At Ohio Right to Life, we aim for consistency in opposing all forms of aggression against innocent human beings, born and unborn. As a nation, the U.S. should do the same.

Considering that our country already recognizes April as National Child Abuse Prevention month, I would say that the U.S. is halfway there.

Interestingly, the Administration of Children and Families (an arm of Health and Human Services) included “the unborn” in its 2012 Maltreatment Report, where it analyzes child abuse across the United States. This inclusion is astounding if we consider that the very same U.S. government does not extend the right to live to the unborn. The ACF’s report accounts for the abuse of unborn children, but does not account for the harms brought by abortion.

According to the report, more than a quarter of child abuse victims in the United States are under the age of two years. How many babies does that amount to? 207,645. But the report also demonstrates that abuse occurs before some children are even born.

In the following table, the ACF considers the abuse of “the unborn”:

This category accounts for 3,222 children. While the ACF does not identify how many of those children were unborn, I think it is important to note that the report counts the unborn among victims.

So what would the ACF report look like if it counted all of the unborn victims of child abuse? According to numbers from the Guttmacher Institute, abortion alone would add more than one million lives to the “Physical Abuse” category.

In Ohio alone, there were more than 11,000 victims of child abuse who were younger than two. If we include the victims of abortion (25,473 children), Ohio would claim more than 36,000 cases of child abuse against children under two—25,473 of which resulted in death.

The ACF’s definition of “child” already includes the unborn, as evidenced by their report. Neglecting or refusing to include abortion as a form of abuse (which, in fact, results in death) is inconsistent. It is neither fair nor rational to say that hurting (or for that matter, killing) an unborn child in one circumstance is abuse and, in another circumstance, is a right. Whether we reject child abuse should not depend on the child’s location or age. If we are to have principals, they must be consistent.

LifeNews Note: Katie McCann writes for Ohio Right to Life. This originally appeared at the Ohio Right to Life blog.