A terrifying reality

I am quite often affected by the things that Oprah Winfrey talks about on her show, and today, more than ever. It was an entire show about child pornography and abuse. It was a shocking show. It wasn't 2 minutes into it before I was crying. She had poor victims of child sexual abuse by a trusted neighbor. What really got me was an internet instruction guide created by online child predators on how to create your own child pornography and the things you can do. It was so highly disturbing, that it made me feel physically sick, and I am tearing up just writing this. I can't imagine how you parents must feel about topics like this, because I am not even a parent. What Oprah really brought to my attention is an amazing computer program that law enforcement has created to get the exact location of these disgusting predators. It is amazing that we have the technology and power to save these children who are experiencing things that no one should have to experience, and they aren't necessarily teenagers, they were talking about children as young as infants. The problem here is that they don't have the funding, or the staff country-wide to be able to tackle this problem the way they need to. I feel very strongly about not using my blog to push politics or my personal political view. The thing about this is, it has nothing to do with politics, or parties or opinions. There isn't a person with a soul in this country that couldn't agree that not one more child needs to face this kind of horror for one more second.
There is a new bill (one that Elizabeth Smart's father is also pushing) that is going to the Senate for a vote THIS MONTH. Oprah has made it ridiculously easy for us to contact our Senators to tell them that we back this bill, to give more money to law enforcement to help solve this problem.
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=OR
If you live in Oregon, click in this link above and you can choose one or both of your Senators to email and tell them that you want them to vote for this bill. On www.oprah.com there is a sample letter that you can use, and she gives more information about the bill and what we can do. Unfortunately we only have a few days to take action and email our Senators to urge them to help. I am not one to urge people to do this kind of thing on a normal basis, because I think voting is a very personal matter, but I truly think if we can overwhelmingly urge our Senators to vote in this bill, that we can take this matter into our own hands and feel like as one person, we can make a difference, and perhaps save a child from this fate.
I hope I didn't sound too preachy or too much like a "Save the Children" commercial. I promise, I did it already, and it only took me 2 minutes to copy and paste Oprah's form letter into our Senators web-ready email forms.
Do it.
Thanks,
Lauren