My congresswoman, Mia Love, argued that “if we’re a country that decides we’re going to kill our babies, we’re good for nothing.” And I can’t in good conscience let this one slide.

I know these talking points fire up Love’s base, but they are disappointing. She conjures up images of infants lying in their cribs, with murderers coming for them. But what Love is actually talking about is abortion, the ending of pregnancy by removing an embryo or fetus before it can survive outside the uterus, 98.6 percent of which occur before viability. That’s a little different from a country going around “killing babies.”

The idea of a mother terminating her pregnancy is a sadness we don’t want to feel. But if there are circumstances in which we believe that a woman should have a choice of whether or not to continue her pregnancy, we admit that an abortion procedure does not equal murder, just as we admit there are no circumstances that would justify the actual killing of an actual human child.

If Love actually cared about human life, she would support measures that would support women’s decisions, as well as support humans who have already been born.

Alyssa Sorenson, Eagle Mountain