A bill to defund Planned Parenthood and another measure, “Iryna’s Law,” show that valuing life means shielding the vulnerable before birth and after — a rare pro-life convergence in Raleigh.

Picture yourself holding a large commemorative coin. On one side is stamped a newborn baby’s tiny footprint, delicate, vulnerable, and full of promise. On the other side is etched a crowded commuter train – men, women, and children on their way to work or school, equally vulnerable to forces they cannot control. Two images, one coin. Both sides represent lives that the government is charged with protecting and preserving.

That coin could be the emblem of what happened this week in Raleigh. In an unusual moment, North Carolina lawmakers advanced two significant pieces of legislation within the two days they reconvened – bills that seem worlds apart at first glance. House Bill 192 – Defund Planned Parenthood and Cost Transparency removes Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid program and redirects those dollars to other clinics that respect life passed the Seante and was sent to the House. House Bill 307 – Iryna’s Law — named after 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light-rail car in August, tightens bail rules, requires more mental-health evaluations, adds prosecutors in Mecklenburg County, and revamps the state’s long-stalled death penalty process (More than 100 on death row in North Carolina, and no one has been executed in 20 years) so it can be carried out constitutionally for the worst crimes. HB 307 passed both chambers and has been sent to the Governor.

One bill focuses on unborn children; the other addresses murderous, violent offenders and public safety. Yet both flow from a single principle: the sanctity of human life. HB 192 insists that public money should support health care providers who protect, not end, life. HB 307 insists the state must restrain evil and protect innocent commuters, students, and families from preventable violence, especially willful homicide.

The case of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell lays bare how arbitrary our nation has been regarding the practice of abortion. Gosnell was convicted of first-degree murder for killing infants who survived his late-term abortion attempts. Testimony showed that babies who were normal and moving were delivered alive after being disfigured, poisoned, or otherwise harmed in utero – acts perfectly legal so long as the child remained inside the womb. But once a baby’s head or body had passed a few inches and the law recognized him as a person, finishing the same act became homicide. Inside the womb, the act was protected; outside, it was called murder. That legal line is only inches wide, but morally it’s a canyon. Does anyone honestly believe one of those killings was right and the other wrong?

The same moral principle underlies public outrage over Iryna Zarutska’s death on Charlotte’s light-rail system. In both cases, a vulnerable human being was attacked and killed – one in a medical setting, one on a commuter train. Both were powerless to stop what was happening. If we believe every human life is sacred, and we should, then geography, whether it’s a mother’s womb or a train car, cannot determine whether the killing is acceptable. The location may change the legal definition, but it cannot change the moral reality that an innocent life has been taken.

The late R.C. Sproul, the renowned Reformed theologian, author, and founder of Ligonier Ministries, noted that the chief objection to capital punishment is that human life is so valuable we should never intentionally take it. Others argue that no matter how evil, every human being has the potential for redemption. Still others claim that capital punishment does not deter crime. Yet Sproul rightly observed that “the institution of capital punishment was not given as a deterrent but as an act of justice. Its biblical rationale appears very early in Scripture – before Moses, before Sinai, before the Ten Commandments, back in the days of Noah, where God declares, ‘Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ That’s not a prediction. The structure of the language there is an imperative; it is a command. The reason is given: ‘Because man is made in the image of God.’” In other words, the Bible says that human life is so sacred, so precious, so holy – human life has so much dignity – that if, with malice of forethought, you wantonly destroy another human being, you thereby forfeit your own right to life. God doesn’t merely permit the execution of murderers; He commands it.”

Critics label the two bills contradictory – one “pro-life,” the other “pro-death.” Instead, they agree that every innocent life is sacred and must be defended. A consistent pro-life ethic protects children before birth and shields women and families in public spaces by restraining evil through removing society’s most dangerous offenders of life. It also declares via the ultimate penalty that the wanton destruction of human life cannot and will not be tolerated. No person who commits such a heinous act will ever be able to do it again.

In a time when politics is often polarized into slogans, these measures, debated together and moving through the legislature alongside each other, offer North Carolina a rare chance to see how different strands of “pro-life” concern are woven together. They challenge us to think bigger, to recover a full-orbed ethic of life – one that shelters the vulnerable, restrains evil, and aligns public policy with the enduring truth that every innocent life must be vigorously protected and preserved.