"culture of life" has become one of President Bush's favorite campy utterances these days. First uttered by Pope John Paul II, the president has appropriated it for use chiefly in the areas of Terri Schiavo and Stem Cells. Needless to say, I think that George Bush is pretty damn far from a "culture of life." However, I'll be honest- I think it's an excellent phrase and an excellent thing for a religious (or secular) person to order their overall political worldview by. To me, a culture of life is a thorough and complete worldview.
To start with, what is a "culture of life"? To me, a culture of life is a culture that seems to protect and encourage life at every possible point, and a culture that works ceaselessly to enhance and improve the quality of those lives- and the overall life of the people, in this case, the nation. My political and moral beliefs grow out of this idea. So I guess a logical place to begin is the conception of a child- the very beginning of, to me, and maybe not to you, an individual life. I am staunchly opposed to abortion, because I believe it is the taking of a life. Not the equivalent of a first degree murder or any such histrionic blather, but the taking of life nonetheless. I am opposed to the death penalty in every single instance, because it is the taking of life, which should not be man's province. As a Christian, I believe that executing someone is not what Christ would do, nor is it acting humbly, as Christians are instructed to do. I am also a total pacifist, because I believe war is an egregious waste of human life and that killing someone is- for me at least- never what God would want me to do. I am NOT opposed to physician-assisted suicide, although I do not really like it, because a person's life is between them and God, and as St. Paul says in Romans, before his own master each man shall stand or fall. Their life is their own, and if they wish to end it in dignity it is not my province to forbid it.
War, abortion, the death penalty, and physician-assisted suicide- these are the big issues we face in our political life that are concrete issues literally involving the life or death of another person. So now, what does the culture of life mean as far as preserving and enhancing lives? In Matthew, Jesus tells his flock "what you do for the least of these, you do for me." We must treat each life, and our communal life, as if it was the life of the person most important to us- Jesus Christ if you are of that persuasion or whoever else. So I believe in using the public resources- tax dollars- to provide a good life for the least and greatest among us- good public schools, health care, affordable and renewable energy, clean and functional public utilities, and AIDS treatment and a food and infrastructure aid to poor nations. Because now that we have protected these lives, refused to kill, the culture of life must extend to nourishing these lives, and doing for the least of these- a Haitian or Somalian living on less than a dollar a day- as we would for our friends and loved ones. The environment comes under this heading too. People die and suffer when sea levels rise, when the air and water they breathe and drink are filthy, when there are no trees to absorb CO2 and no roots to stop erosion, mudslides, and flooding. Therefore, practicing a "culture of life" includes maintaining the environment through good stewardship and regulatory practices. A culture of life includes nourishing our culture as well, the things that make life more for us than just eating, surviving, and reproducing day in and day out, so I support public nourishment of literature, museums, the arts, public parks, et cetera. For our children, a culture of life to me demands that we take the orphaned and cast-out in our society and make sure they have loving and supportive families- and since the adopted children of homosexual couples turn out homosexual at roughly the same rate as the rest of us, I support allowing Gay couples to adopt children and to have a civil marriage, since that would help provide the option of a more stable family structure, financially and in other ways, in that segment of the population, which would improve the quality of their lives and ours.
Naturally there are conflicts here. Take abortion- in some cases, an abortion may end a life, but it may save the life of the mother. Outlawing abortion might save lives, but it would also condemn thousands of women to suffering and death because they would have them in unsafe conditions. War may be a massive and profligate waste of life, but what if fighting it has the potential to save many lives, or if not fighting it would condemn millions to death? These are questions that have to be answered by each person in his or her own way, and it's important that we respect that. For example, I think that outlawing abortion straight out would probably have ramifications too negative, in a literal and legal sense, for the quality of our lives, to make it a good idea. But other people who don't like abortion might think differently. We can have differences. But what is important is that the "culture of life" we build must extend to every person, young or old, black or white, rich or poor, and that it must extend to all of us collectively, because like it or not we are in this together. The culture of life means ensuring that the baby you protected in the womb has health care and that its mother has pre-natal care. It needs good public schools, a clean environment to live in, clean water and air, affordable power, equal access to a job, respect for its choice of sexual orientation and lifestyle as long as it is not directly harmful to someone else's life, the freedom from war, and the guarantee of mercy from a just people should it go wrong at some point. It needs an income in its retirement years, and it needs the right to die with dignity at a time of its own choosing, naturally or otherwise. The libertarian-minded among us might say that all these things should be provided by the private sector, or the person him or her self, and to a limited extent, I think we'd all agree. I'm not saying that you can't be a small-government person or even- gasp- a Republican to live by this "culture of life" idea. But you have to extend it beyond cheap platitudes to be a commitment to life and love for all people, and for me that means being on the left.