I am unashamedly pro-life, but let me tell you what that means

Firstly, it is pure supposition to say that overturning Roe v Wade “will almost certainly mean a return to clandestine, backyard abortions in the US.”
Roe was always considered, even by pro-abortionists such as Justice Ruth Ginsberg, to be bad law. The Supreme Court had ignored the Constitution and invented a Right of Privacy out of thin air in order to justify their decision. Federalism is the core of American governance. If Roe is overturned, it will not ban abortion but will simply refer the matter back to the States—meaning the people will decide.
Since the Roe decision, 61 million babies have been killed in the US.
Other bad decisions have been reversed, including Dred Scott v Stanford holding that African Americans could not be considered American citizens (leading to the Civil War), and Buck v Bell which upheld forced sterilization of citizens with intellectual disabilities.
Secondly, the Seamless Garment compels us to accept all, not some, of the Church’s social doctrine. Yet there is a tendency to flatten all moral issues to the same level of significance (treating the minimum wage as equivalent to the deliberate taking of an innocent human life) to evade this responsibility.

‘Terminology matters’

It does. ‘Pro-life’ means ‘anti-abortion’. That’s all it means. It’s a clever, catchy label used by anti-abortion activists, so useful and catchy that ‘seamless’ is the irritated response of people (strangely, even those on the same general side) who want to dilute the profile of anti-abortion by insisting that there is a competing merit in other issues which justifies a Laodicean approach of hiding the anti-abortion endeavour like a mentally deficient relative in the attic or cellar.

There is no competing merit but there are aligned merits. However, attending to the aligned merits is a prudential matter of time, energy, place and, especially, calling or vocation from God. ‘Seamless’ is just begrudging the place of anti-abortion in the spectrum of causes which should attract the attention span of the public.

‘Seamless’ is also practised inconsistently. After all, if the presence of the death penalty in the world is such an important ‘pro-life’ issue, does the author spend half an hour in her home city, once a year, with a placard outside an embassy of a nation which uses the death penalty? Just one embassy a year will do. And just for 30 minutes a year. There are quite a few embassies from which to choose. But which one, prudentially speaking? Just, as in Greenham Common anti-nuclear bias, outside the US embassy?

The Greens have amassed a program of what they would regard as a consistent whole-of-life ethic ranging from personal freedom of behavioural expression through increased spending on certain government programs to legislation concerning the climate. If we want a similar whole-of-life Christian ethic to be captured in one party, perhaps we should consider standing a Christian party for the federal and state legislatures. If you do that, discussion and debate on what to propose on the floor will no doubt prove that Church is correct in defining some matters as intrinsically and indisputably moral or immoral and others only prudentially so and subject to differing opinions.

In other words, to expand the meaning of ‘pro-life’ beyond ‘anti-abortion’ isn’t as simple as it feels. In other words, ‘seamless’ is full of seams to trap the unthinking.

If Harradine were still alive, what would he think?.

"Your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, a child educated, a child housed". Let us also add loving babies, valuing families and spouses. This means all the attitudes that would lead to women not wanting abortion. This means a society that makes adoptions easy, so that babies who cannot be looked after by their mothers can be properly mothered. This means education, of the witnessing kind, so that young women will know what they are doing and choosing. It also means being prepared to be taken in by a certain percentage of young parents who have babies for the government assistance they might get. A law banning abortion gets it right for the wrong reason. Society has much changing to do. Law is a bottletop forced on a bottle when there is much fermenting of the contents going on. Shouldn't governments admit there are things about which laws should not be made? We have two divisions, legal and illegal. How about "We don't make laws about that!" as a third category, or "Too divided to put into law at this time". Then educate, educate, educate.

I remember reading, sometime in the mid 1960s whilst still at school, a quote in 'Time' magazine by a lay Catholic Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, which goes: 'A Christian view of Man makes sense'. Bringing the terminology up to date: 'Men and Women' it makes even more sense in today's fractured world. I think what you have said here, Beth, is very much in keeping with Catholic Tradition as exemplified in my favourite author, G K Chesterton. That Tradition, properly understood and explained, liberates. So much of various modern ideologies actually enslave people to the Great Delusion, whilst claiming a specious 'liberation'. Chesterton would say that, behind the face of the prophets of this specious 'liberation' and their many acolytes, there stands a great grinning face and that it is none other than that of the Evil One. His name is Satan. I am not normally one to say this straight out, but I think, in this instance, it needs to be said. The battle between Good and Evil still rages in our public life, but we have assurance of ultimate victory. All these false ideologies will, one day, crumble into dust as did the vast self-proclaiming statue in Shelley's poem 'Ozymandias'.

Beth,
You have put in front of us the disconnect between the campaign by anti abortionists/pro life advocates to ban abortions for any reason and the reluctance of our society, particularly the right/conservative side of politics to provide the essential social services for the disadvantaged in our society, who are often a family , most likely a single mum, that face major problems raising children, particularly today in an inflationary environment, where wages are falling behind, while cost of living increases.
I suspect those who oppose abortion are often ignorant of the compelling reasons that a pregnant women has to make such a life changing decision.

You appear to have opened a can of worms with your article, Beth. Perhaps the term 'pro-life' should be changed to 'life affirming'. That would again stick in the craw of the 'pro-choice' lobby. Some pro-choice lobbyists can be just as much on the nose as some pro-lifers. There is certainly a need to address the issue of the rights of the woman having an abortion with the rights of the unborn child, who has no choice. I believe, in Catholic Theology, there is provision for a doctor to perform an operation where, to save a woman's life, he or she might, as an unintended result, cause the death of the child. This is not carte blanche to perform an abortion and the woman in question needs to be consulted right through the procedure. It is the same with unecessarily prolonging life when palliative care only may be the patient's desired option. This is not euthanasia. What really concerns me these days is the overt pressure exerted by some doctors on parents whose children may have certain genetic defects, like Down's Syndrome, to abort. This is getting us closer to Eugenics. The same sort of situation often occurs in the Belgium and the Netherlands in regard to euthanasia.

I am pro-life too and genuinely respect the important parallels you draw out between the importance of value of a life and the value of being afforded the opportunities for a fair and good life. But I also do not think we should glide over the difference between the two concepts. I will not go on at length about this tortured subject except to say that I think all lives matter, regardless of race, gender, chronological age etc, etc. , that is to say, I believe in universal inclusion, no discrimination, zero tolerance for violence etc. Thus I would suggest that abortion is only justified by compelling medical necessity, genuinely irreconcilable dilemma, never by a “choice”, a preference, an election. Most medical research data bases put this criterion of necessity at a low 2–4% of the estimated total of the 80,000 plus abortions in Australia each year. Life is never, ever easy but aspiring to be the responsible adult in the room can also furnish rewards that often consumption never will.