The past century was the bloodiest the world has ever seen. It is not hard to list off the atrocities of Nazi Germany or to recall the millions of Russians who died under the Soviet Union. That does not even scratch the surface. There was Chairman Mao in China who slaughtered millions of Chinese. It was such a bloody century that smaller genocides like the Armenian genocide by the Turks slips through the cracks in our mind. But the greatest atrocity of the twentieth century is one that continues to this day. It is one that our society and the state of Iowa participates in. The greatest atrocity is abortion. On a global scale the atrocity of abortion makes all these other atrocities pale in comparison.
Throughout the world abortion is the single largest cause of death for infants. It is estimated that about 73 million babies are aborted per year. UNICEF has estimated that the total number of babies born in the world in 2023 was 134 million. If those numbers are accurate, that means that there were about 207 million pregnancies and 34% of those babies were aborted globally last year. There were about 200,000 abortions every day last year. That devastation that abortion wreaks annually on the world is greater than the most violent dictators of the last century.
America is a part of this atrocity. In America, the single largest cause of death for infants is abortion. There were an estimated 930,000 abortions in the United States in 2020. In 2020 there were 3.6 million babies that were born. That means there were more than 4.5 million pregnancies that would have gone to full term in 2020. 20% of those babies were aborted in 2020. 1 out of every 5 babies were aborted in 2020 in the United States of America.
Iowa participates in this catastrophe with America. We have not yet outlawed abortion. Although I hope the heartbeat bill helps, I have my doubts. Abortions via medication are on the rise, with perhaps as many as two-thirds of all abortions being performed via medication according to the Guttmacher Institute. In Iowa we still permit the operation of abortion clinics, and we still permit abortion pills to be sold. Because of that we are complicit in this travesty that is occurring throughout the world: we are participating in the single greatest atrocity of the past century.
But we can stop being accomplices to this atrocity this year. There is a path we can take that repents of our participation in this travesty and which sets a pattern other states can imitate so that we can outlaw abortion at last. Representative Zach Dieken in the Iowa State Legislature is putting forth a bill of equal protection which states that life begins at conception and is protected from conception until natural death. This law calls abortion murder and inserts into our law code the necessary verbiage that will protect the lives of the unborn in our state. Christians in America have prayed for this opportunity for decades and now it is here right in front of us. We have the opportunity in Iowa to end abortion. Let us contact our state representatives and ask them to vote for this equal protection bill and protect the lives of our unborn neighbors.
