Our new and re-elected national and state officials are once again working hard. Many of them may rehash some aspects of the abortion issue during their terms. As you observe your new leaders, ponder the following simple logic in this great debate of our time.

Is a fetus a maturing human being throughout the pregnancy, or does it become that at its birth? No human zygote has ever come out as anything other than a human, so unless we are real persons from conception, what are we before we 'become' human? Moreover, at which magical moment do we turn from a clump of cells to a human, as if by a genie? Certainly it is a baby when born, and at that instant anyone who tries to harm the infant will be pursued by the law. Should that protection not apply when the baby is half-way out? How about three seconds before? Or eight seconds? Where and how does who draw the line?

Ponder the baby kicking inside the womb. Is that not a sign of life? Just ask the mother! What is the baby just before that first kick -- the instant before its muscles develop enough and it starts thinking about getting out of there? Is it a non-living, non-human "blob" that in the next moment happens to kick with the full life and coordination of any normal infant? Of course not! One second before its first kick, it is still a baby. What about one minute before? Is it then a pile of nothing? How about an hour?

The evidence of billions of human conceptions spanning the millennia resulting in billions of human births is pretty solid support for the case that our humanity begins at conception. That is far more case studies over a far longer period of time than any science lab could accomplish!

One final thought. Under the pro-choice view, we were all once expendable fetuses in our mothers' wombs. Ponder this: just before you 'switched' into a real living being, what was there to stop your parents from ridding themselves of you? You were a false person, so aborting you would have been of no consequence. You were worthless and dispensable; they could have done anything they wanted to you. We have every moral obligation in the world to stop this evil called abortion. God inspired our parents to keep us, so we should restore and preserve the value of our children's lives, too.

Nikolas Grosfield is a published writer from Bozeman.