On Jan. 22, 2018, our country will commemorate 45 years since the grossly infamous Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion in the U.S. by overturning all state laws on the subject. Federalism wasn’t the only casualty. Since that decision, nearly 60 million children in the U.S. have been denied the right to take their first breath. This accounts for almost 10 times the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust.

March for Life began in 1974, one year after Roe v. Wade, as a way for people to gather in the nation’s capital to support the rights of pre-born children. This year, the March will take place on Friday, Jan. 19 and will feature Speaker Paul Ryan, Pam Tebow (mother of quarterback Tim Tebow, whom she spared from abortion), former NFL player Matt Birk, and others. With the theme “Love Saves Lives,” the March will focus on love, the love that says “yes” to the lives of the pre-born. While the abortion industry unjustly separates the “inconvenient” from the “worthy,” love accepts each individual life as a unique creation with value, dignity and worth. This love ultimately acts as the force by which a culture of death transforms into a culture of life.

Some might argue that abortion is a personal choice that does not affect the broader culture. Yet a culture that accepts the arbitrary removal of innocent people from its community does not value human life at all. Taken to its logical end, the abortion rationale makes all lives of the weak the “personal choice” of the strong. This philosophically empty concept makes other types of violence seem “acceptable” to those who perpetrate it.

Consider the pervasive violence and utter disregard for life in our culture. Just last month, four teens murdered a driver by throwing sandbags onto the interstate from an overpass. To them, murder was recreation. Last spring, a Cleveland man murdered an elderly man and posted it on Facebook. To him, murder was entertainment. Any rational person ought to ask, “What in the world is going on?”

Examining our deeply violent culture, can we not see that it could be related to the acceptance of violence against our own — innocent citizens only weeks away from being born? When we accept the indiscriminate violence of abortion, are we not also implicitly condoning the indiscriminate violence of these other situations?

While our country was founded on the premise that “all are created equal,” abortion says, “All are not created equal. Some are created more worthy, some less worthy.” How can we be the land of opportunity when we deny the basic opportunity of life to the youngest members of society? This right is denied without a conviction of crime, due process or trial, but simply because society calls it a “right” to rid itself of those deemed inconvenient or whom they determine cannot contribute.

Our Founders believed the essential truth that because we have inherent value and dignity, we have the right to self-rule, to create a government where the power is in the people, not the elite. They believed that those in power only remain in power because of the “consent” of the people. If we believe in this American model of the “consent of the governed,” we must realize that we don’t have to consent to Planned Parenthood’s reign of terror. The strong winning over the weak is the paradigm of dictatorships, not free nations. It is time to acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s elitism, which continues through their suppression of truth and exploitation of women for profit. To them, women’s “rights” are the rights of abortion clinics to keep profiting from exploitation, crisis, deception and death.

March for Life 2018 reminds us of the need to embrace all people as equally valuable. The anniversary of Roe v. Wade provides opportunity to reflect on the connection between violence toward innocent pre-born children and the systemic violence in our culture. This week, as we remember both the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, may we remember the value of the human person and how upholding that value and dignity affects all other areas of culture, life and policy.