A Seamless Garment for the Right?

By David G. Bonagura, Jr. ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 26, 2026

In 1983, Cardinal Joseph Bernadin proposed the image of a seamless garment for a Catholic approach to what has been termed “the life issues.” In a widely quoted sentence, Bernadin argued that “the spectrum of life cuts across the issues of genetics, abortion, capital punishment, modern warfare and the care of the terminally ill.” While the original speech was nuanced, the seamless garment now symbolizes equating the fight against abortion, an intrinsic evil, with other moral issues that are not as cut and dry.

The political context of Cardinal Bernadin’s proposal is noteworthy. At the time, most American Catholics were members of the Democratic Party, which was then hardening its support for abortion. In 1979, Catholic Senator Ted Kennedy announced his support for legal abortion, which he helped add to the party platform the following year. Earlier in 1983, without saying so publicly, Senator Joe Biden refused to bring forward a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade that he had voted for a year earlier as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee; this was the beginning of his full support for legal abortion.

Bernadin’s speech, given at New York’s Fordham University, provided useful cover for Democrats who were transgressing the Church’s position on the issue. They could conveniently point to all the other moral things they were supporting to show what good guys they were. By extension, Catholics could vote for them without feeling guilty.

Flash forward to 2026, when Vice President JD Vance addressed the March for Life for the second consecutive year. As I wrote last week, President Trump, whom Vance has called “the most pro-life American president of our lifetimes,” in his second administration has had a checkered year defending life, with some victories, some sins of omission, and some sins of commission. The president’s recent equivocation on the Hyde Amendment sparked some resistance among pro-life leaders, and clearly the administration has felt the heat: at the end of his speech, the vice president felt compelled to “address an elephant in the room,” namely, that in terms of the administration’s pro-life efforts, “not enough progress has been made, that we’re not going fast enough, that our politics have failed to answer the clarion call to life that this march represents.”

This was after Vance detailed—his speech was 21 minutes, more than double last year’s length—what he perceived as the Trump administration’s many accomplishments that contribute to building a culture of life: conscience protections, undoing Biden-era pro-abortion policies, Trump accounts for newborn babies, tax code reforms that benefit families with children, facilitating home ownership. These are all welcome measures that contribute to women choosing life over abortion—or over not having children at all.

Yet when it comes to stopping abortion itself in the United States through the law, the prerogative of the executive branch, the vice president was silent. After one year, the Trump administration has not pushed a measure to limit abortion or the abortion pill. It is with the latter that the Trump administration has to step forward: if doctors in blue states can continue to prescribe abortion pills for women in states where abortion access is curbed, then the United States today functions as if Roe had never been overturned.

Instead, the vice president’s promised pro-life initiatives for the new year—launched the day before the March in thinly veiled political timing—include investigating Planned Parenthood and banning fetal tissue for use in federally-funded research. Most surprising, though, was the “proud” announcement of “a historic expansion of the Mexico City Policy” so that in addition to protecting life it will now “combat DEI and the radical gender ideologies that prey on our children.” For tripling the size of the policy, Vance concluded, “we’re proud of it because we believe in fighting for life.”

Combating DEI has nothing to do with legal protection for unborn children. Radical gender ideology, though pernicious and a gateway to the evil of sex-change hormones and surgeries, is also far afield of the right to life for the unborn, the reason for the March for Life.

Has the vice president, to distract attention from the administration’s checkered pro-life record, created a seamless garment for those on the right, hoping to convince them that fighting DEI and radical gender ideology (the latter was mentioned three times in the speech) is just as important as the fight for life? Has Vance, like Cardinal Bernardin before him, tried to create a cover for his administration and fellow Republicans so they, too, can cop out on fighting abortion?

Pro-lifers will not be fooled by this clever—and incorrect—equivocation. As they have said to those on the left who have minimized abortion’s gravity by treating it as one among many issues, they say to the Trump administration: abortion is intrinsically evil and therefore can never be justified. This is the preeminent issue of our times—other issues of concern to the conservative base do not meet this mark. Legal efforts to foster a culture of life through tax reform and housing rules will always be welcome. But a presidential administration that is proud to call itself pro-life also has to find ways to limit the legal slaughter of innocents if it cannot halt them outright.

At the March for Life, America was blessed to hear the nation’s second-highest office holder positively present an energetic pro-family message. “We know that babies are precious because we know them and we love them and we see the way they can transform our families.” But when surrounded by the culture of death, cheering life is only half the battle. If the “most pro-life president” is going to live up to his own accolades, he has to defend life too, even when it is politically unpopular. Equivocating the fight against abortion with other issues is not a garment that pro-lifers are willing to wear.