But who really cares? It's just a game, after all. No big deal.

Two weeks later Escobar was gunned down. His own goal came at a higher cost than anyone could have imagined at that moment.

Last week two laws passed their respective parliaments.

In the ACT the legal status of animals was changed from 'property' to being sentient beings. This decision provides legal protections against such mistreatments as a pet dog being chained up for days on end.

On the same day in NSW a bill allowing abortion for any reason up to birth was passed.

In the process many amendments were rejected, including ones which sought to protect against terminations based on gender selection and insisting on treatment for babies who survive the abortion process.

Christians look to the Bible to guide our lives in the world. It is clear that God cares for his creation and expects people to do the same.

However the Bible is also clear that humanity holds a special place within God's creation. Human life has a dignity and a worth which other life simply does not have.

So while I want to applaud efforts to stop the mistreatment of animals, when you put these two laws together they paint a grim picture. A picture of a society in which grants a dignity and worth to animals which it denies to the unborn.

I suspect that most us us know deep down that there is something wrong with all of this.

The couple grieving a miscarriage knows they have lost a person of great worth, not simply a collection of cells or a 'potential' life. Yet our laws seem more and more to want to strip human life of it's inherent worth.

A speeding driver hits a car carrying a pregnant woman and kill the child, they are rightly charged with manslaughter.

That same child is aborted and many people now celebrate the freedom a mother has to choose. Is the unborn's life only valuable when the pregnancy is wanted? And what about other lives? What illnesses or disabilities or other inconveniences might render a person's life less worthy of being lived? And how would any of us feel should something happen to us that meant we were the ones who have lost whatever it is that makes a life worth living?

I am thankful that God's verdict is that life is inherently worthwhile.

So much so that he sent his son to be born as a little baby, to live a life like ours and to die for us, to make us his own treasured possession.

Jesus was certainly an inconvenient pregnancy. One which would be a prime candidate for abortion today. Yet his is a life which has had more impact than any other in history.

A life that continues to impact countless millions in our world today. A life that gives us great example to follow.

After all if God has shown human life to be so inherently valuable that he would give Jesus for our sake, how can we rightly think differently?

History shows that when human life is not valued, it hasn't ended well.

If we do not begin standing up for the great worth of every human life, we will look back one day and realise that we've been kicking some very costly own goals.

MORE NEWS AND OPINION: