The struggle to defend human life in all its developmental stages and biological conditions, particularly for defenseless and discarded persons, will not find its footing in the drifting sands of uncertain moral intuitions that guide our secular society. While emotional or relational appeals are powerful, ultimately a culture of life depends on a secure and clearly understood commitment to the inherent dignity of the human person. In our justification and rhetoric regarding the defense of human life, we should not shy away from, but double down on passionately affirming a specifically religious faith in human dignity.

This is not to deny that the emotional and relational appeals, whether communicated in secular language or not, are legitimate and important. We have to trust that there is a pre-rational, universal intuition of the intrinsic worth of human persons that drives the intimacy, respect, empathy, and especially love that connects people. This manifests on both the individual and societal levels.

When the American founders, for example, wrote of inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, they were not just spouting an Enlightenment philosophy of property and the conventions of natural law, but they were expressing a deeper, eternal sense of purpose and destiny for human beings. It is that profound, multi-layered intuition that spurred public support for the American rebellion and continues to motivate the masses’ fervent advocacy of various contemporary social movements.

Emotional responses to the plight of human persons suffering from indignities and, occasionally, to the soaring rhetoric of virtuous pride in human nature are essential to the pro-life cause but not its exclusive domain. We even have to recognize that feminist empathy, often a simultaneously charitable and outraged concern for the widespread mistreatment of women throughout our culture, can stimulate misplaced endorsement of the legality of abortion despite the self-interest, libertine values, financial greed, and distorted rationalizations that saturate the pro-abortion lobby.

For the pro-life cause, the intimate relationships between mother and child, father and child (too often overlooked), and the younger generations with their aging or ailing elders is more than an opening for dialogue; it is a core argument in itself. These natural relationships have their own pre-rational “logic” as well as a cogently reasonable link to human dignity. That dignity is enhanced and celebrated, for example, when parents nurture their child. The individual experience of dignity, for both parent and child, is powerfully dependent on their active, caring relationship.

Championing loving parental relationships relies, in turn, on sound insights into the foundations of human dignity. When a pregnant woman is burdened with significant, practical obstacles and fears and, perhaps, finds it difficult in the moment to relate personally or emotionally to her preborn child, what will motivate her to nevertheless embrace motherhood? It will likely be a lucid awareness of her own, individual human dignity as a woman, mother, and moral being. But on what basis will we communicate that dignity to a woman in these circumstances and state of mind?

In individual and communal contexts, when much of our culture is predisposed to engaging in such practices as abortion, physician-assisted suicide, discarding or abandoning embryonic persons in IVF, and more, we find that emotional and relational appeals for a defense of human life quickly fall back on some core notion of universal human dignity. If a pro-life effort is to be successful, either the individuals involved must recognize and embrace their own, personal dignity as well as the behavioral integrity that truly expresses that dignity – or they must adopt an inclusive approach to human dignity that extends empathy and protection to the victims. In both cases, if the emotional or relational appeal has not already moved people to a pro-life perspective, it is no longer a likely means of triggering their crucial perception of human dignity when practical and self-interests spur resistance.

There is no substitute for a bold, concise, and rational – but inspiring – case for the universal dignity of the human person. You may get a somewhat logical and long-winded defense of human dignity through secular philosophy, often based on the self-interest of individuals (e.g., Locke) or the supreme value of human reasoning (e.g., Kant), but the only concise expressions available will be fragmented and easily distorted sound bytes that are also touted by the culture of death. When it comes to human dignity, it is religion that comes to the rescue.

There are, for example, many faith-based approaches to the unassailable dignity of a nurturing mother. The “theology of the body” of Pope St. John Paul II explains how a mother “discovers herself” in her sacrificial and loving conception and birth of a child. With a secular mindset, we may interpret this as primarily a psychological affirmation of her identity; it is, however, related directly to the final purpose of humanity and its relation to God: “Motherhood has been introduced into the order of the Covenant that God made with humanity in Jesus Christ. Each and every time that motherhood is repeated in human history, it is always related to the Covenant which God established with the human race through the motherhood of the Mother of God” (John Paul II, Mulieris Dignitatem, no.19).

The Christian faith also proclaims the inherent dignity of every human being (as does nearly every contemporary religious tradition). The Christian foundation of that dignity is the favored creation of each human being – a nature that is both spiritual and bodily – by God; the special relationship of humanity with God in loving friendship, worship, and stewardship of the created world; the history of covenants between God and His chosen people; and especially the New Covenant promising redemption and resurrection through Christ. This account of human dignity is intuitively ontological (on the fundamental level of Being), historical, relational, personal, awe-inspiring, and backed by the authority and personal witness found in the Bible as well as deep theological scholarship.

I acknowledge the fact that, even among religious believers, there are many who willfully develop justifications for practices that favor death for certain classes of people, often motivated by a complex fusion of misdirected compassion, inclination toward self-interest, and secular buzzwords like “freedom,” “rights,” and – frustratingly – “dignity.” Religious faith, however, is fundamentally built upon the relationship between human persons and the divine. As such, it highlights the spiritual destiny and uniqueness of humanity, a transcendent nature that profoundly resists reduction to the characteristics that certain people use to reclassify others as unworthy of life or its protection: preborn, early-stage, disabled, ill, old, irrational, unconscious, etc. Religious belief that is consistently and faithfully asserted is therefore, by its essence, a strongly positive force for embracing universal human dignity without exceptions, despite those who resist it with falsely logical obstacles to the fullness of divine revelation.

Is a religious message about human dignity the right kind of language for pro-life rhetoric in a largely secular, hyper-technological, and multicultural society? When that society is overwhelmed with a rotating assortment of moral declarations and values, captivated by online social media, increasingly frustrated by a shallow and often distorting sense of community, and humiliated by the supposed superiority of machines in cognitive abilities, the religious experience of human dignity offers an anchor in communal celebration and worship as well as eternal and transcendent truth. The religious experience embraces various cultural traditions and identities even while it supplies the content for a more meaningful, intimate connection with the deeply held intuitions and moral principles that underlie those traditions. The religious encounter with human dignity is also more than words; in contemporary lingo, it is a “multi-channel” experience that includes artistic, musical, and iconic expression; ritual; community gatherings; charitable outreach; and interpersonal expression of commitment and love – all of which accompany its written authority and verbal, textual, and multimedia interpretations.

The pro-life effort needs an explicit, confident, repeated, and loud commitment to the principle of human dignity for all. The specifically religious expression of this commitment is essential to both the integrity, defense, and passionate communication of that principle.

“And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1, seven times).