The late Cardinal Bernardin indeed did not intend for the consistent life ethic to mean that all life-related issues are equally important. In fact, here is what he told the National Catholic Register in an interview in 1988: "I don't see how you can subscribe to the consistent ethic and then vote for someone who feels that abortion is a 'basic right' of the individual." He went on to say, “I know that some people on the left, if I may use that label, have used the consistent ethic to give the impression that the abortion issue is not all that important anymore, that you should be against abortion in a general way but that there are more important issues, so don’t hold anybody’s feet to the fire just on abortion. That’s a misuse of the consistent ethic, and I deplore it.”
You're welcome, Josh. I think the reason many people view life-related issues as equally important is that it gives them a reason to continue supporting the Democratic Party, which Cardinal Raymond Burke once lamented "risks transforming itself definitively into a 'party of death' due to its choices on bioethical issues."
consistent ethic and then vote for someone who feels that abortion is a
'basic right' of the individual." He went on to say, “I know that some people on the left, if I may use that label, have used the consistent ethic to give the impression that the abortion issue is not all that important anymore, that you should be against abortion in a general way but that there are more important issues, so don’t hold anybody’s feet to the fire just on abortion. That’s a misuse of the consistent ethic, and I deplore it.”