Author: Amber Roseboom, President of Right to Life of Michigan
Original date: February 13, 2025

Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and love is in the air, so they say.

Americans may spend as much as 26 billion dollars on Valentine’s gifts this year, according to the National Retail Federation. That includes an estimated 145 million Valentine’s Day cards, 250 million roses, and 36 million boxes of chocolates! Rom Coms, cards, candlelit dinners and chocolates, admittedly, are welcome treats. But it begs the question, what is love? We use the term loosely these days. I love pizza. I love traveling. I love…

St. Thomas Aquinas said, “To love is to will the good of the other.” Love isn’t about satisfying a need for ourselves. It is about seeking the good for the other person.

There is a reason 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is often read at weddings. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Self-sacrificing love brings true happiness.

Yet abortion advocates continue to peddle a lie that perverts truth and twists love into something destructive. Consider a few recent examples:

Of course, there is no question that abortion is ending the life of the unborn child.

Comedian Bill Maher said on his show, about abortion and pro-lifers, “I can respect the absolutist position. I really can. I scold the Left when they say, ‘Oh, you know what, they just hate women, people who aren’t pro-choice.’ They don’t hate women. They just made that up… They think it’s murder and it kind of is. I’m just OK with that… That’s my position on it… is that not your position if you’re pro-choice? (discussion continues) You said you’re pro-choice…that’s your position too.” The crowd and his guests were largely silent.

In the pro-life movement, we know love looks different.

Love is doing everything we can as a society to help women make a choice for life. This includes expanding prenatal and postnatal care, reaching deep into our communities with the truth about abortion, showing compassion to women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant in each and every instance, and connecting them to a local Pregnancy Resource Center to help provide the myriad of support they may need, including free medical care, clothing, food, confidential counseling and more. Love is welcoming into our arms the post-abortive women seeking healing, mercy, and forgiveness and helping them find a future filled with new hope.

Our movement is woven together by countless stories of self-sacrificing love, stories which I’ll save for another time. For now, I want to tell you what practical love looks like from our vantage point at Right to Life of Michigan moving forward. We are:

• The present and future must be met with new strategies and tactics on behalf of the cause for life, and that’s exactly what we’re committed to doing!

Together, we can show Americans what true love is all about!