This seems appropriate on this feast day:
A Prayer for Children
Sweet Blessed Mother,
O Mary, mother of us all,
This morning I pray
For all the babies conceived to be biosamples,
For all the children ripped from their mothers' wombs,
For all the children abandoned by their parents at
birth,
For all the children dumped by their families and left
to fend for their own in cities throughout the world,
For all the children kidnapped to be soldiers in wars
they cannot understand,
For all the children who live under the threat of
abuse, physical, mental and sexual,
For children starving because of famine or neglect,
For children killed by local authorities because they
are embarrassed by the numbers of abandoned children
haunting their streets,
For children killed by people because they belonged to
the wrong faith, wrong color or wrong ethnic or
political group,
For children accused of socery to excuse their parents'
problems, and then tortured or abandoned,
For children forced to work in unsafe conditions,
For children growing up starved of knowledge of God,
For children growing up starved of love.
Keep them under your mantle, Blessed Mother,
May we never forget how much they are loved by your Son,
And may my eyes always be open
to ways to help them.
One other:
Molech laughs
with each soul
ripped loose
from the dark, warm cradle
that should have been
a loving cushion
to wait out the months
in loving anticipation,
but instead
became
a crypt of flesh and blood
an altar
to self-interest,
panic,
lies told,
greed.
Who knows what darkness
prevented,
what joy interrrupted,
what good shattered
lies
in that little life
broken
beneath the wheel of
death poising as right,
murder
sheltered by the lie
of self-determination?
Who knows
what guilt and grief
are eaten
beneath the sterile lights
that claim all is well?
Molech laughs
with the laugh of the well fed,
filled with the murder
of life unfulfilled.
O Blessed Mother,
as you gather each little soul
close to you,
held under your mantle,
pray for us
that we might realize
the darkness trying to swallow us up,
and shed your son's light
on the lies told,
and break the chain
of death
presented as good.
(Molech, in case you are not familiar, was the deity that children were offered to as burnt sacrifices in ancient Israel)