On the last Saturday in January, I stood with several hundred of my fellow Utahns on the plaza at the Utah State Capitol. Bundled up against the frigid cold, we heard a handful of courageous pro-life warriors declare self-evident truths about the precious nature of all lives—great and small— from a podium atop the Capitol steps. This year’s annual March for Life was as inspiring as ever as each speaker delivered powerful and heartfelt remarks about the great work accomplished over the past year by a growing army of volunteers. We cheered and clapped when it was announced that 141 babies were saved in 2024 through their heroic efforts, twice the number saved in 2023. Hearing the incredible stories behind several of these miraculous “saves” left me in tears, as usual, which is why this event is always a highlight of my year.

While standing in the crowd, listening to one inspiring message after another, a question dropped into my head, “What would I say if I were standing at that pulpit right now?” Though I have attended countless Pro-Life rallies in my life, that thought had never occurred to me before. Almost immediately, after pondering what I would share if it were me on those steps, the recent words of a famous pro-life blogger came forcefully to mind. Right then, I knew I would share one or two key points of his inspired address.

For background: on December 13, 2024, commentator and blogger Matt Walsh delivered a speech at “The American Principles Project Christmas Ball,” which has since been hailed as “the pro-life movement’s most powerful defense ever.” By all accounts, this is an accurate assessment, considering how deftly he dismantled the amoral foundation of the entire pro-abortion movement in less than fifteen minutes.

In the weeks leading up to the rally, I had already listened to his speech multiple times, so it was no surprise that it flooded my brain so quickly as an answer to my self-imposed question. What did surprise me, though, was my very next thought, which came right on its heels—a verse from King Benjamin’s epic sermon. After pondering the connection between the two thoughts for a minute, I realized that King Benjamin’s words expanded Walsh’s premise, adding another layer of profundity that made his argument even more powerful, timely, and universally applicable.

The title of Walsh’s speech is “The Two Greatest Dangers Facing Our Children.” The first great danger, he asserts, is the trans-ideology movement and the destruction it has wreaked on too many of our young people. He spends about ten minutes deconstructing the hollow, nonsensical arguments that prop up that deceitful campaign of lies. Then he pivots to what he deems as the second, but more perilous, great danger: the pro-abortion movement and their fatally flawed arguments, which have resulted in the deaths of over sixty million innocent babies—more than any genocide or plague this world has ever endured. Their most inherently flawed argument posits that an unborn baby is not a person but merely a clump of cells. And because this clump of cells is dependent upon another being for survival, it lacks all inherent worth or dignity. Walsh then highlights the glaring holes of that distorted view with this,

“There is no way to get around the fundamental fact that the pro-abortion movement wishes to deny the humanity of the unborn, the personhood of the unborn. The pro-abortion advocate will try to say, “But the child is not a person because it is still developing and entirely dependent upon his mother for survival, and this, he’ll say, means the baby lacks some kind of moral standing.”

But this view, that personhood is acquired by degree and that it is forfeit if dependent on someone else for survival, clearly implicates more than the unborn. It would seem the sick, the infirm, the disabled, and the elderly all get caught up in this de-personing net. By this line of reasoning, all of these people have, at a minimum, slightly less personhood. If personhood is on a spectrum, if it’s contingent, then by this logic, we have “de-personed” many categories of persons, which is a feature, not a bug, of pro-abortion logic.

You know, they intend to whittle away at both ends of life, the young and the old, un-personing one subject after another until the right to life has been extinguished for all but the privileged few.”

Walsh continues hammering away at this fatally flawed logic, making several more compelling points that effectively relegate the pro-abortionists’ reasoning to the nearest trash bin.

However, for my speech, after reciting the obvious problems with systematically de-personing people based on their dependence on another person for survival, most especially babies who are still dependent upon their mothers, I would add the following from King Benjamín’s sermon about what actual dependence is for every living being; born or unborn.

“I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another –I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.” Mosiah 2:21

King Benjamin’s eloquent description of our reliance upon our Creator is a humbling reminder to all people everywhere that from the very beginning of our existence, an ever-loving Creator has been preserving us day to day, providing us with the air we breathe so we can live and move, and supporting us from one moment to the next.

 Does that not precisely describe what every mother provides to the precious baby in her womb?

And yet, it is because of that set of facts, not despite them, that the pro-abortion advocates assign no value to the baby’s life. It is precisely because they depend upon their creator, their mother, for the air they breathe and the life-sustaining support they receive from her—moment to moment and day to day—that they clamor for the right to kill it.

How incredibly ironic is that? Though no longer in our mother’s womb, we are every bit as dependent on our Creator for air, food, and sustenance as a baby is on her creator. This is true from the first breath we take to our last.

Therefore, I dare say that Walsh was overly optimistic in saying that eventually, as the pro-abortion movement continues to de-person all those who are dependent on another, there will only be a “privileged few” left to claim the right to life. There won’t be any left because, as King Benjamin reminds us, even the “privileged few” rely on our Creator from moment to moment, breath to breath, and day to day—a feature, not a bug of being a child of God. A God who implores us to petition him for our daily sustenance, as in “Give us this day our daily bread.” And then answers our prayer through his beloved Son, who calls himself the ‘Bread of Life,’

“And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. I am that bread of life.” John 6:35,38

Let us never forget that it is our benevolent Creator who slakes our hunger and satisfies our thirst, making our reliance upon Him essential for our survival.  Only an enemy to God would seek to glorify the false notion of ‘self-dependence’ and make it the standard by which we are granted ‘personhood’ or not. Conversely, it is this same lie that has allowed abortion advocates to de-person and then murder more than sixty million precious babies for one reason only: they were reliant on another for survival—their creator, their mother.

Thankfully, this will not always be the case. As discussed in my book, #RIPENED, God hears their cries and has issued this warning to all those who are complicit in this secret mass murder of millions through abortion:

“Behold the sword of justice hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer. Mormon 8:41

On that note, I’ll conclude with some tragic numbers we heard from the Capitol steps. Utah is one of the only “red states” that is seeing year-over-year increases in abortions since Roe v Wade was overturned. In 2023, the numbers were over 4,000 for the first time ever.  Some of that increase could be partly due to Idaho’s total ban on abortion, which has turned Utah into a sanctuary state for Idahoans seeking abortions. But it gets worse: the court will not reconsider lifting the injunction against the trigger law banning abortion in Utah (like Idaho’s law) until April 2026, thus allowing the mass killing of Utah’s unborn babies to go unchecked for at least 18 more unconscionable months. Utah, we can; we must do better! One life lost to this heinous evil is one too many! God bless all of you on the right side of this spiritual war. Let us keep praying for the day when all babies are welcomed into this world and can breathe the same air gifted to ALL of us by Our Loving Creator, upon whom we ALL depend for our lives.