OPINION
Kimberly Ells
Kimberly Ells is the author of The Invincible Family. Follow her at Invincible Family Substack.
One of the first headlines that greeted me at the turn of the new year was this:
“Abortion Was the Leading Cause of Death Worldwide in 2023”
This statistic grabbed my attention as if I had tripped over a landmine. The leading cause of death last year was the intentional killing of babies. And the total estimated number of babies killed last year alone was 73 million.
LifeNews explained the data:
When contrasting the abortion numbers to other causes of death, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, traffic accidents and suicide, abortions far outnumbered every other cause. By contrast, an estimated 10 million people died from cancer in 2023, 6.2 million from smoking, 17 million from disease, and 2 million died of HIV/AIDS. Deaths by malaria and alcohol are also recorded.
LifeNews continued:
With 67.1 million people dying last year from a cause other than abortion and 140 million people dying in total from abortion and all causes, that means abortions accounted for almost 52% of every death around the world last year.
This may be the biggest epidemic of death occurring from a single cause in one year ever recorded, except the flood documented in the book of Genesis, which left less than a dozen people on the face of the earth.
The next most deadly epidemic since ancient times was the Black Death, which rocked Europe and surrounding areas from 1346 to 1353. This blight of death was caused by bacteria initially spread by fleas. It caused the deaths of roughly 50 per cent of Europe’s population, an estimated 25 to 50 million people. It took seven years to reach these horrifically high death tolls. The modern world managed to top this death toll in one year, on purpose.
For additional perspective, the World Health Organization reports that the total estimated number of people to date who have died of COVID worldwide is 3 million. The WHO says their numbers may be low because of difficulties in collecting data. Even if these calculations are off by a factor of 10 (an absurd margin of error) the number of COVID deaths would still amount to less than half the number of babies who were killed through abortion last year alone.
Generations weeping
Upon hearing that 73 million babies were purposely exterminated in the last 12 months, I thought of the millions of parents in the generations before us who wept over the babies they lost to disease, exposure, and starvation.
If we had told all those broken parents and the scientists, doctors, researchers, and philanthropists who have worn out their lives since then finding ways to reduce the number of babies who die every year that the leading cause of death in the year 2023 would be the intentional killing of babies, I expect the idea would have been inconceivable to them.
It is becoming clear that we are living through the bloodiest era of terror the world has ever known. But few seem to notice or care. Because the victims are thrown out with yesterday’s trash, no one has to see the tiny faces and the lacerated limbs of the dead.
Because there are no daily death count tolls scrolling across our phones and TV screens, we pretend that no one is dying, and that no one is killing them. But they are. We go on pretending that it’s normal to turn mothers into takers of life instead of makers of life. But it isn’t.
Saving lives
It’s fascinating that even as we diligently seek to cure cancer, reduce suicide, help people stop smoking, encourage people not to drive drunk, develop medications to combat AIDS, and make laws that require people to wear seatbelts and bike helmets all in the name of “saving lives,” we do not see widespread support for the thing that would save more people than all these efforts combined.
Laws protecting life in the womb are important, but I’m talking about something else, something deeper than that. We are now reaping the consequences of normalising sex outside the parameters of marriage, and this is what it looks like: 73 million dead babies.
The data indicates that the vast majority of babies aborted are the children of unmarried parents. It is not difficult to understand that if a man is not committed to a woman, he is unlikely to want to commit to a child born of her. Studies indicate (and common sense concurs) that when a woman feels supported in her pregnancy — by the father of her baby and by other people who care — she is far less likely to seek abortion. Most mothers who abort don’t really want to kill their babies; they want to be supported and loved by the fathers of their children.
In short, chastity saves lives. Millions of them.
Hollywood, porn companies, and television producers have spent a great deal of money and screen time convincing us that having sexual relationships outside marriage is normal, expected, and utterly no big deal. But it is a big deal. It’s a big deal to women, to men, to babies, and to all the families and potential families of the world.
If the pro-life movement truly wants to save lives, it must become a pro-marriage, pro-chastity, pro-family movement. And when marriage does not happen, babies must be welcomed anyway, and mothers must be supported no matter what.
So, yes, tell Hollywood what you want by the content you pay for, but perhaps more importantly, tell your family about the value of babies, the value of virtue, the value of mothers, the value of fathers, the value of marriage, and the shear wonder of family. Let’s speak the truth loud and clear that sex is meant to happen within marriage.
Though marriages sometimes falter, though babies take tons of work, and though families are never perfect, tell your children and grandchildren that marriage and family are GOOD anyway. Tell them that having children didn’t ruin your life. Tell them that getting married and having children made your life far more fulfilling, loads more fun, and infinitely more grand.
Let’s see what we can do about turning that horrific statistic around, one family at a time.