For example, it is schizophrenic to speak of the sacredness of human rights and then to deny the very right to life to a growing human being. Claiming a right to abort or terminate a terminally ill patient logically implies that some persons have the authority to determine the right of other human beings to exist and to end that existence for reasons that seem good to themselves. This leads logically to a totalitarianism of the powerful over the weak and undermines the professed adherence of Americans to the principles of democracy, which speak of inalienable rights and individual dignity. Indeed this is essentially the same principle by which the Nazis and Communists lived. The only difference is that abortionists and euthanizers currently limit the application of the principle to the unborn inconveniently present and the troublesome terminally ill. Abortionists and euthanizers can argue with the Nazis and Communists only on the extent of the application of their principles because they already embrace the principles themselves. The pope is right to ask, "How is it still possible to speak of the dignity of every human person when the killing of the weakest and most innocent is permitted?" (#20)

Another area of ambivalence or outright contradiction is how persons conduct themselves in the abortion and euthanasia debates. Politicians and private citizens try to hold themselves aloof from the conflict by saying, "I am personally opposed to these things, but I do not feel it right to impose my morality on others." The pope states that we are all necessarily involved in the clash between the culture of death and the culture of life. We have "the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life." (#28) Some maintain that in a democracy one must take into account the convictions of the majority and every politician must separate his private conscience from the formation of public policy. On the one hand according to the principles of democracy individuals claim for themselves total freedom to make moral choices; on the other, the individual politician is required to set aside his own moral convictions in the public arena. How can the state be said to recognize moral freedom when it requires setting that freedom aside at least in the public arena? This turns over individual moral responsibility to majorities. (#69) A majority political decision to kill the unborn is not a democratic decision but a tyrannical trampling on basic human rights. Crimes do not cease to be such even when legitimated by popular consent or majority opinion, e.g., eliminating non-Aryans or establishing a racially segregated society. Unless the natural law remains the basis of moral values, then morality becomes a matter of regulating opposing interests on the basis of the power of the predominant group. If majorities have the authority to shape values without reference to the universal rights of humanity, democracy becomes an empty word. The tyranny of a group is substituted for a single tyrant. (#70) Politicians have no right to cooperate in evil and so it is never permissible for them to vote for abortion and euthanasia although they may vote for measures that would minimize these things if that is all that can be accomplished in a given situation. (#73)