My home state of Wyoming is among many others in which legislation has recently passed that will protect the smallest among us.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, 47 states introduced bills or enacted laws in 2021 to protect unborn children in some way from abortion. Nearly 550 pro-life measures came forth in state legislatures. The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute considers these “abortion restrictions,” and view 2021 as “…the most devastating antiabortion state legislative session in decades.”
However, the Susan B. Anthony List and other pro-life groups and individuals celebrated the report, stressing that these state legislatures “prove life is winning in America.”
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These state legislatures view abortion differently than those in the abortion movement - whether concerning the state or federal level - abortion is not healthcare; it is the taking a life. Therefore, these state legislators and leaders seek to protect those unborn lives - and the women who carry those pre-born children.
Recent state actions
While the federal Congress has yet to pass the introduced Born Alive Survivors Protection Act, in Wyoming, the legislature passed, and Gov. Mark Gordon (R) signed state-level Senate File 34, requiring medical care for babies born alive after an abortion. Other states, including Kentucky, South Dakota, and North Carolina, brought forth similar measures.
Additionally, state legislatures in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, and South Dakota introduced bills (and in some cases, governors signed the measures) requiring abortion providers to inform women about abortion pill reversal. Utah had passed and the governor there signed a similar bill four years ago. Governors in Wyoming and neighboring Idaho signed into law measures that prohibit public funding for abortions. Other states, such as Oklahoma and Texas, developed heartbeat bills, banning abortion upon detection of a heartbeat, or primarily at six-weeks’ gestation.
When there is a heartbeat, there is life - no matter how small
Like many children, growing up I read books created by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel). These books subtly taught important life lessons as well as entertained in rhyme and illustrations. One of the most important values I remember from the book Horton Hears a Who is that “A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
With debate about abortion as ‘health care’ or ‘a woman’s right to choose,’ the one thing I keep in mind is that even the heartbeat of something as tiny as a seed means life. We cannot live if our heart isn’t beating, and likewise, when there is a heartbeat, there is life.
Tweet This: When there is a heartbeat, there is life
When the sonographer uses the ultrasound probe and the image of a beating heart appears, it’s not the woman’s heart that is seen; it’s the heartbeat of her unborn child.
Yes, at six weeks, 12 weeks, 18 weeks, that child still needs nourishment from his or her mother, and it still needs to grow to become viable outside her womb, but that unborn child will eventually develop enough to survive outside its mother. This is not just a blob of tissue or simply part of a woman’s body – it is a unique, individual life, and when we see the ultrasound image in our pregnancy centers, we are seeing life, albeit a tiny life.
The legislative measures taken by various states in 2021 are protecting life, for the unborn baby and the pregnant woman. Informed consent, requiring abortionists to show a pregnant woman her ultrasound image, requiring abortion practitioners to provide information on abortion pill reversal, limiting abortion at a certain number of weeks, banning selective abortion, and other measures taken by these states protect the two most important people in a pregnancy: the mother and her unborn child.
That is our goal as pregnancy help organizations. We educate women so they are informed about their options, including abortion. We want them to know the truth: what abortion is and does, the potential emotional and physical side effects they could experience, and the fact a chemical abortion can be reversed at a certain point in time. Our legislators in these states are helping us accomplish these goals.
As a nation with many attempting to flaunt abortion as ‘healthcare,’ we are at a reckoning point. If the federal government will not protect the smallest of persons, or pregnant women, states must step in and become, similar to the lead character in Geisel’s Horton Hears a Who, the protector in this tragic story.
Pro-life, pro-woman
Pro-life people are not ‘anti-woman,’ as abortion activists try to paint our movement.
We are the true ‘pro-woman’ organizations, for many of our pregnancy centers provide not only medical services, but some employ counselors, resource coordinators, and well-woman medical practitioners. We offer parenting classes for women and for men. We provide baby items and abortion healing programs. We inform with truthful facts, and we educate on all pregnancy options. We serve with love, not for profit. We desire to see women thrive; we don’t want them to suffer physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.
Abortion has been documented to create trauma, such as depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, subsequent pregnancies with pre-term deliveries, future fertility issues, and more.
As part of a pregnancy help organization, I’ve spoken with women who experienced previous abortions and freely share their trauma from that experience - including side effects such as major cramping, extreme blood loss, sadness, and anxiety.
Abortion proponents don’t talk about those issues; instead, they try to sugar-coat what abortion is, including using the term ‘blob of tissue.’ Forget the heartbeat, forget the developing limbs, and brain functions, forget the fact unborn babies experience pain, or that women can experience physical and emotional trauma.
We in the pro-life movement don’t forget those things. As various states continue to act in support of women and their unborn children, we in the pregnancy resource community welcome these efforts on behalf of life, and we also cheer for the women in our care.
