Abortion Is the Globe’s No. 1 Killer. We Can Help Change That 

Abortion is the leading cause of death across the globe.

That’s a surprising, devastating fact to realize. But it’s one we must contemplate on the fifty-second anniversary of Roe v. Wade. The fact that that odious ruling was overturned in 2022 does not nullify the ongoing need for events like the upcoming as Sanctity of Life Sunday (January 19) and the annual March for Life (January 24).

There is nothing to celebrate, of course, about the fact that 73 million babies worldwide were aborted in 2024, according to the World Health Organization — a number we know we can trust, sadly, since WHO is hardly a bastion of conservative thought and deed. One million of those preborn children were slain here in the U.S. – even after the overturning of Roe.

For worldwide perspective, an estimated 10 million people died from cancer in 2024, 6.2 million died from smoking, 17 million from disease, and two million of HIV/AIDS. Homicides accounted for about half a million deaths. Add in other causes of demise such as suicide and traffic accidents, and abortion still adds up to more than everything else combined.

Takes your breath away, doesn’t it?

Use Your Words

But here are a few dollops of hope.

In November’s election, voters in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota voted down major pro-abortion proposals in their states. Pro-life pregnancy resource centers across the country, in cities big and small, offer free ultrasounds and other support services to abortion-minded women that have helped more than 56% of those considering abortion to choose life.

And these clinics don’t end their support for life when a baby is born. They help women secure such things as jobs, housing, vehicles, and insurance.

So how can we join the cause for life? Casting our ballots at election time for pro-life candidates and bills that uphold the sanctity of life is certainly critical. But the most profound way we can help is by adding our voices to those declaring that a preborn baby is not just “a clump of cells.”

The culture has gotten too comfortable using antiseptic scientific terms to dehumanize a child in the womb. We can counter that by speaking the simple truth that preborn life is just that: life, created in the image of God (Genesis 1:23). And created by God — intimately so — as Psalm 139:13-14 makes poignantly and powerfully clear:

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Words Have Meaning

The organization I work for, Focus on the Family, has created a tool to help convince those in our spheres of influence of this truth. Take a look at this commercial, “It’s a Baby,” then share it widely.

The power of the ad lies in its logic. Watch someone see it for the first time. More often than not, you’ll hear them chuckling during the first 50 seconds – because they’re hearing parents-to-be avoid using the word “baby” when they find out they’re pregnant, when they see their child for the first time on ultrasound, and when they’re discussing the names they’ve picked out as possibilities. We laugh because that’s not how people talk about life in the womb in those moments.

People only stop calling it a “baby” in moments when they want to deemphasize the humanity of the life in the womb. And even then, the truth can seep through in the most unexpected of places.

Just check out the Mayo Clinic’s website. In an article taking prospective parents through the weekly development of their child, the word “baby” is used to describe that child 37 times, from the moment of fertilization on. And that’s just in this one article guiding moms and dads through the first trimester! Our country’s most heralded medical institution knows it’s a baby; by using the correct, human terminology, we can help more of our fellow Americans understand that, too.

Yet we must remember, when having discussions with those who disagree that “it’s a baby,” we need to aim to disagree without being disagreeable. Commit to discussing the subject, even with the attendant ideological heat surrounding it, with the goal of offering reasoned arguments that change minds — not insults that close them.

Because in the end, changed minds are more effective than changed laws in building a culture of life in which abortion is no longer the leading cause of death.

Gary Schneeberger is the assistant to the president for media relations at Focus on the Family.