[Bianca Nerenberg, Ph.D., is the newly-elected President of the Oregon Right to Life Education Foundation. She lives in Beaverton with her husband and three children.]

I used to call myself “pro-choice.” Really, I was pro-life, but didn’t know it yet.

Allow me to highlight a few steps of my journey so far. I was in the womb at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision. Raised in New England, I was instilled with a sense of pride in a society that valued non-discrimination and freedom. My parents, my first teachers, inspired me to seek Truth and appreciate Beauty, and I grew up looking for the good in everyone and everything. From a young age, I had the chance to experience international travel. I studied a variety of topics at Harvard, including Physics and Russian, and eventually completed a Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Washington.

While I had gained a more privileged view of the sciences, I found that I had an extremely sparse understanding of some of the most critical issues of our time: e.g., the life issues. For many of us, abortion, assisted suicide, and human embryo destruction are unexamined topics. These issues can remain clouded if we let them. It takes courage and tenacity to peel back the cloudy haze enshrouding these acts, and to see them for what they are. It took me years to “de-cloud” these issues for myself, only to expose something which should never have started, an ongoing American Holocaust.

One of the easiest issues to address politically is also one of the most hideous, partial-birth abortion. In 1998, this issue provided my entrance into public pro-life action when I joined an initiative campaign to ban this barbaric procedure in Washington State. While the initiative failed to pass, the campaign succeeded in elevating society’s awareness through education.

Helping people discover the pro-life message is what the Oregon Right to Life Education Foundation is all about, and I am proud to be a part of this dynamic organization. I believe that our essential message is the same tenet once held by the abolitionists, especially the historic conductors of the Underground Railroad who aided refugees in their escape from slavery. Every human being has infinite value, not as a commodity, but as a being, and should not be subjugated because of a particular characteristic, such as one’s race, utilitarian productivity, degree of physical ability, or even one’s stage of prenatal development. The expansive pro-life vision sees only one humanity, one society that includes every member of our human species. We must begin with the principle that every human being is fundamentally entitled to exist.

Let the “grassroots” of Oregon Right To Life grow stronger and flourish! Let us live out and spread our message with love, peace, patience, and resolve.