Life

America’s Birthday Should Be a Declaration of the Right to Life

Red, white and blue confetti fell from the sky in Times Square, as a patriotic New Year’s Eve crystal ball came down to welcome 2026.

At the same time, the Washington Monument lit up like a giant birthday candle for America, with video projections celebrating key moments in an American history that can fittingly be described as miraculous.

As we welcomed the New Year, we have welcomed the 250th birthday of America, marked by the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

On Friday, January 23, the day of the national March for Life in Washington, DC, I will again lead the National Prayer Service in the historic and beautiful Constitution Hall, located at 1776 D St. NW, at 18th and D Streets.

The theme of this inspirational event will be In Celebration of America’s 250th Birthday – Celebrating the Right to Life as Recognized in Our Declaration of Independence.

My pro-life ministry, Priests for Life, and I are honored to be a part of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, along with other national leaders, which is preparing for the celebration of our nation’s Semiquincentennial in 2026. The Coalition is led by the America First Policy Institute, in coordination with the U.S. Department of Education.

In the coming months, events will be held as we plan to celebrate the 250th birthday of this bold and hopeful experiment known as the United States of America, and to educate our fellow citizens on the meaning of our founding documents and the extraordinary system of government our Founders have left us.

The key focus my ministry brings to this anniversary celebration of the adoption of the

Declaration of Independence is that this birth certificate of our country clearly and strongly proclaims that God is the source of our rights, that the first of those rights is life, and that government exists to secure those rights.

A proper understanding of these founding principles can only lead to one conclusion regarding abortion: governments have no authority to permit the killing of babies.

This is why the first of our activities as a member group of this Coalition is the National Prayer Service. Clergy and activists of all denominations will gather to pray for an end to abortion, for unity in the pro-life movement, to honor individuals for their outstanding work, and to praise the Lord before we march to the Supreme Court.

At this interdenominational service, Liche Ariza—who plays the role of Gedera, a Sadducee in Jerusalem and a member of the Sanhedrin in The Chosen—will be our special guest speaker. I will preach the sermon, and we will honor the memory of Charlie Kirk. For him, abortion was indeed a fundamental issue, a key passion. We spoke of it, privately and publicly, many times, and worked together to elect pro-life candidates. His message and example inspires a new generation of pro-life activists.

Co-sponsors of the National Prayer Service include the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, American Principles Project, Bott Radio Network, Thomas More Society, Human Life Alliance, The Justice Foundation, Operation Outcry, Timothy Plan, and Intercessors for America.

Please join and/or promote this event, as well as the numerous events throughout this new year for America’s 250th birthday. May our love for this country and our faithful citizenship be renewed as never before!

For more information on the prayer service, visit NationalPrayerService.com, and for more information on the educational activities for America’s 250th birthday, visit America250Civics.org.

Which Book Would You Want Your Child to Read?

Two children’s books. Two opposing worldviews. One cultural fork in the road.

This month, Live Action released I’m a Baby. Watch Me Grow, a children’s board book highlighting prenatal human development in the womb.

Next month, Abortion Is Everything, a children’s book written by abortion activists and aimed at kids as young as five, will be released.

The timing is not accidental. It reflects a broader cultural struggle over who will shape the values of the next generation — and how early that influence begins.

Abortion Is Everything was written by the founders of Shout Your Abortion, an organization devoted to normalizing abortion. Marketed directly to young children, the book presents abortion as a “superpower” — a tool that enables people to pursue their future.

This is not education. It is indoctrination.

The book offers no honest account of abortion’s reality: that it ends a human life. It entirely avoids the moral gravity of that act. Instead, abortion is framed as something good, necessary and affirming — presented to children who are still learning the most basic distinctions between right and wrong.

The underlying message is clear: personal autonomy matters more than life itself.

In sharp contrast stands I’m a Baby. Watch Me Grow. It simply presents biological reality — heartbeat, growth, movement and development in the womb.

It doesn’t mention abortion. It doesn’t need to.

Both books communicate a position on abortion, but they do so in fundamentally different ways.

One begins with a political conclusion and attempts to train children to accept it morally.

The other begins with biological truth and allows moral understanding to follow naturally.

One refuses to recognize the preborn child at all.

The other acknowledges that the preborn baby is a human being in its earliest stage.

These books reflect a deep cultural divide — a disagreement not just about policy, but about who is human and which humans deserve protection.

Abortion advocates understand this debate is not merely legal, but moral and generational. They know children form beliefs early, so they wrap abortion in pictures, affirming language and emotional appeals.

Pro-life advocates are responding by grounding children in truth: that life before birth is real, human and worthy of moral consideration.

Every culture reveals what it values by what it protects. Are we a culture that elevates self-autonomy and self-interest above all — even when the cost is a vulnerable human life? Or are we a culture that recognizes the value of human life regardless of size, location, ability or dependency?

Children’s books are not neutral. They are tools of moral formation. They teach children what matters — and who matters.

One book teaches children that abortion is freedom. The other teaches that life is worthy of protection.

These are not competing facts. They are competing visions of humanity.

One leads toward a culture that affirms death. The other toward a culture that chooses life.

So, which book would you want your child to read?

House Passes Annual Defense Bill Enacting Conservative Priorities

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a massive $900 billion annual defense bill, sending the measure to the Senate before the year-end deadline.

The House passed the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in a 312-112 vote; 94 Democrats and 18 Republicans opposed the bill.

The NDAA includes a 3.8% pay raise for U.S. troops, blocks the Pentagon from reducing the number of U.S. troops “permanently stationed in or deployed to” Europe below 76,000 for longer than 45 days, and authorizes $400 million in annual security assistance for Ukraine, The New York Times reports.

According to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, the bill codifies all or parts of 15 of President Trump’s executive orders, including:

  • Restoring America’s Fighting Force
  • Ending Radical and Wasteful DEI Programs
  • Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border
  • Securing Our Borders
  • Clarifying the Military’s Role in Defending U.S. Territorial Integrity
  • Modernizing Defense Acquisitions & Spurring Innovation
  • Building the Golden Dome for America
  • Deploying Advanced Nuclear Reactor Technologies for National Security
  • Restoring American Airspace Sovereignty
  • Unleashing American Drone Dominance

The speaker’s office also highlighted multiple “major conservative victories” the bill delivers, including:

  • Ends wokeness and DEI by eliminating programs, offices, and training across the Department of War (DOW).
  • Secures the border by expanding DOW support for Department of Homeland Security operations, National Guard deployments and National Defense Areas.
  • Revitalizes the defense industrial base: Grows U.S. defense manufacturing jobs, onshore critical supply chains, and expands surge capacity.
  • Ensures allies pay their fair share: Adds new tools to push allies to shoulder more of their own defense costs.

House Democrats had pushed for the inclusion of a provision covering the cost of in vitro fertilization (IVF) for service members and their families.

Thankfully, Speaker Johnson “intervened during final negotiations to kill that provision,” the Times reports, over concerns it would lead to the destruction of many embryos.

Speaker Johnson is entirely correct. The provision he killed would have used taxpayer money to subsidize an industry that routinely creates and discards hundreds of thousands of tiny human lives each year.

In fact, the baby-making industry (fertility clinics) destroys more human lives every year than the baby-taking (abortion) industry.

Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for Students for Life of America, applauded the speaker’s intervention.

“IVF is not an industry that deserves blanket support and funding. We can do better,” she said in a statement.

Lila Rose, president of Live Action, also thanked Speaker Johnson for “ensuring TRICARE was not used to subsidize this destruction of life.”

The House’s original version of the NDAA contained additional conservative priorities, “including a ban on the Pentagon covering [transgender] surgeries for troops. But that provision and several others were stripped out in final negotiations,” the Times notes.

Though the provision doesn’t appear in the NDAA, the Pentagon stopped funding transgender medical interventions for U.S. soldiers earlier this year after President Trump signed an executive order prohibiting transgenderism within the military.

The NDAA still includes a prohibition on biological males participating in women’s sports at U.S. military academies.

The Senate is expected to overwhelmingly approve the legislation, with President Trump signing it into law before the end of the year.

Related articles and resources:

Counseling Consultation & Referrals

IVF: Moral and Ethical Considerations

Frozen Embryos: Ethical Issues, Cryopreservation Risks, and IVF

Court Upholds Trump Ban on ‘Transgender’ Service Members

Photo from Getty Images.

Correcting the White House: God Became Man at Conception, Not Birth

On Monday, the White House gave a strong presidential message recognizing the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day in the Catholic liturgical calendar. The President’s message begins, “On the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Catholics celebrate what they believe to be Mary’s freedom from original sin as the mother of God.”

Of course, Protestant do not accept this belief, and Orthodox Christians hold an alternative view. All the same, it is notable that President Trump’s White House recognized it.

The statement briefly explains and celebrates the biblical story of how a lowly virgin from Nazareth is chosen by God to give birth to the Savior of the world. The statement properly states, “Mary’s decision forever altered the course of humanity.” But of course, God becoming man changed all of redemptive history.

This statement from the White House can at least be appreciated by all Christians as a reminder of the historical and biblical truth of the coming of the Son of God, even if we don’t accept the Catholic belief surrounding Mary’s own conception. So, the Trump White House is to be thanked for that. After all, as the statement documents, Catholic believers have played important roles in our nation’s founding and success.

But the statement included an unfortunate error that, no doubt, the president nor his staff who drafted the statement, intended.

At the end of the third paragraph, it states:

Nine months later, God became man when Mary gave birth to a son, Jesus, who would go on to offer his life on the Cross for the redemption of sins and the salvation of the world.

Can you spot the error? We hope so!

God did not become man – while also remaining fully God – at His birth. The incarnational miracle that shifted the balance of the whole universe happened at the moment of conception within Mary’s womb.

In fact, the Scripture beautifully notes this divine God-drama in the womb.

Shortly after hearing the angel Gabriel’s remarkable announcement, Mary went to the “hill country, to a town in Judah” to visit her cousin Elizabeth who was miraculously pregnant with Jesus’ forerunner, John the Baptist. As Mary entered Elizabeth’s home and greeted her, baby John excitedly leapt in Elizabeth’s womb. Elizabeth then exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” She then added, “And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:42-43 ESV)

John the Baptist, while in his mother’s womb, miraculously discerned the approach of the Savior of the world in Mary’s womb and leapt in joyful worship. Elizabeth also noted the blessed nature of the preborn Jesus in the womb, calling Mary blessed at that moment and “the mother of my Lord.”

God became flesh in a womb.

Of course, this is also a profound statement about the wonder of the feminine, the maternal and the nature of the unborn, for God used all of these to reveal Himself. It is also a profound statement about the second person of the divine Trinity, Jesus Christ, and His human origins.

This, after all, is the miracle of Christmas and Christianity itself. In fact, it is what C.S. Lewis called “the Grand Miracle”:

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. … If the thing happened, it was the central event in the history of the Earth – the very thing that the whole story has been about.

It is important to get our theology right on the matter. We hope the White House will correct this mistake.

Abortion’s Lies Exposed by Activist’s Own Bumper Stickers

In a way, the bumper sticker predates the bumper – minus the adhesive.

Prior to the advent of Ford’s Model A in 1927 that included the world’s first car bumper, those wanting to communicate a message were known to strap wooden or metal signs using rope or wire onto the back of motorized vehicles. Prior to the car, they were affixed onto horse drawn buggies or carriages.

Forrest P. Gill is credited with inventing the “bumper strip” in the 1940s using self-adhesive paper and fluorescent ink. His first big order was to help promote a park in Clearwater, Florida. It took a few years before politicians began using them to campaign. Dwight Eisenhower’s election in 1952 was buttressed by bumper stickers featuring the ideal short and pithy slogan: “I LIKE IKE”. He won in a landslide.

Bumper stickers have been used for political and social activism ever since. If not always effective, they’ve certainly become ubiquitous. And why not? They’re cheap and everywhere. Motorists can’t help but look at the bumper in front of them while waiting at a red light.

Most causes benefit from reducing the mission, goal or call-to-action down to a single phrase that can fit on a bumper. And yet some are actually exposed by such an exercise – especially the abortion lobby and industry.

I was waiting at a red light the other morning when I spotted a sticker on a silver Subaru in front of me. It read:

ABORTION IS HEALTHCARE

PRO LIFE IS ANTI-WOMEN

Both statements are lies, of course.

According to Merriam-Webster, “healthcare” is “efforts made to maintain, restore, or promote someone’s physical, mental, or emotional well-being especially when performed by trained and licensed professionals.”

Abortion isn’t healthcare by any stretch of the imagination. It doesn’t restore anything but destroys innocent life and then burdens and enslaves the mother and father with a lifetime of guilt and regret.

The claim that being pro-life is somehow “anti-women” is a nonsensical statement on numerous levels, especially since half of the babies aborted are female. But it does speak to the selfish ideology that permeates the abortion movement overall. Many of the activists refuse to acknowledge the existence of life inside the womb and instead put all the emphasis on the mother and none on the baby.

Contrasting pro-life bumper stickers with pro-abortion ones is also instructive and revealing. It’s easy to note the aggression, anger and ignorance in the pro-abortion stickers:

“Keep Your Laws Off My Body,” “No Uterus, No Opinion,” and “My Body, My Choice.”

The slogans are also downright stupid. Do pro-abortion activists really not want any laws concerning the human body? Countless laws protect the bodies of both women and men by making murder illegal or regulating countless other things we ingest/utilize that can potentially kill us – everything ranging from medical procedures to our food and medicine. And only women can have an opinion about abortion? They seem to be fine with pro-abortion male presidents appointing pro-abortion justices to the Supreme Court.

The pro-life messaging?

“Choose Life,” “Every Life Matters,” “Love Them Both,” “Children Are a Gift From God.”

How can anyone be intellectually honest and disagree with these statements?

It can be difficult to reduce contentious issues to soundbites and bumper stickers, but truth is often revealed by contrast. None more so than by examining the rival messages regarding the sanctity of life making their way around the streets of our towns and cities.