The Dark Truth About Abortions The Media Tends To Hide:
Human life is sacred, the Bible teaches, because each and every human being is made in God's image. If that's true, then the taking of an innocent human life-aside from being wrong-is fundamentally contrary to the way God has created us to be. He has given every human being fundamental worth and dignity. That's not some abstract theological concept; it is morally significant. If every human being bears the imprint of the divine, then so does an unborn child from the very beginning of his or her existence. Taking that life is not just a political issue; it's immoral because it runs contrary to the morals God has set.
At the root of this perspective is the belief that since the moment sperm and egg meet, a new, genetically distinct human being comes into existence not to be considered a "potential life" but an actual one. Even in its earliest form, that life has its own identity. To ignore that is to overlook biology, morality, and for many, the truth of divine creation. A legal recognition of life at conception would affirm that every child, no matter how early in development, has the right to grow and to live out whatever purpose God has set for them.
But today, abortion is often treated very differently in the public conversation. Many voices on the political left work to "normalize" it-framing abortion not as a tragic or morally serious decision, but as a routine part of health care and personal freedom. What was once seen by many as the difficult and painful choice is increasingly framed as a matter of rights and autonomy, independent of more profound questions of life or personhood.
This tension strives further in the debate on the Born-Alive Survivors Act, a proposed U.S. law dealing with a very uncomfortable fact: some infants do survive attempted abortions. The Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act would require medical professionals present at such a birth to provide the same level of care they would give any other newborn. If a child is born alive, they must be taken to a hospital and appropriately treated; there are civil and criminal penalties otherwise. Supporters agree that this law is protection for the most vulnerable, and it helps make sure that a baby isn't left to die because they were not expected to be born.
This also connects to a more general question: where should the legal restrictions on abortion be drawn? Critics note that many on the left are unwilling to draw meaningful limits on how late in pregnancy an abortion can occur, well into the second or even third trimester. To those who consider life sacred, the lack of clear limits raises questions about how society is protecting the unborn child, especially later in pregnancy.
In some second-trimester abortions (after 18–20 weeks), doctors may use medications like potassium chloride or digoxin to stop the fetal heartbeat before the procedure. This step is usually mandated by certain state laws or policies of hospitals. It is not a part of all abortions at this stage, but rather done for later second-trimester cases as a way to comply with regulations or address specific medical concerns. The fact that such measures exist at all epitomizes the deep moral and legal tensions that surround late-term abortion, viability, and how we define or refuse to define unborn life. As of July 2025, some states that have no gestational limitations include: Alaska, Colorado, District Of Columbia, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont.
Few Democrats admit that 23 weeks is an acceptable limit because it coincides with "viability," or the time when a fetus could survive outside the womb, given some medical assistance. In this lies a contradiction in their stance. While they take the threshold of viability for medical purposes, they frequently fail to recognize that the fetus at that stage is already a human being in the moral sense of the word. Viability becomes a medical demarcation, not one recognizing life. So how does this square with the contention that the unborn child is not really a "living human being" but a "clump of cells"?
This inconsistency becomes far clearer when we consider the case of miscarriage. A miscarriage is understood as the death of a baby in the womb. But how could a miscarriage be a death if the unborn child at 10 or 12 weeks isn't a "living human being" in any meaningful moral sense? Something that is not living cannot die. For those who would deny personhood to unborn children, it becomes hard to explain why miscarriage is experienced and described as the tragic loss of a human life rather than the end of a collection of cells.
Because of such tensions, many proponents of the pro-life position argue, myself included, that unborn babies should have legal rights. Their protection shouldn't hinge on shifting medical definitions or political winds. If the unborn are truly human and alive, the law should reflect that reality. Each unborn child has inherent dignity, and that dignity deserves legal recognition.
At the heart of the pro-life argument, though, is the belief that life is sacred because we're created in God's image. Normalizing abortion degrades that sacredness. The debates over laws like the Born-Alive Survivors Act; the lack of solid restrictions on abortion; and inconsistencies in the meaning of viability versus miscarriage all point to a question greater than how our society has, so far, refused to answer: if we will not acknowledge unborn children as "living human beings," how should we understand their deaths or their survival? The answer for many is to legally and morally affirm from conception that life is valuable, even when small or early.
