Perry’s identification as a strong supporter of “a culture of life” and what he called the “ultimate justice” of capital punishment, however, raises some potentially thorny questions about the meaning of being “pro-life.” In campaign season, the question is whether American voters, especially voters who identify as “pro-life,” are going to raise concerns about why Perry’s position doesn’t represent what some Catholic theologians call “a consistent ethic of life,” opposition to both legalized abortion and capital punishment. A quick foray into public opinion, however, seems to indicate that Perry may be facing little pressure on this front for at least two reasons.
First, while the political catchphrase “pro-life” may appear to be straightforward, PRRI’s recent survey of Millennials, Religion, and Abortion found that a surprisingly wide array of Americans identify with the term. Strong majorities of the American public, for example, identify as both pro-choice (70 percent) and pro-life (66 percent) in the context of the debates over the legalization of abortion. And when the debate is extended beyond abortion to other moral issues such as capital punishment, the meaning of the term becomes even hazier.
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