To the Journal editor:

Heartfelt thanks to the frontliners (including) medical staff, lab technicians, medical researchers, custodians, farmers, truckers, grocery and pharmacy staff, mask makers and countless others helping us live! Our planetary response to COVID-19 is an all-out defense of life, fighting death with extreme social, medical, and economic measures because we value living, even in this flawed world.

We want people to live simply because they’re human beings, not because we share beliefs or lifestyles. We provide extensive medical care to those helplessly sick and applaud those who defy death and recover. We’ve shown we don’t want anyone to die, so in light of such active compassion it makes no sense to abandon the most helpless, the babies developing in the womb. Every desperate patient on a ventilator, every doctor, nurse, scientist, indeed every person, was once helpless and unborn, yet allowed to live and grow.

As a global community we’re demonstrating how highly we value human life. We’re sacrificing time, personal freedoms, and livelihoods to preserve the lives of people we may never meet and whose character, quality of life, and qualifications for our sacrifice are unjudged. Against this backdrop of our deep sacrifice to keep people alive, abortion makes no sense. It flies in the face of logic.

Let’s be consistent. There’s no DNA distinction between born and unborn. We can’t predict who will enrich humanity or who will plague it. Nobody could predict how you’d turn out, yet here you are! You’re having your chance to live, and perhaps you’re now donning a mask to help others live. But it’s time to unmask abortion. Abortion is more deadly than a pandemic. Abortion extinguishes the helpless. Abortion destroys our humanity.

Let’s build up, not destroy. Let’s increase society’s valuation of and support for sustaining pregnancy, for adoption, and for healthy family life. Those facing difficult or unwanted pregnancies, and those struggling with the challenges of raising children, deserve our personal and financial support. By meeting their emotional and physical needs, we can help them triumph over fear, overcome adversity, and thrive, while also helping those most in need, the unborn members of our human race.

Every life matters. Daily we count each illness and death, moved by every loss. Our pandemic response is proof that we believe every life matters. As Dr. Seuss said, “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” so let us love and protect them all.

LAURA NEZICH

Marquette