If you haven’t yet, take a look at the figures sometime—they’re quite staggering. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regularly releases a surveillance report indicating the number of abortions performed in the U.S. each year. The most recent data indicates that in 2014, 652,639 abortions were performed in the United States; in other words, 186 abortions per 1,000 live births. This works out to be over one a minute.

Two Sundays ago I spoke at the Chicago March for Life, where several thousand people gathered to celebrate life and speak out on behalf of the thousands of unborn lives lost in America each year.

If you haven’t yet, take a look at the figures sometime—they’re quite staggering. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regularly releases a surveillance report indicating the number of abortions performed in the U.S. each year. The most recent data indicates that in 2014, 652,639 abortions were performed in the United States; in other words, 186 abortions per 1,000 live births. This works out to be over one a minute.

Stop and think about that.

Roe v. Wade was only one example of our nation saying one thing while practicing another. We say we care about justice. We say we care about the protection of rights. Our founders themselves sent a letter to the King of England telling of their belief in the concept of God-given, inalienable human rights that no political leader had the power to strip away.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, according to the signers of that notorious declaration, were central to the American identity.

But still, despite these many ideological commitments, we live in a nation where the defenseless are discarded. The unborn are often euphemistically called tissue or formless clumps of cells instead of the human beings that Scripture—and science—tells us they are.

Life Matters

Weaved throughout the Bible is a narrative of God’s love and grace shown to sinners. But we mustn’t miss another important theme: God is our Creator. As our heavenly Father, he knows our hearts and numbers the very hairs on our heads. Amidst our deep fears of inadequacy and nagging insecurities, he calls us his beloved—a reflection of his own image.

While this might be a radical, revolutionary thought to many living in our world, Christians must declare the truth: what the Creator makes is always good. He doesn’t make mistakes; there are no lives he couldn’t love or stories he wouldn’t redeem.

Every human being, from the child with Down syndrome to the senior citizen with Parkinson’s disease to the unborn infant, is deeply loved and intimately known. All are created in the image of God—and this is why we march.

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