The pro-life cause is often misunderstood, even by well-meaning people.

In the course of conversations, pro-lifers frequently are posed questions about other causes. “If you are pro-life, why don’t you (fill in the blank)?” they ask. The cause could be equal pay for women, government assistance, birth control, child abuse, racism, poverty or war.

In asking these questions, people misunderstand the pro-life position. The causes they mention may be worthy, but they miss the vital importance of the right to life issue. Life is the foundational right upon which all other rights are based. Without it, other rights are meaningless.

During a talk Thursday at Texas A&M University, popular conservative blogger Matt Walsh gave a well-reasoned speech explaining why the pro-life cause is so important. His remarks were reported in The Battalion.

“Abortion sets the stage for every other cultural battle,” Walsh said. “Abortion is the number one defining issue in our society, because it gets down to the fundamentals of who you are and what you believe. It plants you firmly on the side of objective truth and human dignity or firmly against it. Everything else you believe will grow from this root. It is the epicenter of America’s vast ideological divide.”

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“Being pro-life is apart from a mere argument or a cause. It is a purpose,” Walsh said. “It informs, directs, and gives substance to every other argument we make on every other subject … It all comes back to abortion because if human life has no intrinsic value then none of this other stuff matters … if we cannot first establish that life matters.”

“The whole point is that pro-life is an absolute declaration,” said Walsh. “We are pro-life completely or not at all, and the world, I believe, needs us to be pro-life completely. The world needs us to testify unwaveringly that life has meaning, life has value, life is sacred. That is our entire argument.”

This is what the pro-life cause is dedicated to. Every day in America, more than 3,000 unborn babies are being aborted and denied a right to life, and euthanasia is a growing threat on the horizon.

These babies should be protected from poverty, abuse, racism, etc.; the elderly and disabled should be protected from neglect, discrimination, coercion, etc. And the reason is because they are human beings, and human beings have value. But if we don’t first recognize that every human life has value, starting at the moment when life begins, these other efforts just don’t make sense.