Open letter to President Obama (Part 621)

(Emailed to White House on 6-12-13.)

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. I know that you don’t agree with my pro-life views but I wanted to challenge you as a fellow Christian to re-examine your pro-choice view. Although we are both Christians and have the Bible as the basis for our moral views, I did want you to take a close look at the views of the pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff too.  Hentoff became convinced of the pro-life view because of secular evidence that shows that the unborn child is human. I would ask you to consider his evidence and then of course reverse your views on abortion.

___________________

Nat Hentoff is an atheist, but he became a pro-life activist because of the scientific evidence that shows that the unborn child is a distinct and separate human being and even has a separate DNA. His perspective is a very intriguing one that I thought you would be interested in. I have shared before many   cases (Bernard Nathanson, Donald Trump, Paul Greenberg, Kathy Ireland)    when other high profile pro-choice leaders have changed their views and this is just another case like those. I have contacted the White House over and over concerning this issue and have even received responses. I am hopeful that people will stop and look even in a secular way (if they are not believers) at this abortion debate and see that the unborn child is deserving of our protection.That is why the writings of Nat Hentoff of the Cato Institute are so crucial.

Can a Nonperson Be a Victim?

Occasional

by Nat Hentoff
The Washington Post, March 27, 1993

Ana Rosa Rodriguez was born in 1991 without a right arm. Actually, she was not supposed to have been born. Her mother, 19-year-old Rosa Rodriguez, a Dominican immigrant, 7 1/2 months pregnant, had gone to Dr. Abu Hayat on New York’s Lower East Side for an abortion. It was botched; Ana Rosa was born the day after. But in the course of the doctor’s attempts to dismember her the day before, Ana Rosa’s right arm had been torn off.

In February of this year, a jury in New York State Supreme Court convicted Dr. Hayat on a number of counts. One was performing an illegal abortion in the third trimester of pregnancy. While 11 states permit abortions during the final three months, New York prohibits it after 24 weeks.

(If the Freedom of Choice Act passes Congress and is signed by the president, this kind of state restriction will probably no longer be allowed anywhere. The bill leaves the definition of viability — when the fetus can survive outside the uterus — to the physician performing the abortion, not to the individual states.)

Dr. Hayat was also convicted of assault on Ana Rosa because of the arm that had been severed at the shoulder. The convictions are being appealed by the doctor’s lawyer, Ronald J. Veneziano. There would appear to be no basis for appeal on the charge of an illegal abortion after 24 weeks. But Dr. Hayat may well get the assault charge overturned.

His attorney’s argument is that, according to Roe v. Wade, a fetus is not a person. And under New York state criminal law, unless a person is assaulted, no crime has been committed. Justice Harry Blackmun, in writing the majority decision in Roe v. Wade, could not have been more clear:

” … the word, ‘person,’ as used in the 14th Amendment, does not include the unborn.”

If, says attorney Veneziano, the majority of the court had held instead that “the fetus was a person, they would have found themselves in the position of sanctioning murder. They can’t have it both ways.”

The New York state appellate courts will almost certainly agree. And should New York appeal to the United States Supreme Court, I doubt that it would agree to review the case, since there is not a majority to declare that fetuses are persons.

Yet, a sonogram of the 7 1/2-month-old fetus on the day of the mishandled abortion would clearly show a viable, developing human being, who — just a day later — did indeed become an actual person under the Constitution. Of course, she had been a member of our species for quite awhile.

If the assault charges are not dismissed, pro-choice organizations might find it somewhat uncomfortable, though necessary, to submit a Supreme Court brief on behalf of Dr. Hayat’s innocence, under Roe v. Wade, of those assault charges. After Dr. Hayat’s arrest, as Richard Perez-Pena reported in the New York Times, “more than 30 women came forward to say he had botched their abortions, often with serious consequences to their health.” And two other assault counts on which the doctor was convicted concerned an incomplete abortion on Marie Moise, a Haitian immigrant. Reported the New York Times: “Mrs. Moise’s husband, David, testified during the trial that the doctor, who had said the price would be $ 300, stopped midway through the procedure and demanded an additional $ 500.” When Mr. Moise said he didn’t have the additional money, “the doctor forced him to leave the office with his bleeding, semiconscious wife.”

I have gone through criminal complaints against many physicians performing abortions, and abortion clinics, in a number of states. Some are harrowing. Abortion -rights groups might spend more resources on pushing for stricter regulations where those are needed and on monitoring clinics and physicians.

As for the doctor, the attention he has received is due in part — as Scott McConnell, who is pro-choice, has noted in the New York Post — to his having pushed “the reality of abortion in front of our eyes … the fact that every fetus is a potential child is one we’d prefer to hide from ourselves.”

A recent medical textbook, “The Unborn Patient: Pre-Natal Diagnosis and Treatment” (W.B. Saunders Co.) begins: “Only now are we beginning to consider … the concept that the fetus is a patient, an individual.”

If the operation had been successful, there would never have been an individual, Ana Rosa Rodriguez, who has learned to pull herself up and drink from a bottle with her remaining hand.

Copyright 1993 The Washington Post

___________________________

In the past I have spent most of my time looking at this issue from the spiritual side. In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthanasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

__________________________

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

_____________________________________

Dr. Francis schaeffer – The flow of Materialism(from Part 4 of Whatever happened to human race?)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical flow of Truth & History (intro)

Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of History & Truth (1)

Dr. Francis Schaeffer – The Biblical Flow of Truth & History (part 2)

Related posts:

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 1 “The Roman Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)