Seamless Garment or Straitjacket?

This has been a particularly poor century for being human. Already more than 100 million men, women, and children have suffered violent death as a result of war, genocide, forced collectivization, inhuman prison conditions, and state-induced famine. Millions more have died as a result of “private” actions—decisions to abort unborn children, to withhold treatment from handicapped newborns, to hasten the death of elderly parents.

Traditional restraints on inhumanity seem to be crumbling—in the courts, the laboratory, the operating room, the legislature. The very idea of an essential dignity to human life seems but a quaint anachronism, no match for ideology or convenience or progress.

But when it comes to human life, Christians can’t concede any ground. We are called to take up the cause of the weak, the helpless, the defenseless. It is our duty; that which, in large part, defines us as citizens of the kingdom of God. Christians, in short, must be unequivocally, resolutely, and unapologetically prolife.

Few Christians would have trouble accepting that label. But the real issue is more problematic; how one defines the term makes all the difference in one’s focus and agenda. If, for example, “prolife” means respect for both life and the natural process that creates it, one would naturally oppose contraception. If one defines it to include some minimum level of income, one would be led to support welfare programs for the poor.

What concerns me is that one popular definition of “prolife,” in spite of the best intentions of those who espouse it, is fundamentally flawed, even dangerous.

In a February speech, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago attacked those who call themselves prolife because of their stand against abortion, but who don’t support what he calls a “consistent ethic of life.” “We must refute decisively,” he argued, “claims that we are a ‘one issue’ constituency.”

What are the neglected prolife issues according to Bernardin? Racial tension, homelessness, Reagan administration economic policies, and, above all, nuclear deterrence. “We are committed to reversing the arms race and reversing Roe v. Wade.” he concluded.

Bernardin has labeled his argument “the seamless garment”—the idea that to be consistently prolife one must oppose both abortion and nuclear deterrence, euthanasia, and the economic exploitation inherent to industrial capitalism—anything, in short, that its proponents believe threatens human life and dignity.

A growing number of evangelicals, particularly on the “evangelical Left,” echo this approach. After all, on the surface it seems plausible enough, offering a comprehensive alternative to a culture whose respect for life has become alarmingly selective. And it successfully avoids the charge of hypocritical attention to one life issue at the expense of others.

But herein lies the danger: this sweeping definition of the seamless garment leads some, logically indeed, to conclude that deterrence is immoral, and a few even to argue for unilateral nuclear disarmament. Even those who don’t go that far convey the impression, by picking up the rhetoric, that no Christian could support deterrence.

I have always taken the term “prolife” to mean that all human life, unborn or elderly, mentally or physically handicapped, should be given the same high value. But the effect of radical applications of the seamless garment is to push this definition much further. In spite of a range of nuance and sophistication among its advocates, some transform respect for life into veneration of life. Biological life becomes the principal, overriding human value. Anything that threatens it must be resisted. Thus, we have the opposition to taking life in the abortuary or on the battlefield.

The question then naturally arises: What price are we prepared to pay to preserve biological life? If we are willing to protect life at any cost, then the price we pay will be high. If the preservation of life is worth any sacrifice, any concession, any compromise, then the result, in a hostile world, can only be slavery.

Some things, such as justice and freedom, must be more important than life if life is to be worth anything at all. If we lack the moral resolve to die, and even to kill, so as to preserve these principles against those who assault them, then we will end up both betraying our principles and losing our lives.

The painful fact is that Christians are not exempt from agonizing conflicts of conscience. Taking a life or even many lives may be justified to prevent a far greater evil. It is for this very reason, I believe, that one cannot label nuclear deterrence immoral; in a world of brutal ideologies and vicious tyrannies, where justice and liberty are scarce and growing scarcer, the existence of nuclear weapons can be, as has been demonstrated for 40 years, a powerful restraint on an intolerable evil.

C. S. Lewis wrote, “… it is part of our spiritual law never to put survival first: not even the survival of our species. We must resolutely train ourselves to feel that the survival of Man on this Earth, much more of our own nation or culture or class, is not worth having unless it can be had by honorable and merciful means.”

That may sound fatalistic, but Lewis thought it was quite the opposite. “The sacrifice is not so great as it seems. Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs. Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved.”

In this light, the distinction between respect for life and veneration of life is as wide as the chasm between civilization and barbarism. Paradoxically, venerating life is life negating, not life affirming. It holds every other human value hostage, and then, one by one, executes them.

We are called to be prolife. But when we worship biological life we betray our principles and our lives. The only truly seamless garment, in the end, is a straitjacket.

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