In such an important election year, arguments will undoubtedly emerge that President Donald Trump is somehow “pro-life” because of his two Supreme Court appointments and various other symbolic and largely rhetorical “pro-life” statements. This would be a terrible mistake to make, and Catholic voters should know the truth. While unborn life is and always will be precious in the eyes of the Catholic church, all life is precious, and so much of that life is under assault because of Donald Trump.
Pope John Paul II reminded us what Vatican II named as intrinsic evils. “Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat laborers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free and responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer the injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator.” (no. 80)
Clearly, intrinsic evils extend beyond personal choices related to human reproduction. According to this more extensive list, putting children in cages and separating families is intrinsically evil, fighting to deny health care to millions of people is intrinsically evil (the Catholic Bishops have been in favor of universal health care since 1920), using workers and paying them the bare minimum to increase a profit margin is intrinsically evil, wantonly destroying the environment for profit is “hostile to life itself,” hurts all human beings and thus qualifies as intrinsically evil.
