I have been praying that the tragic Newtown, Connecticut, massacre will soften President Obama’s heart on the sanctity of preborn children, who are just as valuable as postborn children.

As I wrote in my weekend question, there are many reasons for the obvious breakdown of our culture, but one of them has to be abortion. When our society as a whole is groomed to condone the murder of preborn children, it is no stretch to say the value of postborn children decreases as well. It is only common sense.

If President Obama gave his speech at the Newtown memorial service yesterday without one thought of abortion, he is morally depraved beyond comprehension. Excerpts:

But we as a nation, we are left with some hard questions. You know, someone once described the joy and anxiety of parenthood as the equivalent of having your heart outside of your body all the time, walking around.

With their very first cry, this most precious, vital part of ourselves, our child, is suddenly exposed to the world, to possible mishap or malice, and every parent knows there’s nothing we will not do to shield our children from harm. And yet we also know that with that child’s very first step and each step after that, they are separating from us, that we won’t — that we can’t always be there for them.

They will suffer sickness and setbacks and broken hearts and disappointments, and we learn that our most important job is to give them what they need to become self-reliant and capable and resilient, ready to face the world without fear. And we know we can’t do this by ourselves.

It comes as a shock at a certain point where you realize no matter how much you love these kids, you can’t do it by yourself, that this job of keeping our children safe and teaching them well is something we can only do together, with the help of friends and neighbors, the help of a community and the help of a nation.

And in that way we come to realize that we bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children.

This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.

And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we’re meeting our obligations?

Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough to keep our children, all of them, safe from harm?

Can we claim, as a nation, that we’re all together there, letting them know they are loved and teaching them to love in return?

Can we say that we’re truly doing enough to give all the children of this country the chance they deserve to live out their lives in happiness and with purpose?

I’ve been reflecting on this the last few days, and if we’re honest with ourselves, the answer’s no. We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change. Since I’ve been president, this is the fourth time we have come together to comfort a grieving community torn apart by mass shootings, fourth time we’ve hugged survivors, the fourth time we’ve consoled the families of victims.

And in between, there have been an endless series of deadly shootings across the country, almost daily reports of victims, many of them children, in small towns and in big cities all across America, victims whose — much of the time their only fault was being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

We can’t tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.

We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law, no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society, but that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.

If there’s even one step we can take to save another child or another parent or another town from the grief that’s visited Tucson and Aurora and Oak Creek and Newtown and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that, then surely we have an obligation to try….

Are we really prepared to say that we’re powerless in the face of such carnage, that the politics are too hard?

Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

You know, all the world’s religions, so many of them represented here today, start with a simple question.

Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose?

We know our time on this Earth is fleeting….

There’s only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child’s embrace, that is true.

The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves and binds us to something larger, we know that’s what matters.

We know we’re always doing right when we’re taking care of them, when we’re teaching them well, when we’re showing acts of kindness. We don’t go wrong when we do that….

That’s what should drive us forward in everything we do for as long as God sees fit to keep us on this Earth.

“Let the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeline, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Benjamin, Avielle, Allison, God has called them all home.

For those of us who remain, let us find the strength to carry on and make our country worthy of their memory. May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in His heavenly place. May He grace those we still have with His holy comfort, and may He bless and watch over this community and the United States of America.

There is much fodder for conversation in that speech.

Here’s one: The cold, hard truth is God at some point began to withdraw his hand of protection from over the United States of America. We no longer deserve it.

Regarding the title of my post, which was one of the lines in President Obama’s speech: He is the one who added “all of them,” not me. He didn’t have to. It was a pro-life moment.

One more thing, for those already sharpening their poison pencil to attack this post:

I will stop using current events to bring our attention to the murder of babies when the murder of babies stops. No apologies.

~ R. C. Sproul, Jr.,  via Andy Moore on Facebook

[Photo taken December 16, during a meeting between President Obama and grieving Newton families. Click to enlarge]

To be clear, my goal, and the goal of many of those joining me here today, is to make abortion, at any stage, a thing of the past.

~ Texas governor Rick Perry throwing his support behind legislation that would ban abortion after twenty weeks gestation, via Cinema Blend, December 11

So unbelievably sad…

by Michael Ramirez at Townhall.com…

 by Kevin Siers at Cagle.com…

 by Glenn McCoy at Townhall.com…

 by Nate Beeler at Cagle.com…

 by David Fitzsimmons at Cagle.com…

“O Holy Night” is being sung at our church this weekend, and whenever I hear Verse 3, I am overcome with simultaneous angst and joy. I am reminded of all the little babies being murdered here and around the world, and yet there is Hope. The slaughter will someday end.

For a couple years during the month of December I have posted the fascinating abolitionist history behind some of our most beloved Christmas hymns. Pro-lifers identify closely with those 150 years ago who fought to free another oppressed class of people.

Today I am reposting the history of the classic carol, “O Holy Night.”

O Holy Night

In 1847, his parish priest asked French poet Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure to compose a Christmas poem. He wrote “Cantique de Noel” while contemplating what it would have been like to be present at Christ’s birth and asked his friend Adolphe-Charles Adam to set it to music.

The song became an instant classic in France but was later denounced by the Church after Placide himself denounced the Church and became a Socialist Communist, and it was also learned Adam was a Jew.

A decade later American abolitionist and pastor John Sullivan Dwight learned of the beautiful song and saw something more when translating it into English.

According to Ace Collins in his book, Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas, Verse 3 “supported Dwight’s own view of slavery in the South…. Dwight’s English translation of ‘O Holy Night’ quickly found favor in America, especially in the North during the Civil War.”

Here is the literal English translation of Verse 3:

The Redeemer has overcome every obstacle:
The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave,
Love unites those that iron had chained.
Who will tell Him of our gratitude,
For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.

And here was Dwight’s translation of Verse 3:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.

I was three months pregnant, and they said, “Your baby is the size of an olive,” and [snapping fingers] that was it. We never looked back.

~ Actress Drew Barrymore, on how she came up with her now 10-wk-old baby daughter’s name, on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, December 20, as quoted by E! Online

[Photo via People]

If you’re like me, you can’t dwell too long on the massacre of 20 school children yesterday (and six adults) at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

As psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow of Fox News wrote, “Adam Lanza opened the door to a new kind of horror in America – the massacre of children.”

That’s not true, but I know what he was trying to say.

There was a personal reason President Obama cried during his press conference. We can all put ourselves in the place of those parents whose babies didn’t walk out of that school.

There is talk now of having police at every school in America, and also at malls and shops. The Lane Bryant store where five people were gunned down in 2008 is 10 minutes from my home. (That shooter is still at large.)

And churches. My own now has at least one off-duty policeman at every service. My pastor has a personal security guard.

Speaking of, Megyn Kelly of Fox News thought the crumbling faith community was a contributing factor:

America looks very different than it looked 30 years ago. We don’t interact with each other the way we used to, and faith has been diminished as well. And that’s not to diminish the position that is held by atheists, which is valid and to which they are entitled, but faith has something that’s been a common thread in America that has bound us for so long.

It’s not just “faith” that has bound us, it is the object of our faith, Yahweh. As John Cahn, author of the recemt bestselling book, The Harbinger, wrote, America and Israel are the only two nations whose founders “saw themselves in covenant with God…. [T]he Puritans, America’s founders, established America after the pattern of ancient Israel.”

Back to Adam Lanza, the 20-yr-old Sandy Hook killer who shot his own mother, an employee of the school, in the face before setting off for the school, Ablow wrote:

Perhaps there is a genetic vulnerability in such individuals.  Perhaps there is a defect in the serotonin (a calming brain chemical messenger) systems of such people.  Perhaps head trauma can play a role in damaging the frontal lobes. Some will even claim symptoms of autism could be involved. But consider this:  In every case I have ever treated in which empathy is in short supply or absent, it was eroded through suffering inflicted upon that person himself or herself, usually early in life.  Psychological trauma – whether chronic or acute – has been present in every violent person I have ever evaluated during the past two decades.

I think there are numerous forces at work contributing to the surge in destructive tendencies not just in America but around the world, including turning away from God; yes, abortion; violence in the home; even environmental toxins; and so much more.

What are your thoughts? Do you think the abyss can be averted? If so, how?

by Susie Allen, host of the blog, Pro-Life in TN, and Kelli

We welcome your suggestions for additions to our Top Blogs (see tab on right side of home page)! Email Susie@jillstanek.com.

• Pro-Life NZ links to an article showing how the Guttmacher Institute pushes the legalization of abortion by using flawed methods to determine (and inflate) countries’ illegal abortion numbers.
• Alveda King of Priests for Life announces that new Life Talk panel member Fr. Frank Pavone is set to receive the 2013 Defender of Life Award from Students for Life of America.
• Albert Mohler notes how Newsweek, which will go out of print at the end of this year, uses one of its final editions to “deny the historical basis of Christmas.” Mohler points out that “it is Newsweek, and not the New Testament, that is going out of print.”

• Secular Pro-Life president Kelsey Hazzard plans to soon release her new fiction entitled, Cultivating Weeds, the “story of an abortion doctor who secretly becomes pro-life and is recruited to help conduct a controversial, revolutionary medical study.” Though written from a secular point of view, Hazzard thinks Christians will enjoy it also. Look for online release soon with sales with proceeds through February to benefit SPL.
• Wesley J. Smith takes on Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, who seems confused by his own “twisted logic and inconsistency”:
  

  Singer claims that it is ethical and moral to kill an existing disabled baby to serve the interests of an, as yet, unborn sibling….

That’s the amorality of utilitarianism. There really are no fixed moral principles, only expedient analyses. If Singer wants a chance to experience near-immortality, the cost of the quest to the not yet born can be justified because they don’t matter yet. But when he wants to justify killing disabled babies, the lives of the not yet born matter more than the life of an already born infant – even if the latter-born sibling will never actually make it into this world.

In other words, in Peter Singer’s moral universe, consistency doesn’t matter and principles need not be applied.

• Stand for Life focuses on what should be considered a healthcare crisis in New Mexico – and why this is everyone’s concern:
  

  In the past four years alone in New Mexico, 14 women have been rushed to local hospitals with severe life-threatening injuries due to botched abortions. In addition, late-term abortionist Shelley Sella [pictured right] faced a New Mexico Medical Board hearing after a woman suffered a ruptured uterus during a 35 week full term abortion. This was a violation of the standard of care. To make matters worse, no abortion clinic in New Mexico is ever inspected by the health department.

In New Mexico, we know that the health department, hospitals, and even high schools send unsuspecting women to Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics to receive healthcare services. Women are continually referred to abortion clinics for D&C’s after their miscarriages, sterilizations and birth control. New Mexico is one of 15 states where all of these services, including abortion, are fully funded through Medicaid by taxpayers. When abortion clinic workers maim and injure these women they make each one of us culpable.

by LauraLoo

For those of you who are medically able to participate in blood donation, here is your reminder if you haven’t done so for a while – or if you have never given at all.

It is such a great feeling to donate, knowing you are saving lives.  It is a privilege and a gift from God to donate blood regularly.  I know this from personal experience, formerly changing my status from “pre-diabetic” (very close to diabetic, in fact) to a healthy glucose reading of 87 due in part to lots of daily exercise. :)

Will you consider saving lives with a blood donation?  It becomes a great habit once you start, and one of the best Christmas gifts you can still give this year – a part of yourself.
 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwLrENmsm20[/youtube]

Email dailyvid@jillstanek.com with your video suggestions.