Guest column: 4 other ways to be pro-life

Elizabeth and Iowa have me thinking about the sacredness of life.

Elizabeth, my 6-year-old grandniece, was visiting. We wandered through the garden where I smashed a potato bug. I quickly learned that Elizabeth has strong objections to killing bugs. I explained that I was saving my potato plants from being eaten. She spied another bug and asked if we could move it on a plant I didn’t care about. We relocated it to the oats patch.

Don’t tell Elizabeth I’m back to my old habits of killing destructive bugs.

The following week Iowa passed a pro-life bill. When a heartbeat is heard, life is declared sacred.

My heart goes out to both pro-lifers and pro-choicers. I believe a fetus is more than a group of cells, more than a potato bug, but I’m not ready to push for legislation that forces rigid ideas on others.

Now if we want to advocate for pro-life ideals, I’d have some ideas.

Why not be pro-life by ending gun violence?

So far this year there have been 22,715 gun deaths — 152 of these were children ages 0 to 11 and 811 of these were teens.

Roughly 115 gun deaths occur each day. Last I thought about it, they all have heartbeats.

There have been 184 mass shootings so far this year.

Are we all pro-life enough to ban assault rifles? Are we pro-life enough to require background checks for all gun owners? Iowa had required checks on private sales of handguns, but in 2021, Iowa eliminated its handgun permit requirement.

How pro-life is that?

Why not be pro-life by being passionate about children’s well-being?

Around 7% of Iowans struggle with hunger. One in 11 children in Iowa with heartbeats face hunger.

Iowa wasn’t going to apply for a USDA program that provides food when school meals are unavailable. Forty-one organizations and more than 100 faith leaders signed letters to Gov. Reynolds and Kelly Garcia, director of the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, pushing for feeding kids. Iowa has reversed its decision and now plans to apply for food aid.

Let’s keep advocating for our kids.

Why not be pro-life by caring about the land and the environment?

Do we care how farming methods influence climate change and health?

We may not agree on what is causing climate change, but can we agree that we need to be careful about pesticide exposure?

Researchers at the University of California saw that those living near agricultural areas had an increased risk of giving birth to a baby with abnormalities. These risks are high for farmworkers and their families. Do we care about the heartbeats of fetuses exposed to chemicals?

Why not be pro-life by speaking out against cluster bombs?

Recently the United States is making plans to send cluster bombs to Ukraine. These are older ones that were used in Iraq.

Cluster bombs release smaller bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area. Their failure rate creates a danger to civilians in the years to come.

During the Laotian War, 50,000 civilians were killed by cluster bombs. Since the war’s end, about 20,000 civilians have been killed. Thousands continue to be killed, crippled, and disfigured. The victims all had heartbeats, half of them are children.

Pro-life can become an endless list. We don’t all agree on what it involves. Some of our passions call for legislation. Some of our passions are more personal preferences. I don’t think Iowa is ready to ban guns or pesticides, but that doesn’t mean some of us can’t work for improved regulations.

Let’s be pro-life in multiple ways. Let’s find ways to work for our common good. And when we don’t agree, let’s work together to find healthy compromises. Sometimes compromises can involve reluctantly relocating potato bugs.

Jane Yoder-Short lives in Kalona.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Opinion: 4 other ways to be pro-life