Books affirming the value of all humans are part of a time-honored, truth-telling tradition

Live Action's new children's book highlights the life of the preborn child and helps to pass the torch of the fight for human rights to the next generation. Children's literature has been used to promote the dignity of the human person throughout recent history — notably, in the years leading up to the abolition of slavery — and is an exceptional tool in today's human rights battle for the life, dignity, and protection of the preborn child.

Key Takeaways:

• Children's books and videos can be a tool to help teach them about the importance of advocating for human rights, including the right to life.

• Live Action's New Baby Olivia book follows a preborn baby's life from the moment of fertilization.

• Books from years past have taught children that all persons are equal and that slavery is an injustice against human rights.

The Details:

Teaching Truth to Younger Generations

This month, Live Action introduced its children's book, "I'm a Baby," which follows the journey of Baby Olivia as she grows and develops before birth.

"Through gentle rhyme and beautiful illustrations, children will discover the wonder of human life in the womb," the book's back cover states.

'I'm a Baby' begins with Olivia's first moment of life at fertilization, sees her implant in the womb, and details her significant fetal development markers, from the first weeks of human life all the way to birth.

This beautifully designed book (read by Live Action President Lila Rose below) features sweet imagery that can be softly imprinted into the minds of the next generation, who will know as they grow up that preborn babies are valuable human beings.

"I'm a Baby" joins a lineup of other wonderful, pro-life resources for children, including “Pro-Life Kids,” a book by Bethany Bomberger, co-founder and Executive Director of The Radiance Foundation. This book reinforces the value of every human life and is available in the Live Action shop.

An animated video of Olivia's brother, Baby Oliver, was recently introduced by Live Action as well.

Anti-Slavery Literature for Children

Sharing the importance of human rights with children is not a new concept.

Anti-slavery abolitionists were especially intentional about educating the next generation, even as they fought to confirm full constitutional protections for individuals being held as slaves, motivating them to design books for children about human dignity.

Cornell University Library, which documented anti-slavery strategies, wrote:

Abolitionists... looked to future generations to carry on their work, creating a body of children’s literature to bring the harsh realities of slavery before a young audience. These materials were deemed so threatening in slave states that they were outlawed...

... Abolitionists published many illustrated tracts for children on the evils of slavery to inculcate the next generation with anti-slavery beliefs. Many of these tracts featured stories of slave children separated from their parents to show free children the urgency of the abolitionist cause.

In a section entitled "Antislavery Children's Primers," the New York Public Library wrote:

Abolitionists did not forget the very impressionable new generation. Within many larger publications... there was a children’s section to help groom an abolitionist future. The Slave’s Friend is one example of a publication that was dedicated solely to children.

Authors also wrote children’s books on slavery and various versions of the alphabet of slavery to appeal to children as well as to assist parents and other adults as they broached the difficult topic with youth...

Exhibits at the Library of Congress detail abolitionist tracts used "to excite the sympathy of free children" which featured "[v]ivid illustrations help to reinforce the message that black children should have the same rights as white children, and that holding humans as property is 'a sin against God.'”

The 1864 book, The Gospel of Slavery: A Primer of Freedom, written by Iron Gray, utilized the alphabet, truths about slavery, and "Christian terms to teach children abolitionist principles," Cornell University Library noted.

The book begins:

A Stands for Adam. Creation began

By giving dominion of Nature to man.

Men differ in color, and stature, and weight,

Nor equal are all in their talent or state,

But equal in rights are the great and the small

In sight of the God and Creator of all.

Then how comes dominion of brother by brother?

Or how can the one be the lord of the other?

Consider it well-for an answer I crave,

That reaches the question of Master and Slave.

The book continues:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."—Decl. of Ind. It is nothing to affirm that the Negro, or Indian, or Arab, is not equal to the white man—namely, in talent and the like. No two white men are equal in all respects—but if you deny an equality of rights, specify the grounds of such denial.

Meanwhile, the 1846 Anti-Slavery Alphabet Book was read to the children of anti-slavery activists.

American Antiquarian Society wrote:

The Anti-Slavery Alphabet is a reader that was published... for the purpose of being sold at the Anti-Slavery Fair in Philadelphia...

... This book, like most antislavery and abolitionist texts, was not read in the classroom but rather would have been read in antislavery and abolitionist households as an attempt to inform the next generation about abolitionist politics and to inspire future activism...

... Using direct, instructive language as well as the second-person perspective, the text entreats readers to both acknowledge the system of slavery and take action to further the abolitionist cause.

Its introduction, which is titled “To Our Little Readers,” urges children to take part in the abolitionist movement by imploring slave masters, educating peers, and boycotting “[c]andy, sweetmeat, pie or cake,” all of which contained sugar, a slave-cultivated staple.

... Though the text mainly highlights the cruelty of slavery, it also offers hope, depicting an alternative society in which the free black man is “rambling free” and “Delighting ‘neath the palm trees’ shade.” 

A section entitled TO OUR LITTLE READERS states:

Listen, little children, all, Listen to our earnest call:
You are very young, 'tis true, But there's much that you can do.
Even you can plead with men That they buy not slaves again,
And that those they have may be Quickly set at liberty.
They may hearken what you say, Though from us they turn away.
Sometimes, when from school you walk, You can with your playmates talk,
Tell them of the slave child's fate, Motherless and desolate.
And you can refuse to take Candy, sweetmeat, pie or cake,
Saying "no"—unless 'tis free— "The slave shall not work for me."
Thus, dear little children, each May some useful lesson teach;
Thus each one may help to free This fair land from slavery.

A Child's Anti-Slavery Book, containing a few words about American slave children and stories of slave life, begins:

Children, you are free and happy... when you become men and women you will have full liberty to earn your living, to go, to come, to seek pleasure or profit in any way that you may choose, so long as you do not meddle with the rights of other people; in one word, _you are free children_!

Thank God! thank God! my children, for this precious gift. Count it dearer than life. Ask the great God who made you free to teach you to prefer death to the loss of liberty.

But are all the children in America free like you? No, no! I am sorry to tell you that hundreds of thousands of American children are _slaves_. Though born beneath the same sun and on the same soil, with the same natural right to freedom as yourselves, they are nevertheless SLAVES. Alas for them! Their parents cannot train them as they will, for they too have MASTERS. These masters say to them:

"Your children are OURS--OUR PROPERTY!"

The Other Side:

Tragically, those who oppose protecting every human being have sought to propagandize young minds. Live Action News recently documented the Shout Your Abortion founder's children's book, "Abortion is Everything," which purports to explain abortion in kid-friendly, abortion-positive language. The book essentially credits abortion as empowerment for women, allowing them to decide their own futures... through the killing of their own children in the womb. Of course, the book doesn't put it in those terms.

There is a legacy here, as well, in dehumanizing certain human beings through the use of children's literature.

"Reading Poison: Science and Story in Nazi Children’s Propaganda" author Daniel Feldman in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at Bar-Ilan University wrote:

One of the most prominent children’s books of the Nazi period, Hiemer’s Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom) instantiates the toxic combination of science and narrative in a text featuring Nazi eugenics as the biological justification for anti-Semitism.

In the Illustration for “The Poisonous Mushroom,” the caption reads, “Just as it is often hard to tell the poisonous mushrooms from good mushrooms, so too it is very difficult to recognize the Jew as a crook and criminal…”

Feldman added:

... the Nazis were not the first to ground children’s books in race science. Eugenics have long featured in American children’s books... Interest in eugenics also preoccupied a “significant piece of children’s literature” in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain....

Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, an ardent eugenics proponent, also promoted children's books in her Birth Control Review publications:

The Bottom Line:

Planned Parenthood regularly targets children and adolescents with vile sexual content, promotion of abortion, sex-ed, and the trans agenda. Children's books promoting abortion or sexual promiscuity continue to make their way into public institutions, while groups like SIECUS (Sex Ed for Social Change), founded by former Planned Parenthood medical director Mary Calderone, oppose educating children with the Baby Olivia video.

The question then, is, "Why is the beauty of telling a story about the most significant moment in a person's life — his or her very beginning — such a threat to abortion proponents?"

It is important to teach children the truth from a young age, now more than ever.

Live Action's children's book reinforces the message pro-life advocates convey every day — that life is precious from the moment of fertilization until natural death.