I saw a bumper sticker that depicted a pair of hands cradling a newborn and read “Every life is worth living.” Despite the banner’s anti-abortion intent, it made me think about the quality of my own life and the lives of my peers and teachers. Our lives are worth living because our needs are met, as well as many of our wants. We are fortunate to have clothes on our backs and food on our plates. We’re taken care of. Not everyone can say that.

My mind then went to the implications of the bumper sticker. The full scope of its message is, “Every life is worth living, even if it is a life of certain poverty, constant struggle, or physical disability.”

Are any of these so called “pro-life” folks adopting the waves of children that are being given up for adoption because their biological parents are unable or unwilling to take care of them?

Anti-abortion proponents shriek that abortion is murder, that having such a procedure is robbing a person of the right to live, and that life begins at conception. The definition of a person is “a human being” or “a self-conscious or rational being” (dictionary.com).

Using these denotations, one could argue that a fetus is a human being, but to say that a fetus is self-conscious or rational would be like saying “my Chia Pet can do calculus!” Have you ever received a text message from an embryo asking, “Does this birthday suit make me look fat?”

After Paul Ryan told his “bean” story during the vice presidential debate, which he stole from Kurt Cobain, Adam Gopnik wrote in The New Yorker about Ryan’s remark that on a sonogram “a bean is exactly what the photograph shows—a seed, a potential, a thing that might yet grow into something greater, just as a seed has the potential to become a tree. A bean is not a baby.” I appreciate that Ryan was elated by the image of what was going to be his daughter. That being said, Ryan and his wife were not looking at a picture of their daughter. They were, as he said, looking at a legume.

Even though Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ran a staunchly anti-abortion campaign, except in cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is in jeopardy, the Republican ticket was slipping on its surgical gloves and sharpening its scalpel during the 2012 race in preparation for the implementation of conservative reforms.

Along with gutting Planned Parenthood, which provides many healthcare services in addition to abortions for women who cannot afford to pay for such services, and overturning Roe vs. Wade, Romney vowed to go after Medicare and Medicaid, dismantle Social Security, and slash funding for education all in the name of cutting the deficit and preserving individual freedom.

Keep in mind, this advocacy for ardently cutting the national deficit was coming from a man who as head of Bain Capital—and perfectly legally—made his fortune by taking over companies, largely with borrowed money and often against the companies’ own will (KB Toys), and driving them into so much debt that they were forced to shut down, while Romney and his partners collected millions of dollars in “service” fees along the way.

Romney also promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act his first day in office.

I have type one diabetes and, as a consequence, an over-active thyroid. I didn’t bring it upon myself through poor health habits; my immune system decided one day to attack itself, causing my pancreas to stop producing insulin. Because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I will not be denied insurance coverage because of my pre-existing condition, and I will be able to stay on my parents’ health insurance plan until I am twenty-six. It’s a big deal.

If this election had gone the other way, I like many others would have to face the possibiliy of being told “tough” when it comes to coverage because we couldn’t control biology.

Would you tell a loved one to just “deal with it” if he or she was denied coverage because of a previous illness such as cancer or heart disease? Maybe you would. I hope not.

The reelection of Barack Obama proved that Americans want to continue to progress, rather than move backward on healthcare issues. We can all take comfort in knowing that we don’t have a pompous president who was born on third but acts like he hit a triple.

Despite the inevitable hatred that will be perpetuated by the sore losers of this election, Americans can now wake up every morning knowing that they are being protected by a man who knows that everyone has a life worth living.