Protecting innocence is of utmost importance

Katie innocently snuggled up to her grandfather in his hospital bed. She was oblivious to the concerned faces of everyone else in the room. She was old enough to understand, but she is severely autistic, and couldn't intellectually grasp the gravity of her grandfather's sever stroke. All she knew was grandpa needed a hug; he needed love and compassion.

Catholic journalist, best-selling author and speaker Michael Coren tugged the audience's collective heartstrings with the story of his niece's innocent love for her grandfather—love that he credits as a turning point in his father's recovery—recently in Saskatoon, Sask. He punctuated the emotional story with the contrasting world-view that many think "people like Katie" shouldn't be alive; they should be aborted instead of becoming a burden to parents and society.

Coren made it abundantly clear that intellectual and factual arguments need to accompany the personal, and often emotional, debate about an unborn baby's right to life. "It's not about religion. It's about science and about morality,"he said. "Life begins at conception. It's a scientific fact. Abortion is objectively terrible. It's killing millions of tiny human beings in what should be the safest place on earth—the womb."

According to Coren, there are three groups of people who are victims of abortion more than any other: the disabled, particularly those with down syndrome; people of brown or black skinned ethnicity; and women.

In our world, where the value of a human being is too often connected to one's economic contribution, it is tragically not surprising the intellectually or physically disabled are increasingly denied the right to be born.

The last two groups are often combined in countries or cultures where girls have lower social standing than boys. China and India, the world's most populace countries, are examples. China's one child policy  has left a generation of men unable to find a spouse because girls are often selectively aborted or abandoned at birth.

The fact girls are selectively aborted in great numbers makes it personal for those female pro-choice advocates who fight in the name of women's rights. Coren stated that making it personal is a necessary component of the equation for people to understand abortion is something more than an abstract concept for the enlightened; it's cruelly ending the life of an innocent unborn child.

Coren is unabashedly bold about standing up for what is right, for the right of the unborn to live. He stated that in comparison, all social causes—health care, education, welfare—pale in comparison. "It's the issue that matters most."

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