Politics
The Least of These
If protecting children is the principle, it should show up everywhere children die or go hungry. A consistency test, using Utah’s own record.
The argument
“Pro-life” is a moral claim, and a serious one: the lives of children matter more than convenience, cost, or politics. This page does not argue with that claim. It takes it at its word and asks where else it should lead.
If protecting children is the principle, it should be just as loud where children die from guns and where they go hungry as it is at the start of a pregnancy. Utah’s record shows a principle applied in some places and set aside in others, and the Book of Mormon has already answered the usual reason why.
1. The Church’s position, stated fairly
Church of Jesus Christ, official statement on abortion
[T]he Church opposes elective abortion for personal or social convenience, and counsels its members not to submit to, perform, encourage, pay for, or arrange for such abortions.
It then allows exceptions: when pregnancy results from rape or incest, when “the life or health of the mother is in serious jeopardy,” or when “the fetus has severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.”
Read the statementThat is a more careful position than many people assume, and it should be said at the start. The question here is not whether this position is right. It is whether the value behind it, protecting children, is applied the same way everywhere else.
2. What kills American children and teens
In 2020, firearms passed car crashes as the leading cause of death for Americans ages 1 to 19, and they have stayed there. In 2021, the CDC counted 4,733 firearm deaths in that age group, against 4,048 from motor vehicle crashes.
Definitions matter here, and the honest version includes them. The 1-to-19 group includes 18- and 19-year-olds, who are a large share of the deaths, and it leaves out infants. For the very youngest children, guns are not the top cause. For ages 0 to 17 in 2024, firearms and car crashes were tied. PolitiFact rated the claim “Mostly True” for exactly these reasons.
Even with every caveat, the United States accounts for 97% of child and teen gun deaths among its peer countries combined, according to KFF.
3. Hungry kids, in Utah
Here Utah’s record is better than its critics say, and that comes first.
- In 2025 Utah expanded free lunch. HB100, sponsored by a Republican, Rep. Tyler Clancy, and signed by Governor Spencer Cox, made lunch free for about 40,000 students who had been paying the reduced price, and banned “lunch shaming”: special buttons or different-colored trays that mark which kids cannot pay.
- Universal free meals did not pass. A bill to make breakfast and lunch free for every public school student died in a Senate committee the same year.
- The summer program comes and goes. Summer EBT, called SUN Bucks, gives families $120 per eligible child to buy food over the summer, with the state paying half the administrative cost. Utah stayed out in 2024, joined in 2025, and stayed out again in 2026, one of 13 states that chose not to take part. The state’s own site now says: “SUN Bucks will not be offered in the summer of 2027.”
The usual objection is that the poor brought it on themselves. The Book of Mormon has a king answer that objection in almost those words.
Mosiah 4:17–19, King Benjamin speaking
Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food … But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent … For behold, are we not all beggars?
And the hungry here are children, who did not bring anything on themselves.
Read Mosiah 4One more pairing, from outside Utah, because it makes the test plain. In June 2025 Texas signed into law a requirement for the Ten Commandments to be posted in every public school classroom (SB 10, in effect September 1, 2025). In 2026 Texas was also one of 13 states that turned down the summer food program for children, the same $120 per child described above (FRAC). The commandments go on the wall. Jesus’s words from the same Bible, “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat” (Matthew 25:35), do not make it into the budget.
4. Executions
Church of Jesus Christ, official statement on capital punishment
a matter to be decided solely by the prescribed processes of civil law. We neither promote nor oppose capital punishment.Read the statement
The United States carried out 47 executions in 2025 and 30 in 2026 through October 7, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In October 2026 the Pentagon announced it would carry out the execution of the Fort Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, by firing squad in December, and livestream it. That was the plan as of October 12, 2026.
A person can believe the guilty may be executed and the innocent must be protected, and many do. But it is worth noticing that the Church takes a firm position on one kind of killing and declines to take any on another.
5. The test, side by side
Where the principle shows up
The same value, protecting life, at five points.
| Where children’s lives are at stake | The usual political answer |
|---|---|
| Before birth | A firm moral line, written into law |
| Guns, the leading cause of death for children and teens | Rights come first; the deaths are a separate problem |
| School lunch | Expanded in 2025; universal meals refused |
| Summer food for kids | Turned down for 2026 and 2027 |
| Executions | No position |
Each row is sourced in the sections above
What is true on the other side
- Members give enormously. The Church says it provides “over a billion dollars annually to humanitarian and welfare efforts,” and members fast and donate every month. A great deal of feeding happens outside government, through bishops and storehouses.
- Innocent and guilty are different. Protecting the unborn and executing a murderer are consistent if the principle is protecting innocent life. That is a coherent position.
- Guns are not one problem. Most of the deaths are older teens, and many are suicides. Gun owners can fairly say the answer is not obvious.
- Utah did act. HB100 was a real expansion, passed by Republicans.
The common rebuttals
“Charity should come from people, not the government.”
Then the test is whether the charity reaches every hungry child. The summer program Utah declined would have reached children whose families never ask a bishop. If private giving reached every hungry child, the summer program would have nobody left to reach.
“Gun deaths are a mental health problem, not a gun problem.”
Many are suicides, and mental health is part of it. But other wealthy countries have teenagers with the same struggles. The United States accounts for 97% of the combined child and teen gun deaths in its peer countries (KFF, 2019 and 2021 data).
“You are comparing different issues.”
Yes, on purpose. The principle claims to be about children’s lives. A principle about children’s lives is tested wherever children die.
What this means
None of this makes the abortion position wrong. It asks whether the value underneath it is the value that is actually driving the politics.
If the principle is protecting children, it should be loudest where the most children are dying. Right now it is loudest in the one place where it asks the least of the people who hold it.