On November 7, 2023, Ohioans will vote to approve or reject an amendment to the Ohio Constitution, proposing to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right. Drafted and financed by militant pro-abortion advocacy groups, the approved amendment would enable Ohio to have the most extreme abortion law imaginable. Properly read and understood (and as its drafters intend), it would allow abortion up to the day of full-term birth, with no meaningful restrictions. The amendment would prevent Ohio citizens, through their elected representatives, from passing any laws regulating abortion access. This includes, for example, a law that might require parental consent for a minor to procure an abortion or obtain hormonal contraception. The amendment truly is extreme in its practical effect. It is impossible to conceive a reformulation that would make it worse.

Of course, we must be resolute in our legal and political opposition to this gruesome proposal. But all the legal wrangling and maneuvering in the world will not be effective unless we are able to articulate a coherent moral case against abortion, founded in a true theology of the human person. I use the word “articulate” deliberately because I am referring not to our moral opposition to the evil of elective abortion, but rather to the words that we use to communicate that conviction. The language that we usually employ— individual “rights”—is not only deficient in that task, but it also actually works against us. Put another way, the vocabulary of individual rights assumes and perpetuates a moral theory that actually supports the extreme policy in the proposed amendment.

As it is used in the United States, developed from 17th century English philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the language of individual rights is expressive of a moral theory according to which we are all enemies of one another, competing in a “war of all against all” for whatever we have the power to take. This is the “state of nature,” according to this theory, a description of the natural moral anthropology of the human person. Humans are radically individual bearers of absolute claims against one another, without any moral principles to curb or qualify those claims. The only natural measure of our rights to take anything (including taking anything away from another) is our relative power to do so. To the extent that we refrain from the right to exercise that power, it is solely through implied mutual promises. In this moral theory, the “social contract” is not binding; it is only as good as our willingness to keep it for the sake of social peace, consistent with our own convenience.

In the context of abortion, when we cast the issue in terms of rights, our language implies that mother and child are enemies of one another. Both sides in this naturally antagonistic relationship have the natural, mutually exclusive authority to take what they can from the other, limited only by their ability to do so.

If no actual conflict arises, the mother allows the child to be born. But if a conflict does arise, under a regime of individual rights, no natural barrier prevents either mother or unborn child from resolving it according to their respective abilities.

Of course, you can see where this ends. The unborn child might have a “right to life,” but he has no power to enforce this claim against his rights-bearing mother. Thus, the mother’s conflicting right—to do as she sees fit—permits her to eliminate the opponent in her womb. If we subscribe to a language of rights in our discussion of abortion, this is how the scenario plays out. And it is precisely the way that pro-abortion advocates see the issue. Therefore, when we use their moral language, they win the policy argument. And they win it with our assistance.

Of course, I understand that ecclesial documents from the highest magisterial authorities are replete with the language of “rights.” But this usage is rooted in a very different moral anthropology from the English rights tradition that has formed the American moral psyche. Rather, popes and bishops use the term to signify the implications of being made in the image and likeness of God, and thus endowed with unalienable dignity. This is a theory rooted in a vision of the human person as naturally social, expressed through the venerable Catholic doctrine of the solidarity of all humankind. Rights is the term the Church has used to signify the mutual immunities, privileges, responsibilities and care that we are called to reciprocate with one another.

But this is not how Americans use the language of rights. Thus, I propose that we American Catholics try to wean ourselves from it, using instead a language of dignity, mutual dependence and solidarity. I realize that there might be a quixotic tone to this plea. But we will not—indeed we cannot—win the moral case against abortion in the U.S. using a fundamental moral theory that actually undermines our argument. The language matters. And in the United States, the language of “rights” means the powerful win over the powerless.

Dr. Kenneth Craycraft is an attorney and the James J. Gardner Family Chair of Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology.

This article appeared in the October 2023 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here.