I work at a grocery store and I heard one of our female cashiers the other day telling a customer that she needed some of what the customer was buying but when she went to Wal-Mart to buy it she was told she was underage. This girl is 17 so I wondered what it could be. The lady didn't seem to have any alcoholic beverages or tobacco products with her.

Now some may think I'm blunt but when I want to know something, I find it out. I just asked the girl what it was. She said that it was PMS medication. She said she could use it and considering what I hear from women I know, I think I can understand why she believed that.

But my mind flashed to another situation. PMS deals with the female reproductive cycle. We all know that it's the passage of an egg on its journey and that's what causes it. Now here is what I find amazing. A 17 year-old girl cannot get medication to cure pain in the reproductive system, but she can have an abortion without her parents knowledge to destroy a human life, the result of the reproductive system.

We've all heard the analogy before with medication. When I was in school I even had to have a doctor's note to take cough drops to school. I really think that's taking things too far. Maybe some will disagree but I don't see it with cough drops. I don't even see it with OTC drugs. Smart kids know how to handle drugs like tylenol or aspirin. I assure you if a kid really wants to get drugged up they know of better drugs than OTCs and they know how to get them.

But I like the analogy better when it uses PMS pills because this is explicitly dealing with the reproductive system on both counts. A girl can't get medication unless she's 18 to deal with the pain of PMS but she can get an abortion without her parents ever knowing about it.

Friends. Something is wrong there.

We are sending a mixed message to our children. We can't treat natural pain that they go through but we tell them it's okay to inflict the worst possible pain that can be felt on an unborn child. We tell them we can't heal their injury but we can allow them to take the life of a baby within them. They can't manage handling their own pain in their life but they can handle the decision of the life of another.

Now I know there are a lot of smart teenage girls out there but do you think your average teenager knows enough to decide on rather or not to end a life within her? Most girls have a hard time deciding what they're gonna wear to school one day but they'll have no problem deciding to take the life of a child that day.

Again, I take this back to evolutionary theory. Life has been seen as meaningless. I think this is one reason many young people I know try to pull off stunts in their cars. Sadly, they're not afraid of death. I don't think we should stay up at night agonizing over our future deaths but I think we should give the thought some respect.

We're talking about a life in either case. The youth are flippant with their own lives. Why should they care about the life of another? Many don't know what it means to really fight for a cause. There are just cases of taking lives such as in a war, self-defense, and I would say capital punishment.

I was with friends tonight discussing some cartoons an hour or so after church. I think we should have more that have real heroes and real causes worth fighting for. We talked about Batman Beyond because the speaker at our church had said his 5 year-old was having a birthday party and that was his theme. I liked that show. I liked the idea that it pictured a world of despair but when the hero comes, there's hope. That's the gospel friends. Before Christ came, the world was in despair. He came, and now there's hope.

A friend and I went and saw "Agent Cody Banks" Friday. I honestly loved this movie. I thought it was very very clean compared to many movies for kids today but still very good and very funny. I also liked how it depicted people. In the movie, Cody Banks is assigned to date a girl because the CIA needs to reach her father who is a scientist being used by an evil mastermind.

Cody had been at a Summer camp with other kids where they were secretly learning techniques like using spy equipment and martial arts so they could be in the CIA when they grew up. Like any guy, Cody bragged about his abilities with the ladies there which is why the CIA contacts him for the case.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Cody is so shy that girls ask him if he's in special education. The CIA helps him though and he reaches this girl but then gets off the case. (I won't tell why for those who see it.) However when he has to rescue her and he tells her why he dated her she's offended at first. She doesn't like being treated like an object until he tells her the truth about how he really feels.

What an awesome truth our young people need to hear! People are not objects! The baby inside the womb of a girl is not an object. Could the pregnancy be an accident? Of course! Could it be unplanned? Of course! But the baby in the womb is a person. It has its own cells and DNA code. It's not an object.

Now I think is the time we stressed to our youth that life is valuable. Like the cartoons and movies, we need heroes who will stand up today and fight for those who can't defend themselves. An unborn child has no defense against an abortion doctor. We need to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.