Please pray for the conversion of those who are attending and supporting the so-called March for Women's Lives and for all those who do not fully accept the dignity of each human individual.

I was riding the subway on Friday and saw a woman with a button on supporting the March. She was a disabled person, not fully formed in every way, in a wheelchair, but cheerfully chatting away with a friend about her active social life and her job and her plans. If I were her, I'd be marching in January and not in April, because someone clearly loved her enough to help her to the person she became.

This woman made me profoundly sad. All I could think was that, if she had her way, women in her mother's situation would probably choose to abort her rather than deal with a child with extreme and special needs. And a cheerful, charming, articulate, and obviously happy person like her would never have been. People say that abortion isn't used that way, but I know otherwise. A friend of mine - an alleged Catholic - took fertility drugs and described to me how they [the doctors] "don't let too many babies grow" and will "thin them out, if necessary." As I told her, number one, the doctors don't choose that - the parents do - and, number two, there are lots of children already born who need parents, so why not try to adopt such a child and make him/her your own.

Please pray that we will learn to uphold the dignity of each, individual human being at each natural stage of his/her life. Please pray that we won't sink into some sort of cynicism, like politicians, and think that somehow what we "believe" in faith is somehow separate from how we "live" our life. Please pray that when we look at another person, any person, that we see someone made in the image of God Himself and so special that He knows each "in the womb."

Peace and all good.

Dear Annie-SFO:

I join you in fervent prayer for the increased cultivation of a "Culture of Life!"

Amado