While I am in agreement with Carrie Bass on the need to heavily weigh presidential candidates’ abortion views this election, I write as a man who will vote pro-life.

An enduring principle of America has been the sanctity of life. National forefathers perceived the right to a life of religious freedom as crucial enough to brave the Atlantic Ocean and forge a new world. Our predecessors viewed the right to a free life worth the outpouring of at least 618,000 lives to end slavery. Our grandparents and great-grandparents saw the right to an equal life important enough to risk being disowned, imprisoned and even killed until years of protest brought women the right to vote in 1920 and struck down racial segregation in 1954.

Now another question of life has been raised: Should we extend to the unborn this same view of equal, sacred life as an inalienable right? Roe v. Wade, avoiding the tough question of when life begins, resolved that the child was granted rights as a living being only after becoming “viable” — capable of living outside the mother’s womb on its own.

Most dissenting views against Roe v. Wade come from the enduring historical debate asking when the child is alive. Scarily, medical analyses of life-like behavior return an ever-diminishing value: A baby is full-term within 38 weeks, responsive to its mother’s touch within 26 weeks and bears a heartbeat within 40 days.

Even somehow setting that aside, here’s what few vocalize: Tragically, studies have shown that women post-abortion are 4.7 percent more likely to suffer breast cancer, 90 percent are likely to report psychological trauma, 96 percent are likely to report they feel they took a human life and seven times more likely to commit suicide than women post-birth.

At the very least, we should postpone abortion until science and law defines life’s commencement; at the very worst, we are a nation of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” — and 48 million silent murders since 1973. In my mind, absolutely nothing justifies taking that risk.

I entreat you to choose life. Your mom did.

David Rempfer

Computer science junior