On this annual Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children, the quote from Jeremiah (in our first reading) is especially relevant. For although legal protection of the unborn is crucial, it is only a stage in progress towards a true solution. Until, in the words of Jeremiah, God’s immutable law against the taking of all human life, is placed in our minds and written on our hearts, true respect for life will still elude us. Accordingly, one of the prime motivators for the church’s efforts towards the New Evangelization needs to include the desire to open the minds and hearts of both believers and unbelievers alike, to this divine recreation of our minds and hearts—estranged as they are from God. This recreation is another way of describing the healing and full flowering of conscience which enables choices and decisions in harmony, not only with God’s will, but with our true humanity as creatures made in God’s image and likeness. Only in this way will our protection of the unborn reflect a fundamental respect for the sacredness of all human life from the moment of conception until natural death.