Life Issues Are a Lost Cause

Merry Christmas: Illinois has become the latest state in the Union to add medically assisted suicide to its panoply of modern horrors. Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the Medical Aid in Dying Act into law on December 12, which will allow adults with a terminal diagnosis of six months or less to seek death. Twelve states and the District of Columbia now allow some form of assisted suicide, and seven more are considering legalization measures. 

This is a social revolution in the Western world; legalized suicide raises serious questions in the Anglo-American tradition of law, not to mention the practicalities of a program that now accounts for roughly 4 percent of all deaths in Canada. Yet it is happening quietly—very quietly. One might reasonably expect the opinion pages to be full of raging debate. But by my (possibly fallible) count, the New York Times (headquartered in a state where there is an assisted suicide bill under consideration!) has run two opinion pieces addressing the issue all year. The more conservative Wall Street Journal has run several, but it has hardly been a thematic issue. Few national politicians have articulated any opposition to assisted suicide. The leading men of the right, President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, have never even mentioned it.

What does it all mean, Mr. Natural? Well, laying aside Freudian or Spenglerian speculations about the increasingly literal death drive of Western culture, it concretely means that social conservatism as conventionally understood is politically kaput. The culture war is over; the Christian right lost soundly. Pope Leo and Chicago’s Blase Cardinal Cupich [NB: “CARDINAL” IS IN THE CORRECT POSITION] personally lobbied Pritzker against signing the latest bill. It didn’t matter. The governor’s own account of his meeting with the pope didn’t even mention the assisted suicide issue, but instead advertised a broad agreement on “values.” Perhaps Pritzker was lying; perhaps in his mind assisted suicide didn’t even rise to the level of a substantive difference of opinion. The Catholic Church, for better or worse the leading bastion of social conservatism on life issues in America, has no clout even in the environs of one of its largest and most historically powerful sees.

And, in fairness to the politicos, they are just following the crowd. Medically assisted suicide is hardly something that is being foisted on an unwilling public; Gallup found in 2024 that 71 percent of Americans support direct euthanasia, and 66 percent support assisted suicide. Those are what you call losing numbers. 

This leaves social conservatives in a sticky situation. Pro-life groups, traditionally focused on abortion, have been all but completely neutered by the pyrrhic victory of the Dobbs decision. As evidenced by the controversies over life-issue language in the 2024 Republican platform, the candidates’ positions on the abortion drug mifepristone, and the party’s official enthusiasm for in vitro fertilization, the GOP is already ready to move on from pro-lifers. The old gang is helpless and friendless in the face of this new assault on the sanctity of human life, an antiquated phrase that in 2025 sounds a bit like a nasty punchline. It’s not a matter of losing the game. Pro-lifers are barely capable of putting a team on the field. Nobody cares.

So what can they actually do? Well, as we wrote in February, they can get a whole lot meaner with their tactics:

It is also worth reconsidering the terms of the pro-life movement’s pact with the GOP. Pro-lifers should see themselves for what they are: a minority partner in a largely indifferent or hostile coalition. How do other such groups work? The “Make America Healthy Again” strain of the Trump coalition has carved out its power base, although banning Red 3 is not high on most Americans’ list of concerns. To take a negative example, black interests continue to keep affirmative action on the Democratic menu, despite that policy’s enduring and widespread unpopularity. These interest groups get their slice of the pie by offering votes, or, implicitly, by threatening to withhold them. The pro-life movement should consider more aggressive organizing activity in primaries and at the state level, more electioneering, to use the dirty word, than it has hitherto done. It is astonishing that it needs saying, but, in a notional democracy, the best way to advance your interests is by bloc voting.

Principles have lost. Mass appeals have lost. What remains is political trench warfare and a radical reevaluation of how these policies are sold to the American people. But until something happens, it seems unlikely that pro-lifers will gain more than tactical victories in the foreseeable future—and even these will require a harder, more bitter fight than the movement has been willing to countenance so far.

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