Women’s history month was instituted to celebrate the important role women have had in building history. This month celebrates women who have made famous impacts in fighting for justice and equality like Susan B. Anthony and Harriet Tubman, as well as the many unrecognized efforts of women throughout history whose names are unknown.

During this month, we cannot forget the group of women who have been by far the most unrecognized and undervalued in all of history: the nearly 30 million women in America whose lives were taken from them in the womb since 1973.

Many speak about abortion as if it liberates women. In truth, abortion is a tool for discriminating against women. According to one estimate, more than 160 million women around the globe were denied the chance to impact the world because of sex-selection abortions and infanticides in recent decades. Women’s organizations should be outraged; it’s alarmingly unjust that tens of millions of women’s lives ended simply because they were female instead of male.

Sadly, this is not new. For many years before abortion became widely available, baby girls would often be tragically left to die by many parents who decided they wanted a boy instead. This still occurs in some countries today with alarming regularity. The problem has become so stark it’s a crime in some nations to use an ultrasound to learn the sex of your unborn child.

Some may see infanticide as more horrifying than having an abortion, but both options end the child’s life.

In recent weeks, many U.S. politicians including 44 U.S. Senators have sent the message that they see no difference between ending a child’s life in the womb or after birth. If the child is unwanted by the birth parents and targeted for abortion—as is the case for many millions of baby girls around the world—they would ignore infanticide through neglect if the abortion fails and results in a live birth instead.

So many politicians, celebrities—and of course, Planned Parenthood—widely praise abortion as the foundation of women’s rights, but by doing so they ignore the stories of hundreds of millions of women who were denied the most basic right to life. Abortion is a tool used over and over for discrimination and targeting of vulnerable lives deemed “unwanted.” So much more women’s history would be made if we simply valued the life of every little girl.