When the Means Undermine the End

An introductory course in moral theology will include that the end does not justify the means. It’s a basic Catholic principle. Doing a wicked thing for a good end is not permissible. Is it more than a moral principle though? Does it also apply in politics? Recent news on immigration and abortion—two issues of particular interest to Catholics—suggest that it does.

The principle can be stated more precisely. The end must in some sense justify the means; if it wasn’t for the end, there would be no need for means. We make such decisions in ordinary life all the time. Is it worth the bother of going to the supermarket (the means) to buy food (the end)? Probably not just for spinach, but certainly for the weekly groceries. But there is no moral question there.

A good end does not justify any means, and if the means are morally impermissible, the goodness of the end does not change that. That analysis lies behind moral teaching on IVF, an issue raised in the commentary surrounding the recent March for Life in Washington, D.C., given the Trump administration’s policy of expanding IVF access.

Does the principle also have a political application? Do poorly chosen means have an adverse impact on public opinion, on the potential to galvanize opposing reactions?

Immigration has returned to prominence after the killing of a second American citizen in Minneapolis by federal agents. The consuming controversy forced the Trump administration to back away from the signature means of its deportation policy: the mass deployment of ICE and border patrol agents in urban centers. Roughly three thousand such agents were sent into the streets of Minneapolis; seven hundred have now been withdrawn. For comparison, the Minneapolis police force has about six hundred officers.

The desired end of deporting the “worst of the worst,” illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes, enjoys broad popular support. It’s the only major policy of the Trump administration that is popular—not an insignificant consideration when the president and his other key policies are as unpopular as Donald Trump is.

As to the chosen means? Large margins oppose masked, heavily armed agents in the streets, entering homes without judicial warrants, stopping people without probable cause, demanding to see papers, making legal immigrants and citizens fearful of going to school, church, or work. It is likely that large margins find at least off-putting the videos the government itself posts on social media of its tactics, reveling in the shackled men shuffling along, not altogether unlike the public display of chain gangs along the highways in previous generations. Certainly off-putting are the lies the president and his most senior officials have told about Renee Good and Alex Pretti for political ends, such as that Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” an officer, or that Pretti was an “assassin.”

From the very beginning of his first presidential campaign, Trump has chosen immigration as his primary issue, protecting the homeland, he claimed, from an illegal inundation of murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, and the mentally ill. It has been politically potent. Yet now he is underwater in the polls on immigration. Even some of his allies, customarily supine, have criticized him. 

A popular end has been undermined by unpalatable means. 

Twenty-five years ago, Republicans spoke of immigration enforcers as “stormtroopers” (Rudy Giuliani) and “jackbooted thugs” (Tom DeLay) when aggressive tactics were employed by a Democratic administration. It turns out that killing citizens under a Republican administration is also bad politics. 

The day before the vice president and his colleagues were defending the shooting of Alex Pretti, JD Vance addressed the March for Life. He praised the Trump administration’s pro-life record. Yet there was murmuring in the pro-life community, mostly because of the administration’s support for the abortion pill, the preferred means for most abortions. And there was murmuring because, since Dobbs, abortions have increased on a national level. The means of Dobbs has produced the end of more abortions.

Is it the case of a good end—overturning Roe—being accomplished by means that produced a political backlash, which in turn led to more abortions? 

After Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell decided—with wide support in the pro-life community—that the Republicans would neither hold a hearing nor vote on Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. It was a historic refusal by the Senate. McConnell argued that it was a presidential election year, and it would be more democratic to wait for the winner of the election to make the nomination. Trump won, nominated Neil Gorsuch, and the Senate Republicans confirmed him.

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September 2020, less than two months before the presidential election, the Republican senators—with wide support in the pro-life community—pushed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett in a month’s time. McConnell’s 2016 argument for waiting no longer applied. 

Roe was overturned 5–4. If Garland had been on the Court at the time of Dobbs, it likely would not have been overturned. If whomever, after the 2020 election, Joe Biden would have nominated to replace Ginsburg had been on the Court, Roe likely would have survived. Supporters of Roe felt that the nakedly inconsistent application of McConnell’s principle was a simple power play to serve pro-life ends. 

Were those chosen means—refusing Garland but accelerating Barrett—part of the reason that abortion policy since Dobbs has led to more abortions? Were the decisions of the Biden administration and the large pro-abortion states—California, New York, Illinois—to promote telemedicine and abortion pills to make abortions easier to get, including in anti-abortion states, a response to what they regarded as hypocritical tactics to overturn Roe?

Voters seemed to agree, defeating the pro-life side every time in subsequent statewide referenda, including red states like Kansas and Ohio. In Florida, enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution prevailed 57–43, but did not meet the required threshold of 60 percent.

Politically unpopular means can undermine the desired end. America’s abortion and immigration politics seemed to have confirmed that ends and means are not only a moral principle.

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