Pope St. John Paul II says in Evangelium Vitae "Only respect for life can be the foundation and guarantee of the most precious and essential goods of society..." this comes after saying that it is impossible to further the common good without defending the right to life.

For Catholics in the US this is vital. Both Democrats and Republicans are convinced they're voting in the best interest of the common good, but we are told "it is impossible to further the common good without acknowledging and defending the right to life..."

Again Catholics vote to further the common good, and without protecting the right to life, from conception until natural death, we're told this is impossible. To vote for a candidate who is explicitly against the pro-life cause necessarily moves us further from the common good.

St. John Paul II says "only respect for life can be the foundation...of the most precious and essential goods of society, such as democracy and peace." Issues such as immigration, race relations, wages, and preserving our democracy then are real but not foundational issues.

We can debate endlessly about rhetoric vs. reality, or we can try to elevate immigration policies into "life" issues equivalent to abortion but that would be to do violence to St. John Paul II's thoughts. The right he speaks of as foundational is the right to be born and to live.

It's good to care for the lives of blacks, browns, and immigrants, but how can a society that fails to acknowledge that unborn lives matter affirm that any others matter? If not at conception, when? Or do black, refugee, immigrant, and women's lives only matter after birth?

Yet the immigrant is less defenseless than the infant, the black suspect less innocent than the fetus. Lives matter either from conception or not at all, or are we to believe if a person is killed in the womb he had it coming but if he resisted arrest he didn't?

All other issues are secondary to, and predicated on, this fundamental issue. We should not be divided about this, this isn't our home. We shouldn't be voting as Republicans, Democrats, or even Americans, but as Catholics, and when vote like that it isn't so complicated.