In 1973, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision that has been understood as allowing for the cessation of human life as a right of the person bearing that life. That the object of this legislation is a human life has been determined by the courts in the recognition that the killing of a fetus during a robbery can be considered homicide. The peculiar situation in which determination of human life can be decided by choice and not by objective reality reprises the arguments supporting slavery and eugenics. Today, the Church asks us that the clarity of what is known by reason and motivated by faith may permeate the collective heart of our nation and that decisions be made in support of both the unborn and those women who are in situations of difficulty caused by pregnancy. Prayer is one of the many appropriate responses to this decision of the Supreme Court and subsequent legislation because in prayer we recognize the presence and the action of God who created each human person as an intentional act. There are some who have nourished themselves on the poisonous idea that the human person is a living creature but differs only in degree and not in kind from other living creatures. This mistaken view of human nature, the killing and removing of what Margaret Sanger considered to be to “human weeds,” (See her article published in Collier’s Magazine published on August 15, 1925, p. 25 cited in the Margaret Sanger official archives: http://sangerpapers.org/documents/show.php?sangerDoc=305433.xml ) established a foundational idea that serves as a first premise to a deadly logic and this logic is used as a faulty response to the world’s problems. Planned parenthood in New York has recognized the racism and classism implicit in Margaret Sanger’s position and has initiated movements to remove her name from their offices and a public square in the city. Let us pray that reason continues to prevail, a reason inspired by faith which identifies the dignity of the human person present from conception to natural death.