As I considered this in the hours after the debate, I realized it is possible that Clinton, too, has suffered through a miscarriage. I hope she hasn’t, but if she has, perhaps she didn’t have the tools or the support to deal with her grief. Perhaps recognizing abortion for what it is would mean revisiting a loss so profound it is difficult to put it into words. Even if she hasn’t experienced it, she knows someone who has. We all do.

For a long time, people didn’t really talk about miscarriage and stillbirth. But more of us are speaking up now. We are grieving, mourning, remembering. We are acknowledging that our children matter. All of them, no matter whether they were in or out of the womb when their hearts stopped beating. We are mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents who have experienced a distinct loss.

We may not have held these children in our arms. We may not have watched them draw a breath. But those things do not make their losses less tragic, the voids around our dinner tables less profound.

It is either one or the other; it cannot be both. Either what is lost in miscarriage and abortion is a child or it’s not. In my experience, the answer is crystal clear.