Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, remembering those children who were killed by King Herod who was enraged that one of them (Jesus) was the real King of the Jews and thus a threat to his power. In his selfishness for power, Herod completely disregarded innocent human life.

Today, we are apalled at the barbarity of Herod since we are civilized people. However, the main difference is the use of civilized euphemisms to cover up our own barbarity. We use words like choice, right to privacy, mercy-killing, and euthanasia (meaning good death) to describe the taking of an innocent human life. Maybe a modern day Herod would be preferrable to wake us up from our comfortable tolerance.

I was born in 1978, five years after Roe v. Wade, so it is my generation that has been destroyed through the right to "choice." These could’ve been my classmates, my co-workers, those kneeling next to me at mass. They could’ve found the cure for cancer or taken us to Mars, but they weren’t even given a chance. They were simply treated as an expendable mass of cells.

We need to fight harder to make abortion illegal. Legalized killing of the unborn is a blight on our national soul, a horrendous injustic. Combined with birth control, it could literally lead to the death of our culture and way of life.

We also need to work to change people’s hearts about abortion now. We need to teach a respect for the sanctity of unborn life to all people from the earliest ages. We need to make it easier for couples to adopt children. We need to strengthen marriage as an institution beyond personal fulfillment of the husband and wife. We need to reach out as a community to provide for the needs of scared single mothers who feel they have no other options. We need to instill into our young men a respect for and responsibility towards women and children. We need to not only tell our teenagers negatively why sex before marriage is wrong but positively why sex within marriage is the right, godly, and best way for them. In short, we must work to outlaw abortion, but also to create a society and a citizenry where abortion isn’t even considered a valid choice.

Have a blessed feast of the Holy Innocents.