Two thousand years ago the Church came into a world that practiced child abandonment, and they did something about it. If not for the human worth that Christianity brought into this world I would suggest that there would be 10% of the families in this room wouldn't be here today. But from what I can see, there is still a form of child abandonment practiced today, especially in the cities of this country.

Jonathan Kozol worked with children in the South Bronx, among those he described as "the poorest of the poor." He wrote that these children were not suffering by mistake, they were outcasts. They lived in what he called the "lazarettos," those sections of the cities in the Middle Ages where certain people were condemned, and not allowed to leave those ghettos. They were confined there.

He said that we had the same thing in every city in America. We send children to the worst schools, the most vile hospitals, the filthiest and most unsafe neighborhoods, and then we study these children to find out why they don't have any values. In every city, there is a section where we don't go, and we don't want to see what's there. The children who live in that part of the city are not our children, and we have nothing to do with them.

I tell you, that is a form of the old Roman practice of child abandonment, getting rid of unwanted children by ignoring them, not paying any attention to them. You would think that an enlightened civilization would do something about that. You would think the Church would do something about it. I'm not going to lay this solely at the government's feet. We, Me, You personally need to do something about it.