The Catholic Church believes that a fertilized egg is a human being, and that the protection of life is an overriding public obligation. As a result, the Church opposes the death penalty as well as abortion, and supports social programs which help the poor and the powerless. You may well disagree with some or all of this, but you can’t reasonably say that it is logically inconsistent or hypocritical.
Individual CDs follow the Catholic line on being “pro-life” whether they are themselves Catholic or not. Reactionaries, on the other hand, think their overriding objective is the deterrence of immoral extramarital sex. The burdens of giving birth and supporting an unwanted child are, to them, an appropriate sanction for a sin. In other words, being “pro-life” to them has nothing to do with life itself; it is a just punishment for wayward women. Reactionaries consequently have no qualms about supporting the death penalty or cutting medical benefits for the poor.
The current conflict in the Catholic Church is between a leadership which clearly thinks that it is a mistake to place too much emphasis on preventing abortion, as opposed to protecting the interests of the born, and conservatives who view abortion as a sort of modern day holocaust, and who are willing to ally themselves politically with the Reactionaries even if it means accepting the rest of the odious Reactionary social agenda as a quid pro quo.