What Are You Talking About?
By Guest Blogger Sean Miller

A few weeks ago, I heard a disturbing story on the news. Equally disturbing was the cavalier manner in which it was reported on the radio.

It was about a woman who went into labor at a nightclub. She gave birth in the bathroom and then suffocated the baby and hid the body in the toilet tank. Afterwards, she smoked a cigarette and then returned to the bar as if nothing happened. The next morning, the baby was found by a maintenance worker.

The indifference expressed by the reporter telling the story left an unsettled feeling in my stomach. There was a callousness to her voice, which was void of compassion – and even normal emotion.

Her tone seemed to imply that if a mother finds a baby to be an inconvenience, she can simply just get rid of him. It made me wonder if the reporter understood the gravity of the situation.

Is this what 40 years of abortion on demand have done to us? Has our country lost its sensitivity to the sacredness of life?

Perhaps. If our land allows a mother to kill her own child, then why wouldn’t life become so cheap?

It’s obvious that over the years the number of stories of violent acts against the innocent and defenseless has grown. The elderly are victims of euthanasia. The disabled are neglected and even abused. Unwanted babies are left unattended to cry themselves to their final breath.

Now it seems that when these horribly sad stories hit the airwaves, many people – like the reporter — are just desensitized to such tragedies.

What has numbed so many Americans to the atrocities that lie before us? Have we gotten so accustomed to the killings that we accept them as part of the American landscape? Do we excuse ourselves by simply saying, “That does not involve me”?

There are many answers to these questions but I think, in large part, the media has been responsible for this desensitization.

They’ve done it by shifting our attention on matters. The important or even grave issues they downplay as if they are trivial. Then, they place an ever-increasing importance on silly matters that are largely from the entertainment industry.

Just put on the television or the radio and you’ll see this demonstrated as people talk passionately about some sports or entertainment star.

Turn the A.M. dial on the radio and you’ll hear people discussing their favorite player or team with so much fervor that they might even start yelling or hang up the phone out of anger!

On television it’s the Hollywood celebrities! We adorn them with applause and awards and look to them as role models as we follow their every move as documented in magazines and entertainment shows.

Our attention becomes consumed by a fantasy world, based on the lives of people that act or play sports for a living. And this escape is at the expense of the real matters, which aren’t always easy to look at but, nevertheless, demand our attention.

It was my 10-year old niece that brought his home to me. One day was she was watching how baseball fans on television reacted to a home run.

In her eyes, she saw their response as an overreaction. With a pure innocence and wisdom she stated, “Big deal, he hit a ball with a bat … how silly, everybody gets so excited over that?”

When she said this she unknowingly made me re-think my own passions. As I looked in the mirror I had to ask myself, “Am I as passionate in life about important issues as I am about this team?” Were my values in the right order? Her comment caused me to take inventory of what was important to me.

And I think this is something we all must do as we confront a society where the lives of those in Hollywood grow in importance, while the lives of the vulnerable and innocent are increasingly discounted.

We must put what is important in the forefront, again!

We must remind people of the daily atrocity of 4,000 abortions which occur in our own country each day. We must offer help and support to a pregnant mother.

This will help bring the sanctity of life back to the forefront of our discussions both in our own house and the White House. Let’s get busy talking about what matters so that our words can lead us to action. And, in this way, our actions will lead us to the saving of innocent human lives.