In two successive articles, we have tried to document the electoral tactic being used right now by left-leaning Christians who prefer the policies of Hillary Clinton, who are trying to garner votes for their favored candidate. It’s an old moral sleight of hand which Cardinal Joseph Bernardin invented in the early 1980s called the “Seamless Garment.” Faced with the hideous, blood-caked truth that every Democratic presidential nominee and platform since Roe v. Wade has favored abortion on demand for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy, Bernardin essentially said,

Hey, look — a squirrel! Pay no attention to the fact that Teddy Kennedy, Mario Cuomo — and now Joseph Biden and Nancy Pelosi — favor deliberate murder of babies. Do you realize that Republican economic policies might boost childhood obesity? That they oppose motorcycle helmet laws? Those are life issues too!

Now two decades later, with the Democratic Party even more committed than ever to abortion, and now euthanasia, that hoary phrase “Seamless Garment” has run its course, and avid Democrats who wish to keep their pro-life credentials intact have found another phrase: “Whole Life.” They didn’t just find it — they lifted it, straight off our own organization’s website, IAmWholelife.com. These advocates hijacked the language, the phrasing, and even the tone of our consistently pro-life organization — which sticks to issues where the government commits or enables deliberate violence against the vulnerable.

And now they’re using our own words to blur the stark distinction between opposing intentional killing, and favoring economic or environmental policies which (some experts argue) might extend people’s lifespans.

There’s a clean and absolute difference between premeditated murder and policies (always with trade-offs) that might lower the risk of mortality, just as there was between slavery in the South and bad working conditions in the North. But pro-slavery politicians used the injustices of the early industrial revolution in America as a smokescreen for the fact that their whole economic system rested on forced labor, squeezed out of black people who were kept in chains and worked under penalty of death. Likewise, leftists today who wish to claim to be pro-life are using every possible distraction they can find to make voters forget that their candidates favor the deliberate killing of babies, and the sale of their bodies as parts. Is any other issue in America even remotely of this gravity?

Yes, it would be good to solve childhood obesity, which needlessly shortens lives. It would be great if people stopped smoking, got better healthcare, and buckled their seat belts. Does a candidate who favors cumbersome federal policies to promote all of that, and wants to fund Planned Parenthood, deserve the label of “pro-life” instead of a candidate who wants to protect the innocent from killing, but might be more small government than some Christians would wish? Some people who claim to be pro-life say so.

What’s funny about the current campaign, which tries to steal IAmWholeLife’s carefully crafted language in service of Hillary Clinton, is that by any standard at all — even by that of the Seamless Garment — Mrs. Clinton is the most pro-death major candidate in American political history. She’s Dr. Jack Kevorkian in a pantsuit. There’s a long list of prudential issues which Seamless Garment advocates try to muddle with black or white, morally clear questions such as abortion or genocide. But even on those questions, Hillary’s stances ought to offend a Seamless Garment voter:

• Hillary Clinton was fully on board with the reckless interventionism of the Obama administration, which used NATO jets to meddle with Libya’s civil war, leaving the country in chaos. Now large parts of Libya are ruled de facto by ISIS, thousands are sailing the Mediterranean in rickety boats to escape, and Clinton considers that intervention a success. What would a failure look like?
• The status quo on the death penalty. Seamless Garment people consistently oppose it as abusive and unjust, but Hillary Clinton wants to keep up America’s rate of executions.
• The killing of civilians in the war on terror. Seamless Garment advocates have joined human rights activists to condemn our current use of military drones. Hillary Clinton fully supports it.

Donald Trump Is No Mother Teresa, Either

Each of us has been sharply critical of Republican Donald Trump, whose supporters make no pretense that he is a consistent advocate of a comprehensive pro-life platform. But many will choose to vote for him because he has promised to fight the single greatest threat to human dignity in America: legal abortion, and backed up that pledge with a list of qualified judges.

What has Hillary Clinton offered to do that remotely comes close? She will fight to enshrine forever in law the death of a million American children every year. She will carry on the bloody, incoherent foreign policy of Obama which she helped craft. She will grow the power and reach of our soulless federal government, which increasingly threatens the basic religious rights of every American. There is no theory compatible with Christianity or even common decency that would yield the conclusion that Hillary Clinton is somehow the “lesser evil.” Those whose words and deeds suggest that she is have discredited themselves.