I monitored most of the new President’s inauguration over CNN (wherein I had to stay up late till 3AM) and I did witness him take the podium and tell the world about how it is high time to “lead America into the new age” and “proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.” Pretty nice words for a speech and from a President, who since his campaign has promised to effect change to a people struggling from the global economic crisis and dissatisfaction with an ever-lingering policy of sending troops to Iraq. However, I perhaps have been one with those whose sceptical minds were burning with anticipation as to whether the good President shall definitely stay true to his vows. We shall never know; however, what needs to be addressed primordially are not merely of the tangible but what goes beyond the affairs of the world–that being the root of everything that haunts us, the touchstones of moral decrepitude.

Abortion kills more than hundreds (or even millions) of innocent children annually, and such being the product of an even larger scale of humanity’s disregard for life. This is even worse than numerous soldiers getting their throats ripped apart by terrorists in the Middle East or children having their limbs cut off by landmines in Cambodia. What we are experiencing now is not merely a global war against terrorism, but as to why there has been a rising death toll amongst the innocent who shall never come to taste life in its fullest. We shed our tears for every victim of war; but do we even manage to take just once merciful glance upon those mothers who shall forever suffer the consequences of guilt precipitated by such a horrendous crime, and children who cannot even budge against telling their own mothers to stop annihilating their existence in the womb?

Change we need. True. But we need more than change. We need metanoia.