Pro-life bumper stickers make me uncomfortable. So do pro-life T-shirts with their large pictures of unborn babies.

They don’t make me uncomfortable because I’m pro-abortion. I agree with the church’s teachings on the sanctity of life at every stage. I do not believe in the death penalty; don’t believe in euthanasia and rarely think that war is the only answer to an international problem. Rather, my discomfort with some aspects of the pro-life movement in general, and the Catholic piece of it in particular, arises from my perspective as a foster and adoptive parent. I see too little of a connection between the pro-life movement and the foster and adoptive community.

As of December 2008, there were 2,638 children in Milwaukee County who needed placement outside of their homes because of allegations of neglect or abuse against their parents. That year, there were only 857 active, licensed foster homes able to receive those children. The rest of the children had to be placed with unlicensed relatives or in group homes. In Milwaukee, as well as in other cities its size or larger, the families who step forward to foster are too often marginal themselves. Recent tragedies highlighted in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s series on the ills of the Milwaukee foster care system illustrate just how dire the situation is.

The story haunted me for weeks and even now, some eight months later, it still sends shivers up my spine.

The tragedy of Maddie Kiefer, the Whitefish Bay High School freshman who was left to die in a driveway on a winter morning after overdosing on prescription drugs seemed such a waste of a beautiful life.

Her solitary death was such a contrast to the photo of Maddie that ran in the newspaper and on television for days to follow. Such a beautiful girl with an engaging smile, she seemed to have the world at her feet.

Her story also hit close to home. Maddie was two days older than our oldest daughter, Marisa, and from what I read, Maddie had a similar upbringing, including a Catholic school education and connection to their Catholic parish.

Madison Kiefer’s tragic death March 1 from a prescription drug overdose horrified a community. But it also shed light on a troubling reality: drug and alcohol problems can exist anywhere – even in Milwaukee’s North Shore suburbs.

Maddie, a 15-year-old Whitefish Bay High School freshman, died shortly after being left, unconscious, in a friend’s driveway.

That’s why Divine Savior Holy Angels and Marquette University high schools teamed up to bring one of the nation’s top experts on drugs and alcohol, Robert Stutman, to talk to students and parents. In the Sept. 22 parent presentation titled, “‘Not My Kid’: Three Killer Words of Abuse,” he gave the nearly 500 parents in attendance an overview of the issues and a plan of action.

“I’d like to start out talking about where we are in the United States because of the drugs in this country, talk about what some of your kids said today (during the presentation to students) that, frankly, puts you right in the middle of the mainstream of the drug and alcohol issue in the United States,” said Stutman, a Drug Enforcement Administration agent for 25 years, five of which he worked as an undercover agent, and founder of the Stutman Group, through which he speaks to schools and workplaces about drugs and alcohol.