By Alden Abbott
The Catholic bishops of Arlington and Richmond, Michael Burbidge and Barry Knestout, urged Virginians to reject next month’s Question 1 on the ballot, a proposed constitutional amendment that would expand legal access to abortion. The bishops warned that the measure would establish a supposed fundamental right to abortion “up to the very moment of birth and for every person,” including minors; would endanger the health and safety of women; would exclude parents from decisions affecting their minor daughters; and would shield from legal consequences those who assist in abortions. Their conclusion was blunt: the proposal is “extreme, dangerous, radical, and horrific.”
That statement is a much-needed reminder that the culture of death is not an abstraction. It appears whenever the law treats the deliberate destruction of an innocent human life as a right, a service, or a form of compassion. It appears in the normalization of abortion and in the growing acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide. It also appears when disability, dependence, age, and illness are presented as reasons why a human life has become less worthy of protection. The bishops’ intervention therefore raises a question that extends far beyond Virginia: has the time come for the Vatican to renew the Church’s public proclamation of the culture of life?
St. John Paul II answered that question in 1995 with extraordinary clarity in Evangelium vitae. Human life, he taught, is a gift from God and possesses a sacred and inviolable dignity from conception until natural death. The Gospel of Life is not a limited political program. It is part of the Gospel itself, because every person is made in the image of God and called to communion with Him. Abortion and euthanasia are not merely unfortunate social choices or issues on which the Church happens to have a particular preference. They are grave violations of the moral law, because they directly attack innocent life. No government can transform such an attack into a genuine human right.
Evangelium vitae further insisted that defending life requires more than condemning specific acts. A culture of life must protect mothers, children, persons with disabilities, the elderly, and the dying; support families facing hardship; provide genuine care instead of abandonment; and resist the temptation to measure human worth by productivity, independence, or health. Public authority has the duty to defend the common good, and the right to life is the foundation on which all other rights rest. Thus, the encyclical united moral truth with mercy, and legal protection with a civilization of solidarity.
Nearly three decades later, the need for that teaching has become more urgent. In many jurisdictions, abortion has moved from being tolerated in limited circumstances to being described as a fundamental constitutional right. Chemical abortion and abortion tourism have made it easier to conceal the destruction of unborn life. At the other end of life, euthanasia and assisted suicide have shifted from exceptional proposals to accepted features of public policy. (Five percent of Canadians now die by MAID—“Medical Assistance in Dying”—a figure that will only grow.) In some places, families are increasingly asked to consider death as a solution to suffering, cost, dependence, or social inconvenience. The language of autonomy can mask the reality that vulnerable people may feel pressured to choose death so as not to be a burden on others.
In light of all this, Pope Leo XIV should issue an encyclical specifically dedicated to renewing Evangelium vitae for the present age. There is a venerable precedent. John Paul II’s Centesimus annus took up and updated Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum a century after its publication, applying perennial principles to changing economic and political circumstances. A new encyclical could do the same with the Gospel of Life. It could reaffirm the central teachings of Evangelium vitae while addressing new technologies, constitutional claims, medical pressures, demographic decline, and the international movement seeking to redefine abortion and assisted death as human rights.
Such an encyclical would also be a natural extension of Leo’s public teaching. His first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, already affirms that the right to life extends from conception to natural death and identifies induced abortion, the killing of innocents, and euthanasia as grave evils. An encyclical devoted to life could give those affirmations a sustained theological, moral, and pastoral framework. It could signal to Catholic bishops around the world—including those of the Eastern Catholic Churches—that opposition to government policies promoting abortion and euthanasia should be a pastoral priority.
The document should be firm in principle without becoming partisan. The Church must distinguish the certainty of moral teaching from the prudence required in addressing specific laws and policies. But prudence cannot mean silence when governments redefine killing as a “right” or “compassion” as the abandonment of the vulnerable. Bishops should encourage Catholics to defend life in the public square while also demanding concrete help for women with crisis pregnancies, generous support for families, adoption reform, inclusion of persons with disabilities, and high-quality palliative care. The culture of life will not be convincing if presented only as prohibition. It must be embodied in habits of accompaniment and sacrificial love.
The present moment may also contain unexpected reasons for hope. Reports of renewed interest in Catholicism among some young people, the rise of adult baptisms in France, and the hunger for tradition and transcendence in the United States and elsewhere suggest that resignation to secular advances is not the only possible future. These signs should be described with moderation; they do not erase the Church’s demographic and cultural challenges. Yet they show why clarity matters. A generation seeking a coherent account of human dignity deserves to hear that life is not disposable, that suffering does not cancel worth, and that freedom is ordered to love, not to self-destruction.
The world has spent too long accommodating the degradation of human life through laws and policies. Virginia’s Question 1 is a warning among many. The Church should respond to it, and to the broader crisis it represents, with the confidence and compassion of the Gospel. The time is ripe for Pope Leo XIV to reaffirm the culture of life, and the moment to act is now.
About the author
Alden Abbott is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where he focuses on antitrust issues. Before joining Mercatus, Mr. Abbott served as general counsel of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) from 2018 to early 2021, representing the Commission in court and providing legal advice to its commissioners. Prior to his work at the FTC, Mr. Abbott worked at the Heritage Foundation and at BlackBerry Ltd. He also served as an adjunct professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University from 1991 to 2018. Mr. Abbott holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and an M.A. in Economics from Georgetown University.