To the Journal editor:

If you are reading this, “Thou art not a squid!” What I mean is, humans don’t have three hearts, like a squid does. Humans have one heart per person, unless you’ve had a heart transplant. Nonetheless, one heart, at a time, per person.

So when a new heartbeat begins within a woman’s body, guess what? That’s a new person! Two human heartbeats equals two distinct human bodies. Science! Truth is truth.

It’s also true that a woman can choose what she does with her body, except as it infringes upon the rights of another somebody. That’s something we’re pretty big on in this country. “It’s my right!” Yes, and every distinct person has the unalienable right to life.

So, what can a woman choose? Women can choose to give birth but not raise the child, by allowing adoption; choose relationships responsibly, knowing the potential for conception; choose to hold men accountable for shouldering their share of the responsibility of raising children they procreate, reducing financial stress.

Also, the community has choices. We can choose to support, financially, emotionally, and culturally, women who are struggling with pregnancies. Culturally, we need to improve acceptance, medical care, and financial security for pregnant women. We need to salute the generosity of adoption. We need to offer counseling when violent acts cause pregnancy. We need to support women who choose to carry a baby to term, and offer more support, if necessary, for raising the child.

Let’s recognize that women are heroic, really, when they unselfishly offer life to another. It is actually a great humanitarian act to offer 9 months of your life caring for another individual so that they may live, perhaps for another 100 years! Celebrate that, instead of the violence of abortion.

Maybe a surprise pregnancy seems all wrong, unfair, impossibly inconvenient, a catastrophe. But ending the life of an innocent person, no matter how many hours, weeks, or months old, is utterly wrong. And two wrongs have never put anything right again.

You have one heart. Let it be a heart with room for the innocents.