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Ideology opposing abortion, capital punishment, assisted suicide, euthanasia, and some or all wars

The consistent life ethic, also known as the consistent ethic of life or whole life ethic, is an ideology that opposes abortion, capital punishment, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Adherents oppose war, or at the very least unjust war; some adherents go as far as full pacifism and so oppose all war. Many authors have understood the ethic to be relevant to a broad variety of areas of public policy as well as social justice issues. The term was popularized in 1983 by the Catholic prelate Joseph Bernardin in the United States to express an ideology based on the premise that all human life is sacred and should be protected by law.

The phrase "consistent ethic of life" was used as far back as a 1971 speech delivered by then Archbishop Humberto Medeiros of Boston.

In 1971, the Catholic pacifist Eileen Egan coined the phrase "seamless garment" to describe a holistic reverence for life. The phrase is a Bible reference from John 19:23 to the seamless robe of Jesus, which his executioners left whole rather than dividing it at his execution. The seamless garment philosophy holds that issues such as abortion, capital punishment, militarism, euthanasia, social injustice, and economic injustice all demand a consistent application of moral principles valuing the sanctity of human life. "The protection of life", said Egan, "is a seamless garment. You can't protect some life and not others." Her words were meant to challenge members of society who divided their commitment to protecting and cherishing human life, choosing anti war stances but not anti abortion work, or those members of the anti abortion movement who were in favor of capital punishment.

J. Bryan Hehir, staff writer for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on political affairs, is credited by Charles Curran with coining the term "consistent ethic of life"

Bernardin considered opposition to abortion to be an integral part of the consistent life ethic. In a 1988 interview with National Catholic Register, he stated, "I feel very, very strongly about the right to life of the unborn, the weakest and most vulnerable of human beings. I don’t see how you can subscribe to the consistent ethic and then vote for someone who feels that abortion is a 'basic right' of the individual. The consequence of that position would be an absence of legal protection for the unborn." Many consistent life ethic adherents advocate for increased social support for parents in addition to legal protection for the unborn. Advocates for the consistent life ethic have reacted positively to the release of the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision (2022), which overruled both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). According to Herb Geraghty of Rehumanize International, "Right now is clearly a moment for celebration, and for mourning the lives that have been lost in the last 50 years due to the Roe v. Wade decision."

In a 1977 statement following the Gregg v. Georgia decision—which reaffirmed the United States Supreme Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States—Bernardin wrote, "Many have expressed the view [ ] that in this day of increasing violence and disregard for human life, a return to the use of capital punishment can only lead to further erosion of respect for life and to the increased brutalization of our society." Bernardin's opposition to capital punishment was rooted in the conviction that an atmosphere of respect for life must pervade a society, and resorting to the death penalty would not support this attitude. Modern day adherents to the consistent life ethic continue to oppose the use of capital punishment; in this advocacy, some echo Bernardin's appeal to the sanctity of life, while others emphasize the relationships between class, race and capital punishment to argue that there is not a way for capital punishment to be used justly. One outspoken anti death penalty activist is Sister Helen Prejean. Her books Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account to Wrongful Executions are autobiographical accounts of the time she spent ministering to death row inmates.

Bernardin understood the consistent life ethic as implying a societal responsibility to provide adequate health care for all, especially the poor. As such, appeals to the consistent life ethic have been made in support of universal health care.

In vitro fertilization is a process in which multiple viable embryos are created, and a single one implanted, with the extra ones frozen for potential future use. After the parents stop paying the storage fees for these, they are discarded, which has been opposed by anti abortion advocates. Herb Geraghty, executive director of the secular group Rehumanize International, which promotes the consistent life ethic, said, "We should not intentionally end the life of a human being, regardless of where they are in their lifecycle, in a womb or in a fertility lab", but also that he does not know what should be done with the "thousands of human beings who are currently frozen against their will."

James Hedges, in an article titled "Prohibition Platform incorporates a Consistent Life Ethic," stated that "Alcohol in many ways causes 'premature deaths,' and it degrades the quality of life before death." While not directly appealing to the consistent life ethic, other Catholics have sought to apply the pro life ethic to the issue of immigration.

One criticism made of the consistent life ethic position is that it inadvertently helped provide "cover" or support for politicians who supported legalized abortion or wanted to minimize this issue, a circumstance that Bernardin himself both recognized and deplored. The concept of a consistent life ethic is often rejected in the United States and abroad by those who prefer to use the concept of a culture of life as was promoted by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI in their encyclicals. Archbishop José Gómez of Los Angeles dismissed the "seamless garment" approach in 2016 because in his view it results in "a mistaken idea that all issues are morally equivalent". The "seamless garment" approach was also criticized by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger while he was serving as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In a July 2004 letter written to now former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and to the United States Bishops as a whole, Cardinal Ratzinger makes it clear that the church does not treat capital punishment with the same moral weight that it does abortion and euthanasia: "Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father [the Pope] on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia." Jesuit magazine America stated in an article published on 6 December 2023 that the consistent life ethic, generally speaking, has been a failure, writing: "Depressingly, 40 years since Cardinal Bernardin first proposed the consistent ethic of life, the ethic remains mired in the same senseless, polarized partisanship that Bernardin proposed the ethic to overcome."