“Why does that child not deserve life like any one of us?”
In a moving speech on the senate floor January 24, Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) spoke on behalf of the most vulnerable of our population, the unborn. Lankford called on each senator to consider the questions: “When is a child a child?” and “When does life begin.”
The abortion debate remains heated, despite the overturn of Roe v. Wade. We saw this at the 50th annual March for Life event in Washington D.C., which brought in thousands of pro-lifers as well as a slew of pro-abortion protestors. Two days later the Women’s March came to D.C. to share its side of the abortion debate among other “pro-woman” messaging.
When MRCTV visited the March for Life this year, we found that many pro-abortion protesters didn’t understand the procedure or couldn’t even answer the question “when does life begin?” Lankford’s speech pointed out that fact.
Many people, he said, don’t stop to think or “contemplate” about the issue of when life begins. Instead they reiterate bumper sticker slogans and say things like “women’s choice,” “abortion’s legal” etc.
To help his point, Lankford turned around to his poster of a child’s sonogram and then a child who appeared to be a newborn.
I look at these two pictures right here of this child, this one’s out of the womb, this one’s five months earlier, and I ask the simple question, ‘what’s the difference between these two pictures of this child?’ The only difference between that sonogram picture in the womb and that child outside of the womb, is time. That’s it. The same DNA is in this child as in this child, the same parents, the same development. Everything’s the same. The only difference is time.
Lankford is 100% correct. Just as you and I were no different five months ago then we are today. We’re still the same person but, five months older.
The senator also brought up some counter arguments for typical pro-death talking points like “a woman has the right to choose.” He said his response he asks, “… has the right to take the life of a child at what age?” He pointed out that a child at any age is valuable and that “we as a nation have a policy of finding ways to increase the death of children” instead of “protecting the life” of children.
This prompted Lankford’s next point that he wants to make abortion unthinkable in this country. “We look past the convenience and look to this child’s face and say, ‘why does that child not deserve life like everyone of us?’ Because at its most basic level, there is no difference between any one of us and when we were at this stage right here in our mothers womb. Except for time.”
As a final remark, Lankford called on the room to consider when life begins and ask themselves, “are some children really disposable and some children valuable?”
The message was clear: all children are valuable at every stage of development.
Hopefully the senators leave feeling convicted and consider Lankford’s questions when they consider pro-life or pro-death laws in their own states and one day soon, abortion will be unthinkable.