Recently, some prominent cultural figures have bucked a longstanding American tradition of vilifying people with different political views. When Republicans and Democrats come together to talk to one another as human beings, they often emphasize shared humanity over divisive politics. But I think the circle of shared humanity should be extended beyond partisan divisions, to include unborn children.

One example of two political foes meeting in mutual, if temporary, peace came when comedian Bill Maher met with President Donald Trump for dinner at the White House in the spring of 2025. Maher was criticized heavily for it afterwards, accused of normalizing someone who has been portrayed in many media outlets as a singularly dangerous figure. How, Maher was challenged by fellow liberals, could you deign to break bread with a democracy-destroying fascist, an American Hitler?

Maher’s response to the criticism was refreshing. Acknowledging Trump’s many faults, Maher also described Trump as a warm, funny, self-effacing, gracious dinner host . Trump is “a real person,” Maher emphasized. As such, he is someone to meet, someone with whom one can and should share opinions and ideas. It is Trump’s humanity that trumps his public persona, Maher said of the White House encounter. Maher’s broader point was that politics in general should be rooted in shared humanity.

After a lone gunman made an attempt on Trump’s life at a DC dinner in April of 2026, Maher argued that political differences should not lead us to wish death on others. It is precisely because many leftists call Trump “Hitler” that some people feel it imperative to assassinate him, Maher said, repeating his pleas to stop dehumanizing political opponents.

It isn’t just with Trump. Maher’s rhetoric overall these past several years has been critical but ultimately irenic. He calls out shortcomings as he sees them, but seeks dialogue over confrontation, and emphatically rejects violence as a means of resolving domestic political disputes. People with different ideas may be frustrating, and there is no need to deny clashing viewpoints, but overriding all that is our humanity, Maher has said again and again.

A similar spirit was at work in the interview this spring between conservative pundit Candace Owens and Hunter Biden, the man whose dark personal history, captured in part on camera and then broadcast on media outlets worldwide, threw an already contentious 2020 presidential contest into turmoil. Owens and Biden mainly avoided politics in the interview, though. Instead they discussed addiction, betrayal, reconciliation, atonement, and family. Hunter Biden’s faults, like Trump’s, are matters of very public record. But there is a person behind the headlines, Owens rightly intuited. The interview, well worth watching, is often beautiful in its focus on who human beings are and why they are important, regardless of what has happened in the past or what ideas or commitments might divide groups of people in the present. Hunter Biden and Candace Owens agreed that it was important that human beings sit down with one another in peace and friendship. I thought it took considerable courage for both Owens and Biden to rise above partisan rancor and see the frail, suffering person behind the media caricature.

And yet, while I very much appreciate Maher’s and Biden’s pro-human candor, I could not help but see a contradiction in their words. Maher and Biden both point to the humanity of the other as a reason for treating him or her with respect. (Owens, for her part, is solidly pro-life.) Hear, hear. But, I would ask Maher and Biden, why not extend the same courtesy to children in the womb?

In April 2024, one year before meeting Trump person to person, and two years before condemning political violence, Maher stated, flatly, that abortion is murder, and that he accepts it as such because “we won’t miss” the children who have been killed. Abortion came up in the Owens-Biden interview as well. About thirty-four minutes into their talk, Biden mentions disagreement over the “Catholic Church’s views on abortion.” Biden’s father, and the Democratic Party to which both belong, are notoriously, even rabidly, pro-abortion. Does this not all seem to jar with Biden’s and Maher’s very welcome calls for humanizing political discourse? Set aside for a moment the Catholic Church. If the basic argument, coming from Maher and Biden, is that we should all sit down and treat one another as human beings, then why must human beings in utero be excluded from that circle of mutual recognition of shared humanity?

Maher gives a coldly illogical reason for it: we (presumably meaning people capable of speaking for themselves) don’t want you around. The standard is not clear. The line between life and death is arbitrary. “We” want you, or “we” don’t. Compounding the illogic is that Maher seems, in the same statement, to accept the humanity of the unborn. All humans should be accepted; fetuses are human; therefore, fetuses must be killed. This is not how cogent arguments are constructed. Maher is well known for thinking things through, but he seems to have accepted, in this case, a patent absurdity.

Hunter Biden offered no standard for his views, either. His discussion with Owens was not about abortion, to be fair. But the question, for Biden and for everyone else who thinks as he does, remains. Why should children physically attached to their mother’s body–a double humanity–be seen as anything other than fellow human beings? I would ask Biden the same question that I would ask Maher: the line you draw through humanity, where does it come from, and why do you insist on drawing it?

To restate the question: if Maher and Biden are willing to sit down with political counterparts, even political enemies, in the spirit of shared humanity, then why not welcome all humans in that same spirit of brother- and sisterhood?