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Intention

To pray that God creates a clean heart in our nation so that the killing of babies will cease.

Scripture

“Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Renew a loyal spirit within me. Do not banish me from your presence, and don’t take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.

Then I will teach your ways to rebels, and they will return to you.

Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves; then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness. Unseal my lips, O Lord, that my mouth may praise you.”

– Psalm 51:10–15

Reflection

In late 1984, I attended a screening of Silent Scream, a documentary about abortion narrated by Bernard Nathanson. Dr Nathanson was a prominent abortionist who cofounded Repeal of Abortion Laws in 1969. At one stage, in the very early seventies, he ran the largest abortion clinic in the world.

But he began to have second thoughts.

In 1974, Dr Nathanson wrote, “I am deeply troubled by my own increasing certainty that I had presided over 60,000 deaths”. He later wrote, “Abortion… is the most atrocious holocaust in the history of the United States”.

Silent Scream ripped my heart out. I can distinctly remember feeling physically sick watching a live abortion by ultrasound. After the movie, I drove up the mountain and stumbled around in the darkness in the bush, crying for what seemed like hours. To say that this movie changed me was an understatement.

A few years later, I wrote a driving rock song inspired by a Black Sabbath riff called “Don’t Kill the Children”. It became the title track of my first music album.

Don’t kill whales

Don’t kill trees

Don’t kill seals

But most of all

Don’t kill the children (repeat).

 

They were born to live not die

Light does not get in their eyes

A man in white takes their life

Before they have a chance to live.

 

Chorus

 

Blood on the water

Blood on the tree

Pretty soon all that blood

Will be on you and me.

 

Chorus

Many years later, the Good News Band was booked to play at a lunch-hour concert in a high school. The school principal was holding a copy of our album, a picture of a seal with a cartoon caption coming out its mouth that said, “Don’t Kill the Children”.

He asked me bluntly, with a view to cancelling our concert at his school, if we were anti-abortion. “Yes”, I replied, “but the songs say don’t kill whales, trees and seals as well”. Without blinking, he said, “I am an environmentalist. You are welcome in my school!”

It’s incredibly sad that it is okay to kill babies, but seals and trees get the sympathy vote. I can remember telling my friend Peter Smith about the fact that Australia kills about a hundred thousand babies each year. Our total tally of deaths in Australia from the Boer War, including WWI and WW2 and all conflicts up until now, is 102,888. Australia kills each year, almost the equivalent of all wartime casualties for the last 130 years. I said it was barbaric, and he coined the term, “Civilised Barbarians.”

I can remember playing “Don’t Kill the Children” in many prisons and telling the story of the song. I have often said to the prisoners that there are many men out there who should be in here and many men in here who shouldn’t be. Heads slowly nodded in agreement when these words were spoken. In a gaol, everyone knows they are a sinner. There is no point in hiding it.

Video

Prayer

Dear God,

Forgive me for staying silent amidst the shedding of innocent blood. Cleanse me of blood guiltiness.

Create in me a clean heart. Create in me a soft heart, and Lord, do the same in Australia.

As Berard Nathanson said at the end of the film Silent Scream, “For humanity’s sake, here and now, stop the killing.”

Amen.

Author Bio

Warwick Marsh has been married to Alison since 1975 and they have five children and ten grandchildren. He is a family, faith and prayer advocate, social reformer, musician, TV producer, writer and public speaker. Warwick is a leader in the men’s and family movement, and he is well known in Australia for his advocacy for children, marriage, manhood, family, fatherhood and faith.

Prayer Points and Purpose for 21 Days for Life 2025

1. That the Church unifies in prayer and advocacy for the unborn.

2. That Australians will vote according to the defence of LIFE in upcoming elections.

3. That the federal Babies Born Alive Bill be passed with no more delay.

4. That every church across Australia becomes a House of Refuge.

5. That walks for life to defend life in the womb flourish in every state and territory.