In the NCR(eporter), Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life responds to the paper’s editorial on politicians, life issues and the dreaded “narrow litmus test.” Great stuff.

Any vision of this country worth struggling for includes a wide range of values — life itself, provision for its needs, education, employment, health care, peace, justice, and a humane way of dealing with offenders. Yet if we are to avoid a superficial analysis, we need to ask what causes these to be issues in the first place. Why is it always wrong to neglect the poor? Why is it always wrong to deny adequate health care? Why is it always right to strive for justice and peace?

Why, indeed, if not because of the dignity of the human person? If a person can be disposed of, why must he be fed? If a person can be chopped apart, why must she have health care? In fact, every right we have flows from our inherent dignity, at every stage of life.

That dignity is beyond the power of any government to bestow or deny. Government exists for the human person, not the other way around, and the rights of human beings are there not because anyone grants them, but precisely because one is a human being.

To permit abortion is to radically reject that premise. Abortion supporters do not deny that a human being is killed in the process; they simply claim that it should be a legal right. This is not just about the legality of a procedure; this is about a totally different kind of government — the kind that can decide when the legal right to life begins and when it doesn’t; the kind that can separate the concept of human being from human person.

That is hardly a “narrow” litmus test. And that does have a lot to do with a “person’s vision for this country.”