Like you, I’ve heard my share of sophomoric pro-choice jibes. “If only prolifers were concerned about children after they’re born!” Or, “If you were really prolife you’d be protesting the death penalty!”

You, the reader, likely know many prolifers who labor diligently on behalf of newborns and other vulnerable people. There’s also a decent chance that, like me, you oppose the application of the death penalty.

In my experience, such jibes are mostly foolish. As I wrote for the Human Life Review in the Summer 2017 issue, they amount to an “anti-anti-abortion” stance, allowing people to oppose the prolife cause without having to defend the horrors of abortion. They preemptively discredit prolifers. They’re also off-message: If my aim is to protect the unborn in law and in fact, why would I turn away willing allies, even if those allies don’t oppose the death penalty?

But last year, Pope Leo XIV himself joined the chat. In response to a question about plans of the Archdiocese of Chicago to honor a notorious pro-choice politician, Leo said (in part):

I think as I myself have spoken in the past, it’s important to look at many issues that are related to the teachings of the Church. Someone who says I’m against abortion but is in favor of the death penalty is not really prolife, someone who says I’m against abortion but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States, I don’t know if that’s prolife. So they are very complex issues and I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them, but I would ask first and foremost that they would have respect for one another and that we search together….

While I appreciate the pastoral context—i.e., there are other issues and we should work together—at first glance, Leo’s remarks seem to rehash the pro-choice insinuation that prolifers are hypocritical and therefore not to be taken seriously.

But Leo is the Pope. He has the responsibility and therefore the right to regulate conversation among Christians, so if he wants to define “prolife” as something much more than anti-abortion, it’s his prerogative to do so.

More importantly, Leo is a bishop and pastor—indeed, a kind of pastor to bishops. He therefore also has the responsibility and the right to call Christians to greater integrity. In the past, I have taken for granted the coherence of the prolife movement and advocated for a sharper focus on protecting the unborn. But if Leo judges otherwise, i.e., that prolifers need to live up to the name in other ways, then I need to reexamine my own choices. Maybe we should reserve the title “prolife” only for those who advocate for the priority of human life with greater consistency.

Leo’s challenge is not without precedent. It echoes the excerpt (Matthew 5:17-37) that many Christians heard yesterday from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Jesus says we will not enter the kingdom of heaven unless our righteousness “surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees.” Jesus says this not because the scribes and Pharisees were villainous hypocrites, though of course some were, but because they were the gold standard of religious and moral diligence.

Jesus uses them to make a rhetorical point: He’s demanding perfect integrity. It’s not enough to avoid killing someone. Even to be angry with your brother, or to denounce him angrily, is tantamount to the sin of murder.

It’s not enough to avoid sleeping with another man’s wife. Even lusting for someone else is tantamount to adultery. It’s not enough to abstain from false oaths. To be truthful, one must be truthful even in plain speech.

These and Jesus’ other examples all evoke integrity, the perfect coherence of heart and mind and deed with God’s commands. Anything less is unworthy of the kingdom. And they make Leo’s remarks sting: If we accept the label, “prolife,” but fail to live up to it, do we not discredit ourselves?

So let us prolifers examine our own motivations. Why are we prolife? Is it because we truly recognize the dignity and responsibility that accompany the gift of life? If so, then let us act accordingly, and advocate accordingly, not only for the unborn but for all persons.

And while we’re still on this side of Judgment Day, let us cultivate a generous disposition. If you demand that everyone rise to your standards, you will be held accountable in the same way, “you will be thrown into prison . . . and you will not be released until you have paid the last penny.” But if instead you cultivate a posture of forgiveness, if you “settle with your opponent while you are on the way,” you may yet be spared in just the same way—by the forgiveness that comes from Jesus.