Friday, October 10, 2025
The recent remarks on what pro-life actually is by Pope Leo XIV resulted in a fiery debate among Catholics in the US. The debate there mainly focused on Trump’s policies on migration and the death penalty. Neither of these are very relevant for Europe. These remarks raise the broader question ‘what is pro-life’? This question is relevant for Christians in Europe who are engaged in social and political life. For many it’s very straightforward. ‘Pro-life’ means that you are against abortion and furthermore you are pro-family and culturally/politically centre-right or conservative. In a way that is correct and at the same time it leaves the whole issue very vulnerable for further questioning. Especially when it comes to the question ‘what does this mean in practice?’. Let me put this differently. At 30 October 2019, the director of the Missouri state health department admitted to keeping a spreadsheet that monitored the menstrual periods of Planned Parenthood patients at an administrative hearing over whether the clinic could remain open. So he tried to ensure that he implemented a ban on abortion. One could say that he enacted pro-life policy. However one could also say is that he enacted a massive breach of privacy that were similar invasive as tracking policies by the communist regime of China. This question on ‘monitoring pregnancies’ to prevent abortions returned in the debate on the overturning of ‘roe vs wade’ in the US. However if ‘pro-life’ means that we implement policies that look a lot like those of China, something went off the rails. Is ‘pro-life’ then the same as a massive breach of privacy? I think that most pro-life advocates would (rightfully) deny that. So apparently ‘pro-life’ is not a value in isolation. Because the rejection of such breaches of privacy mean that there are other values that we also take into account. This raises the question ‘how do we measure values?’. Because clearly in this case we consider such a breach of privacy a too high a price to prevent abortion. So we weigh the principles against something else and it is necessary to define that ‘something else’. To answer this question, Sallux published a publication ‘Human Dignity and the European abortion debate’. In this publication three European Parliament debates are analysed in order to get an in-depth picture of the type of arguments used in these debates. Both sides typically repeat the well-known arguments and there is little to no reflection over the foundation of these arguments. Because if we try to answer the question ‘how do we measure values?’ we also ask ‘what is the foundation of these values?’. This is why this publication goes further to analyse and explain the concept of human dignity. Because ultimately this is the value from which all other values are derived from. The problem with the debate in the US and in the European Parliament is that it simply clashes different topics against one another without asking these fundamental questions. Because the reason that we reject a massive breach of privacy in order to prevent abortions is that we understand that this massive breach of privacy violates human dignity. So ultimately we measure policies with the notion of human dignity. If a policy means in practice a clear violation of human dignity, we reject that policy even if we still adhere to the initial value that led to that policy. We understand that it would be inherent contradictive if ‘pro-life’ would mean a clear violation of human dignity. The question ‘what is pro-life’ can therefore only be answered positively if we say ‘it means that human dignity is protected and respected’. The good news is that this is also in article one of the EU charter of fundamental rights. ‘Pro-life’ therefore opens up a vision that is indeed much broader than being against abortion. It also opens up a positive challenge: ‘how can we be truly pro-life in our engagement so that we implement human dignity’? This is the challenge that we are happy to be engaged in as we do our work in society and politics. As Sallux that means that we keep contributing to all kinds of complex debates with that goal in mind.