I believe opposition to war is as important, or even more important, than opposition to abortion in presidential elections. I realize this is a controversial take to most readers of Crisis, but hear me out.

Let me first establish my pro-life bonafides. I believe every single abortion, without exception, is murder and should be illegal. Legalized abortion in this country is a holocaust crying to heaven for God’s vengeance. My modern-day heroes are the brave men and women who have been arrested for trying to prevent women from aborting their children. Every abortion doctor, and every abortion-mill worker, should be in jail.

For a long time I was essentially a single-issue voter, and that issue was abortion. On more than one occasion I didn’t vote for the Republican candidate for President because I didn’t think he was pro-life enough. Where a candidate stood on foreign policy and military conflicts wasn’t high on my list of priorities, but I generally favored the more interventionist candidate.

Now, in 2024, my voting calculus has changed (it has been slowly evolving for years, but this is the first year I’m concrete about it).

During my lifetime the United States has been involved in countless overseas conflicts, from outright wars to small-scale military operations. Vietnam War, two Iraq Wars, the occupation of Afghanistan, conflicts in Libya, Bosnia, Somalia, Syria, Yemen: the list goes on and on. In not a single one could America’s involvement be justified under Catholic Just War Theory.

We’ve also been heavily involved in provoking many more conflicts and engaging in proxy wars, most notably the current Russia-Ukraine war. Our neocon foreign policy has been a disaster for decades and has led to untold suffering and death, along with increased ill will and outright hatred for America around the world (thus creating the foundation for future conflicts).

I don’t think most American pro-lifers truly grasp the scale of the horrors our foreign policy has unleashed on the world. We often talk about the invisibility of the unborn, and how the fact that we can’t see the victim is a major reason abortion is accepted by so many.

The same is true for these foreign conflicts. Even though millions have been killed in conflicts involving the United States, and millions more have been horribly injured or had their lives otherwise devastated, we don’t see them. The dead Ukrainian or dead Yemeni or dead Palestinian are mostly invisible to the average American.

This is why neocon propaganda works so well. Politicians can engage in scaremongering about invented future dangers (“Russia will invade Poland!” “Iraq will nuke New York City!”) to frighten the public into supporting their latest war; meanwhile, no one sees or considers the eventual victims of their propaganda, the countless war dead in a far-away land.

So in terms of death and evil, the consequences of our foreign policy are nearly as destructive as the abortion holocaust. But voting calculus can’t be determined by numbers alone (abortion is solidly the greatest killer today), but by what can be done to stop it.

In the post-Roe world, the debate over the legality of abortion has moved mostly to the states. It’s true that the federal government still plays a role in abortion-related policies, but whether or not abortion is legal or illegal now falls on the individual states.

Foreign policy, however, is 100% in the domain of the federal government, and has increasingly become in the modern age mostly based on the whims of the president. (When was the last time the president asked Congress for a declaration of war? 1942, for those wondering.) The reality is that the president has far, far more impact on American foreign policy than he does on American abortion policy. The reality is that the president has far, far more impact on American foreign policy than he does on American abortion policy.Tweet This

This is why I would argue that a presidential candidate’s positions on foreign policy (specifically foreign policy related to war and military conflicts) is as important, if not more important, than his or her positions on abortion. While a president can do little in our current environment to stop abortion, he or she can be extremely influential in minimizing or even stopping bloodshed around the world.

Note that I’m only referring to the presidential election. When voting for a state representative or governor, then abortion policy becomes paramount again, as these men and women can actually have an impact on making abortion illegal where you live (and they have no direct impact on foreign policy). When it comes to federal candidates like congressmen or senators, both foreign policy and abortion policy matter in that they may be voting for funding of both foreign wars and abortions. Again, the important variable in the voting calculus is the impact a politician can have on a specific issue.

I’ve always hated the “If you are really pro-life you would support my pet project” line, and so I won’t use it here. But I will urge Catholics, when voting for president,  to consider the death and destruction around the world brought on by our government’s horrible foreign policy.