Life issues -- from abortion to immigration -- took center stage in 2024

(OSV News) -- In an eventful year for life issues -- including abortion, assisted suicide, and immigration -- advocates and opponents alike wrestled with outcomes, each other, governments, public opinion, and the ballot box.

Ultimately -- according to various experts interviewed by OSV News -- 2024 will perhaps be remembered as 12 months stocked with both mixed results and future uncertainties.

Natalie Dodson -- a policy analyst at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center -- characterized the outgoing Biden-Harris administration as "radically pro-abortion" and "openly hostile to the unborn."

"In 2024, Biden mandated taxpayer-funded coverage of abortion at veteran hospitals, required government employees to facilitate abortion for unaccompanied immigrant minors, and ignored existing abortion funding restrictions in the law," she said.

Dodson noted that concurrently, the Biden-Harris administration ignored or eliminated conscience protections for medical professionals and employers.

Her advice to the incoming Trump-Vance administration?

"President-elect (Donald J.) Trump has stated that the abortion issue should be left to the states. To fulfill this promise," Dodson suggested, "Trump should get the federal government out of the business of abortion by rescinding Biden policies that fund abortion, defund pro-abortion groups like Planned Parenthood, and robustly defend conscience and religious freedom protections in federal law."

Abortion measures were a critical voting issue during the November elections, with a record-breaking 10 U.S. states featuring ballot measures to enshrine access to the procedure; seven out of 10 passed.

Since the June 2022 overturn of Roe v. Wade, American abortion rates have been trending upward. The Society of Family Planning's #WeCount Report -- issued Oct. 22 -- found a slight but consistent increase; during the first six months of 2024, the monthly national abortion count averaged nearly 98,000, which exceeds the 2023 monthly average of 88,000. In 2022, the monthly average was 81,400.

Trump's stated support of in vitro fertilization -- and his proposed plan to widen IVF availability through federal government or private insurer coverage mandates -- has also become a life issue of concern for Catholics.

IVF treatments -- which fertilize an egg outside the body in a laboratory dish -- are opposed by the Catholic Church because they frequently involve the destruction of human embryos, in addition to other ethical and moral issues.

Widespread attention was focused on the practice in 2024, after a February Alabama Supreme Court decision concluded human embryos in IVF clinics "are 'children,'" regardless of "developmental stage, physical location, or any other ancillary characteristics."

"It had obvious financial implications," noted Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, senior ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, "since it allowed parents to seek damages against IVF clinics when their embryonic children were lost or destroyed. When former President Trump weighed in on the matter to support the practice of IVF, the firestorm intensified."

Which was actually beneficial in one sense, said Father Pacholczyk.

"Bringing the matter back into the public eye, nevertheless, helped many to begin to understand how IVF is not truly a pro-life technology," he observed. "It is actually a two-edged sword, with the death-dealing edge of the sword becoming manifest at various points during the process, such as embryo screening for desired features, embryo freezing and abandonment, fetal reductions in utero, and the objectification and direct discarding of embryos that occurs in many IVF clinical settings."

Other IVF obstacles were further cast into sharper relief by way of the headlines.

"It also raised anew the foundational question of whether it doesn't violate our inherent dignity as humans to be manufactured in petri dishes and test tubes," said Father Pacholczyk, "instead of being loved into existence as the fruit and consummate blessing of the marital act."

At the opposite end of the life spectrum, Father Pacholczyk noted developments in assisted suicide and euthanasia when -- during November -- British lawmakers voted in favor of a medically-assisted suicide bill, which will receive further scrutiny in Parliament in advance of a final vote.

The bill -- dubbed the "Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill" -- seeks to allow those who are 18-plus and terminally ill to be given an "approved" substance to die, with some conditions.

"Central to virtually all efforts to legalize PAS (physician-assisted suicide) is the mistaken notion that 'dying with dignity' could ever mean 'killing yourself' or 'encouraging a physician to kill you,'" said Father Pacholczyk. "Neither are dignified in any way. Both represent a colossal failure on the part of the medical establishment and the healing arts."

Assisted suicide has increased in Canada, where it has been allowed since 2016. The 15,343 who did so in 2023 -- a number that did not include over 2,900 individuals who died before their MAID request could be approved -- accounted for 4.7%, or one in 20, of Canada’s 2023 deaths, according to government data. The country's federal Health Canada agency announced the November rollout of a "national conversation" -- which concludes in January 2025 -- on the issue of advance requests for MAID. The province of Quebec, which in 2023 saw the highest number (36.5%) of Canada’s MAID applications, began accepting advance requests for MAID Oct. 30.

Medically assisted suicide is currently authorized in 10 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

"The sick and suffering should be precious to us," emphasized Father Pacholczyk, "and they do not ever deserve an overdose or a lethal prescription. They deserve accompaniment, careful pain management, and being loved unconditionally until the end arrives.

"They deserve," Father Pacholczyk added, "to have us hold their hand and journey with them, activities that require a much greater commitment of time and energy on our part than the quick-and-dirty option of passing out 'kill pills.'"

The legal implications, said Father Pacholczyk, are also ethically objectionable.

"PAS and euthanasia are actually legalized forms of patient abandonment," he declared, "conferring upon physicians a guarantee of non-prosecution whenever they prescribe toxins to their clients, or, heaven forbid, kill them outright, typically through lethal injection."

Another life issue -- immigration -- became a political inferno during the 2024 U.S. elections. In results of a Reuters/Ipsos poll issued Nov. 7 -- just two days after Americans voted -- 25% of respondents said immigration should be Trump's top initial priority. A full 82% of respondents expected Trump would order mass deportations, a position inconsistent with church teaching.

St. John Paul II's 1993 encyclical "Veritatis Splendor" ("Splendor of Truth") and 1995 encyclical "Evangelium Vitae" ("The Gospel of Life") both quote the Second Vatican Council's teaching in "Gaudium et Spes," the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, which names "deportation" among various specific acts "offensive to human dignity" that "are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator."

Both the Biden-Harris administration -- and the incoming Trump-Vance administration -- have problematic immigration policies, said Dylan Corbett, executive director of the Hope Border Institute.

"The Biden administration has left a mixed record on immigration, making some headway in bringing order to the border and opening up legal migration pathways," he said, "but also crucially failing to marshal a robust moral argument that migration enriches and benefits our country."

Trump's post-election immigration rhetoric has, however, stoked much higher tensions.

"We go into next year with a fair amount of deserved anxiety, knowing that the president-elect plans to initiate a campaign of deportations and shut down the border to the vulnerable," noted Corbett. "Families in our parishes, students in our Catholic schools and universities, and our neighbors in communities across the country are living through a real moment of fear."

On Dec. 11, Trump announced a decision immigration advocates such as Corbett have feared: the proposed scrapping of a long-standing "sensitive locations policy" of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, that previously prohibited the arrest of unauthorized immigrants -- except under certain circumstances -- at churches, schools, and hospitals.

Immigrants without legal authorization to live and work in the U.S. are estimated at 11 million to 13 million, although numbers may be higher. According to the American Immigration Council, they disproportionately work in "essential" areas of the American economy, including construction (13.7%), agriculture (12.7%) and hospitality (7.1%).

"The coming months will represent a moral moment for the Catholic Church in the United States," predicted Corbett. "We will be called to put our faith into action in new ways, with effective solidarity, compassion and prophetic witness."

Still, he remained hopeful.

"We will be tested in new ways and we will need to dig deep to offer a credible response rooted in faith. But we are ready to meet this moment," Corbett asserted. "Our faith in Jesus Christ, our Catholic social teaching tradition and the example of Pope Francis offer us guideposts as we work for a more just and merciful society."