The second half of Christie’s emotional appeal was more offensive than the first. “I’m pro-life,” he proclaimed. “And I believe that if you’re going to be pro-life you have to be pro-life for the whole life, not just for the nine months in the womb. It’s easy to be pro-life for the nine months you’re in the womb; they haven’t done anything to disappoint us yet . . . but when they get out, that’s when it gets tough.”

This is a tired and familiar charge from the left. They are fond of saying that pro-lifers only care about babies before they’re born and not after. Good liberals, by contrast, may be fine with dismembering unborn babies, but once they’re out of the womb boy, they’re determined to give them benefits like WIC and Head Start.

This is fatuous. In the first place, no level of social-welfare support for children can morally outweigh licensed killing. Surely that’s what the unborn would say, if they had a voice. Second, the cliché about pro-lifers’ being indifferent to babies after birth is utterly fictional. This country boasts more than 2,000 crisis pregnancy centers that feature support for pregnant women and provide aid during the first year of life (and sometimes beyond) for their children. Christians, who comprise the majority of pro-life Americans, are more than twice as likely to adopt children as non-Christians. People who attend religious services at least once a week (again, assuming considerable overlap with pro-life views) are also more likely to serve as foster parents, volunteers of all kinds, and blood donors. They are also more likely to donate to charities than their secular counterparts. How does that possibly translate into not caring about the “whole life”?