Dear Mr. President:

The following article ran in a number of diocesan papers and is reprinted here, to mark this week, as our country celebrates a Presidential Inauguration and remembers the unborn through the annual March for Life. In an ironic turn of events, a dear friend sent me the link at the bottom of the post. It fits in so well with the article's message that I have included it here for your viewing.


A few weeks ago, my ten-year-old daughter sat at the kitchen table and nibbled on a snack. She thumbed through a Christmas catalog and asked me to get her a typewriter for Christmas. She pointed to a picture on the page in front of her. It was a cheap plastic replica of an old typewriter. I told her she didn’t need it. She could use my computer any time she wanted. She explained that a typewriter captures the words immediately and puts them on paper. No printer needed, she said, and emphatically added that she had an important letter to write.

Now I was curious.

I asked her who she needed to write. In a matter-of-fact tone, she replied, “The President – about the abortion thing.” She whispered the last part, almost like she was sharing some profanity that she had overheard and found distasteful to repeat.

It made me want to buy her that plastic typewriter on the spot. It also made me reflect on the twists and turns of the past couple of months.

We’ve had an interesting year in the Bossert household. Even though we are a pro-life family, the subject of abortion rarely came up in our home before 2008, but then my older daughter moved back home. She took a job at a shelter for pregnant women. Our Lady’s Inn not only helps women choose life over abortion, they give the women a place to live for up to two years. They help them complete school, learn a trade, and find employment.

We’re a pro-life Catholic family. We were thrilled when our older daughter started working at Our Lady’s Inn. But then something happened to make us really pro-life, right down to our DNA.
The twenty-one-year-old daughter became pregnant. She isn’t married. She hasn’t completed college – not even one full year of college. She doesn’t own her own car. She doesn’t have her own place. And now, she doesn’t have a job because she is in almost the same situation as the clients at the women’s shelter. No longer the house monitor, she is now the unmarried mother-to-be. The only thing that separates her from the clients that live in the shelter is that she has familial support. Still, by President Obama’s standard, she is a prime candidate for an abortion. If she wanted to terminate the pregnancy, he would think she’d made a difficult, but wise decision.

Even our ten-year-old knows how wrong that would be. She knows that she will be an aunt sometime in June. She knows the new baby will make her daddy and me grandparents for the first time. She knows that will make her sister a mother, even though she isn’t married. And she knows that there is a baby growing inside her big sister, not a blob, not tissue, not a potential baby. It is a baby. And she prays for that baby every night.

For that ten-year-old, “the abortion thing” is a very big deal. She cannot imagine why any president would support pro-choice laws. And she’s innocent enough to believe her little letter might make a difference.

I can almost imagine what she would write.

Dear Mr. President,
I know you think abortion is okay, but maybe there are a few things you haven’t thought about in awhile. I’d like to tell you what I’ve decided now that my sister is going to have a baby. Even when it doesn’t seem like the right time for a baby to come into our lives, babies are always a gift from God. They are always a blessing. I’m sure you would understand if you could just live here a little while. You might see something familiar in our family. You might see yourself in the baby’s face. Maybe then you will want to change things so that all babies have a chance to live, no matter what. In your deepest part, you have to know that this is only fair. So, about that abortion thing – maybe God protected you all those years ago from just such a tragedy for a moment in time such as this. Please do whatever you can to protect babies. It’s okay to change your mind on the subject. Change is often a good thing. I’m praying that you will have the strength to make the right changes.

During this month when our country has both a Presidential Inauguration and a March for Life, let us continue to believe that our little letters and prayers do make a difference. Let us keep our new President in our prayers, and may God protect the most defenseless among us!


http://wdtprs.com/blog/2009/01/pro-life-commercial-from-catholicvoteorg/