I want to talk about pro-life laws, but first I want to talk about a high school friend. I won’t share her name—we’ll call her Denise.

When I was in high school, abortion rates were close to their all-time highs, with rates more than double what they are today. While the practice obviously wasn’t universal when a classmate got pregnant, it was often expected. In fact, there were times when the expectation bordered on an outright demand.

Denise was (and is!) extremely smart, extremely capable, and was obviously going places. Her senior year, she got pregnant, and—quite frankly—everyone panicked. She was allegedly ruining her future, ruining her reputation, and bringing a child into the world with a teen father who no one thought could be a responsible dad. 

The “solution” was obvious. Abort the child. The pressure on her was intense. It came from friends, from family, and even from parents. And—here’s the crucial part—no one, not one single person, who demanded that she abort her baby argued to her that abortion was killing a human being. That it was “worth it” for her child to die.