So, today is the annual March for Life on in Washington, D.C.  It’s live streaming on EWTN, right here.  It gets rolling around noon, I think, and is worth a peek or staying tuned in. My Tom and Hannah and Marta and Hannah’s best buddy Anna are all there, cold and tired but standing up for what they believe.  I’m proud of them for it!

Many of you might not be comfortable with the advocacy for this issue. I get that.  And I spent years, years ago, in the camp of “pro-choice, not my place to dictate to others” etc etc etc.  And, it’s not  my place to dictate to anyone, to be sure.   But it is my place and my blog to say what I believe and why I  believe this March for Life means something.

The March for Life is important because in our modern culture, life has been trivialized and denigrated and devalued.  It has.  Look around  you, look at the news.  Our popular culture and the focus on celebrities marginalize anyone who isn’t “hot” or the new “it” tabloid darling.  We feed on sound bites and scandal; effectively turning even those with true tangible need into mere commodities.  The images provide the hook and maybe, if they’re lucky, a soundbite.  Sound cynical? Well, maybe.  But I see it.  And that mindset provides the slippery slope to dismiss, or worse, to rank people by a skewed perceived ability to meet or attain the feeding frenzy of our warp speed. attention deficit, pop media values. And it’s wrong.  It is, in fact, I’ll say it, evil.  Evil devalues us, all of us.

This March for Life also is a march for ALL life, the unborn, yes, but also the disabled, the aged, all who are devalued because somehow, they are not good enough.  This March fights stands up against the tide of ingrained racism and stereotypes and valuation that has become entrenched in our culture.  This march is a march to stand up for the value of ALL human life, for it’s dignity, period.  I am Catholic.  I am prolife.  I am a mom.  I am pro-life.  I am a woman. I am pro-life.

But here, once again, is why I’m prolife.  These are what turned me for good and for ever.  Take a look, again: