Reflections on the Feast of the Holy Innocents - allowing the deaths of Children for political reasons.

This morning as we did Morning Prayer on the Feast of the Holy Innocents it came to me that the deaths of holy innocents is still happening.  We make political decisions every day in our world that cause the deaths of children.  We are all upset over the deaths in Newtown CT, they were definately innocents, but do we get upset over the children who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Gaza etc? Are the children who die as "collateral damage" any less innocent?  If they are innocent what does that mean to us?  Can we really just say that is the cost of war?

If we are Pro-Life I think we have to be totally Pro-Life, cradle to grave, and not just the people we like and understand.  Children killed in poorly constructed schools in China, children killed in Chernobyl, children who die anywhere because it is politically expedient are all part of the continuation of Herod's murderous act.  We are horrified that he tried to kill our Savior by ordering the killing of all the children under the age of 2, and rightly so, but did we cry over the death of 8 children in Syria killed in a tank attack 2 days ago?

I think at times we refuse to let reports of the deaths of children to sink in because if we let all the reports in we would do nothing but cry.  But because we ignore these deaths to protect ourselves we don't take action.  It's easier to concentrate on the anti-abortion stance because we aren't taking part even in a small in the deaths so it's safe for us to think about.  If we think about the deaths of children as part of drone attacks, we have to recognize that we ourselves are in some small way Herod.

Herod killed those children to protect his regime.  Probably in his mind what he did, he did for the good of his country.  How often do we discount the welfare of children to save money on taxes, or to avoid government regulation, to our rights?  When we don't speak up for, protect, or decry the death of children we are in someway responsible for their deaths.