratitude for her devotion.”
She graciously reposted my comment in agreement, saying she totally agrees, and referenced the Declaration of Independence.
I do not know whether she plans to switch strategies in the future, nor do I know if she has appealed to the imago Dei in previous debates. But I would like to take this opportunity to push the envelope a bit further.
Now that we are on the same page, let me say this clearly: we have so far accepted and even advanced the traditional pro-life strategy of using natural law. We have only insisted that God’s existence is, in fact, part of the natural law, and that this piece is entirely necessary in order to ground the pro-life argument properly.
But now I want to show all my cards. Where did we ever get the idea that only natural-law arguments (minus God) are allowed to shape the governments and laws of a nation? Why was this never the position of previous generations of Catholics? Why was the natural law always assumed within—and identified as part of—a larger Christocentric vision and revelation?
Early-20th-century theologians traced this new phenomenon (now largely taken for granted as the only legitimate strategy) back to the rise of secularism. As European nations sought to throw off the Church, they needed justifications beyond mere force. Because the masses were still largely Catholic or at least Christian, the new reason offered was: “Let us legislate only what all reasonable people can agree on by reason alone; revelation, by definition, cannot be known by reason.” Thus favoring one religion or revelation would necessarily divide the nation—especially given growing Protestant–Catholic tensions.
Those Catholic theologians highlighted how neo-scholastic thinkers, in an attempt to preserve unity and relevance, began emphasizing how Catholic moral teaching aligned with natural law, thereby bracketing revelation out of public-square arguments altogether. That is, broadly, how we arrived at today’s pro-life apologetic strategy.
Yet the situation today makes far more sense than it did then, and Catholics today are perhaps less culpable than those who bequeathed us the current approach. We are closer to the earliest centuries of the Church than to the Christendom that was taking its last stand. The weapon of “natural law alone” ended up being the blade that brought Christendom to its knees. Now any reference to Christ, the Church’s authority, or the Bible is deemed illegitimate in public.
There is much more I could say about revelation and history, but I want to go straight to the heart of the matter.
Three days after Jesus of Nazareth was executed by the Roman Empire in the first century AD, the manuscript evidence written by His followers—which we still possess—reports that He claimed to have all authority in heaven and on earth. What did Jesus expect us to do with such a claim? Was He serious? And if He was, does that truth affect the way we live and argue? What are we honestly supposed to do with that fact? And finally, for our purposes, does it have anything to do with the arguments we make when defending the unborn?
I believe it has everything to do with it. My fuller argument (which I cannot develop fully here) is that the reasons for the truth of Catholicism—and of divine revelation more broadly are public reasons accessible to all and ought to be put forward as the fullness of God’s plan for our nation and world.
In closing, Christ and the apostles believed that the public resurrection of Jesus gave sufficient grounds for Rome and Jerusalem to recognize the authority Christ claimed, and that the primary argument centered on God’s faithfulness to His covenant promises to Abraham. Whether one can argue from history in that way remains an open question requiring discussion.
I encourage readers to think more deeply about the historical dimension of the “motives of credibility” the Church offers in the Catechism and Vatican I: the miracles of Christ and the saints, the fulfilled prophecies, and the Church herself as a lasting institution despite the sins of her members. These are not syllogisms in a logic class; they are God revealing Himself in space and time—through miracles, prophecy, and the visible Church we can still see today.
For those of us who call ourselves Catholics—that is, who actually believe—it is inconceivable that the same evidential, historical facts that motivate our faith could then be severed from everything else we say and do in the public square. There are no good reasons to keep Christ and the Church out of the pro-life argument. Indeed, once we acknowledge that the pro-life case ultimately requires God’s existence (as part of the natural-law project itself), we must also recognize that the “image of God” in which we are created has now been fully revealed as the face of Jesus of Nazareth.
Therefore, to advance a true pro-life cause is, at its root, to advance the social rights of Christ as King.
