The concept of the "preferential option for the poor," often seems to be used as an attempt to call out the apparent hypocrisy of pro-life, allegedly anti-labor, right-wing Christians. This is a misuse use of the phrase, that discounts the obvious fact that the unborn are poor.

St. John Paul II in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis says "concern for the poor...must not overlook that special form of poverty which consists in being deprived of fundamental human rights..."

The right to life seems one such fundamental right, one needed for the exercise of the rest.

The right to life is the entry point for all other rights, the child comes into the world, despite the wealth or poverty of the parents, as one of the poor, one the least, utterly defenseless and dependent on the charity of those privileged with means.

CST has moved from concern primarily for the worker for the sake of the family to concern for the state and on to the international community and our common home. But these latter concerns assume the presence of human life and are concerns inasmuch as they pertain to humans.

To be born is to be born a worker, for work is the expression of the human personality and the Imago Dei ("My Father is working still, and I am working"). Concern for the unborn is concern for the worker, and for the poor, and who is more marginalized than an unwanted child?

Lastly, to be born is to enter into a nested order of societies beginning with the family, ending in humanity (first in time and finally in eternity). Care for the unborn is the beginning of concern for the rest of those societies as life is the prerequisite for their existence.