As a resident of West Virginia, I am proud that our state legislature not only passed the “Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act,” I am proud that they passed it, then overrode the governor’s veto to make it state law.

Why is this an important bill?

The picture in this post is of a baby boy named David that died by miscarriage at 7 weeks old. What is immediately obvious by looking at the picture is that the unborn child is…a living human being! It is easy to identify arms, legs, the head, and the eyes beginning to form. The fact that this child, before he died through miscarriage, had a heartbeat makes it clear that it is a living child.

A recent article commenting on this story shares the words of the mother in the wake of her loss:

“I had a miscarriage on Palm Sunday last year. We think he was a boy and named him David Raphael. My only prayer when the doctor told me at 11 weeks that my baby had died a month earlier (at 7 weeks gestation), was that I would have something to bury. The doctor said he would either be too small to find or that his fragile body would be crushed in the miscarriage process and there wouldn’t be anything left. On Palm Sunday afternoon he came out. The entire sac was in tact and there he was still floating in the amniotic water. I took a picture so I wouldn’t forget that moment and how God answered my prayer. I think it would be an amazing photo to show people contemplating abortion. Even though he was only 7 weeks when he died, you can see his little arms and legs forming. My 4 year old was looking through my phone when I wasn’t looking one day and found the picture. He came up to me with it and asked me whose baby it was. Even a child can tell that at 7 weeks, the fetus is a little person.”

What I can’t get around is that if such complex life was found on Mars it would be hailed in newspapers the next morning as “Life Found on Mars!” everyone would rave about finding life on another planet and want to do anything and everything to protect that life. Similarly, great lengths are taken to protect the lives of endangered animals, and even plants. And yet, somehow, some people will look at this and willfully ignore the fact that it is life and say it’s not worth protecting.

The governor of West Virginia did just that. He decided to play partisan politics with the unborn and veto the 20 week abortion bill. He did so while claiming to be pro-life; a claim he should be prohibited from using anymore. If a 4-year-old intuitively knows that this is in fact an unborn baby, I can’t help but wonder why we are conditioning people to ignore what we already know to be inherently true. How is it that a 4 year-old has a greater grasp of science and the truth than a grown governor?

I’m thankful the 20 week abortion ban passed in West Virginia. This image is of a 7 week old child, just imagine how real, living, and human a 20 week old child is. There is no doubt in my mind that the unborn deserve every protection given to every other person. If our governor can’t see that perhaps he isn’t the right person for the job of governor; or senator.