Open letter to President Obama (Part 637)

(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.

Beyond the ‘rehearsed response’

by Nat Hentoff
The Village Voice, January 30, 1996

I read my fellow columnist Adolph Reed Jr. with interest and sometimes find him illuminating. But when he writes with what W.H. Auden used to call a ”rehearsed response”–rather than independent research–he is disappointingly ordinary.

In a recent Voice column, Professor Reed–he is a tenured savant at Northwestern University–elegantly described me as having a ”fetus fetish.” The professor went on to declare unequivocally that ”a fetus is not a human being, it’s an organism growing inside the body, albeit an organism with the potential to become a human being.”

Since he or she (even fetuses have genders) has not yet been admitted into our protected circle, it’s okay to kill him or her.

I am familiar with the argument, being confronted with this rationale for abortion when I speak on the subject at colleges–including Princeton, Brown, the Columbia University Law School, Harvard, and other campuses.

Invariably, I am invited to address these largely hostile audiences by a small, hardy group of prolifers who present me as an oddity for their side–somewhat like the two-headed boy in the carnival.

They have spread the word beforehand that I am an atheist civil libertarian who writes for that prochoice bastion, The Village Voice. They add that my writings make clear that my views have far more in common with the teachings of justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall than with those of the Christian Coalition’s Ralph Reed, whom I consider an enemy of the Bill of Rights.

So what the hell am I doing with a fetus fetish–particularly since Margot, my wife of many years, is unswervingly prochoice?

I begin my talks to students and faculty eager to dissect my heresy with a quote from the second edition of a standard medical textbook, The Unborn Patient: Prenatal Diagnosis and Treatment, published by W.B. Saunders Company, a division of Harcourt Brace, in 1991. The editors–all medical school professors at the University of California at San Francisco and experts in fetal treatment–are Michael Harrison, Mitchell Golbus, and Roy Filly.

God is nowhere mentioned in the textbook. The first chapter begins: ”The concept that the fetus is a patient, an individual whose maladies are a proper subject for medical treatment as well as scientific observation, is alarmingly modern. Only now are we beginning to consider the fetus seriously–medically, legally, and ethically.”

In recent years I’ve interviewed a number of physicians engaged in research on prenatal development. Without exception, they emphasize that human life is a continuum–from the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterine lining to birth to death. Setting up divisions of this process to justify abortion –as in Roe v. Wade–is artificial. It’s a denial of biology. Whether in the fourth or 14th week, it is the life of a developing human being that is being killed. The American Medical News (June 20, 1994)–a weekly publication of the American Medical Association–has reported an analysis of the beginnings of human life by Dr. C. Ward Kischer, a professor in the department of anatomy at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. I commend it to Professor Reed:

”Every point in time is part of a continuum. Therefore, every point in development derives its significance from the previous point. Scientific ‘spin doctors’ have invented and promoted such bogus biology as ‘pre-embryo’ and ‘stages of individuality,’ and have duped many physicians who know little about human embryology. Many of them are now using this pseudo-science to justify human embryo experimentation. The Nuremberg trials settled this question conclusively.”

The Nuremberg trials were concerned solely with human beings, as I am.

In the February 18, 1990, Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Joel Hylton, a physician in Thomasville, North Carolina, who had people like Adolph Reed Jr. in mind, wrote:

”Who can say that the fetus is not alive and is not a separate genetic entity? Its humanity…also cannot be questioned scientifically. It is certainly of no other species. That it is dependent on another makes it qualitatively no different from countless other humans outside the womb.” (Emphasis added.)

Dr. Hylton added: ”It strikes me that to argue that one may take an innocent life to preserve the quality of life of another is cold and carries utilitarianism to an obscene extreme. Nowhere else in our society is this permitted or even thinkable–although abortion sets a frightening prospect.”

In 1975, Margot Hentoff wrote a piece on abortion in the Voice that created a great deal of comment, most of it savagely critical. Then, as now, she was for abortion rights. Then, as now, she was an admirer of George Orwell and shunned euphemisms. In any context, she does not turn away from–in William Burroughs’s phrase–”the naked lunch at the end of the fork.” To say the least, she is a challenge to live with and has made me more honest than I would have been otherwise.

In the Voice, Margot wrote:

”Here we have one of the problems created by the liberal community’s obfuscation of language in refusing to speak plainly about what abortion is.

”They have held on to the illogical concept that the fetus is not a human being, that no killing is involved, and that an abortion is merely an operative procedure on a woman who has the right to decide what she wants to do with her body and the products thereof.”

In the October 16, 1995, New Republic, Naomi Wolf, also strongly prochoice, wrote: ”Many pro-choice advocates developed a language to assert that the fetus isn’t a person, and this, over the years, has developed into a lexicon of dehumanization….

”How can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real?”

Copyright 1996 VV Publishing Company

_____________________________

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)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 633)

(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.

___________________

The pro-life atheist Nat Hentoff wrote a fine article below I wanted to share with you.

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.

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)

______________________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband. Now after presenting the secular approach of Nat Hentoff I wanted to make some comments concerning our shared Christian faith.  I  respect you for putting your faith in Christ for your eternal life. I am pleading to you on the basis of the Bible to please review your religious views concerning abortion. It was the Bible that caused the abolition movement of the 1800’s and it also was the basis for Martin Luther King’s movement for civil rights and it also is the basis for recognizing the unborn children.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, lowcostsqueegees@yahoo.com

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)

Open letter to President Obama (Part 629)

(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.

Civil Rights And Anti- Abortion Protests

by Nat Hentoff
The Washington Post, February 6, 1989

Planned Parenthood recently assembled 13 distinguished civil rights leaders so that they might express their scorn for the notion that there is any moral connection between the Operation Rescue demonstrations “and the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.”

The leaders — including Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Julian Bond, John Jacob, Mary King and Roger Wilkins — deplored the pro-lifers’ “protests to deny Americans their constitutional right to freedom of choice. They want the Constitution rewritten.” And in the unkindest cut of all, these leaders — once themselves demonstrators against laws they considered profoundly unjust — compared the nonviolent Operation Rescue workers to “the segregationists who fought desperately to block black Americans from access to their rights.”

Actually, however, a more accurate analogy would link these pro-lifers to the civil rights workers of the 19th century, the Abolitionists, who would not be deterred from their goal of ensuring equal rights for all human beings in this land. They believed, as these 13 civil rights leaders later did, that social change comes only after social upheaval.

What the Abolitionists were opposing was the rule of law — ultimately underlined by the Supreme Court in its Dred Scott decision — that people of African descent, whether free or slaves, had “never been regarded as a part of the people or citizens of the State.” They had no rights whatever. They were the property of their owners, no more. The Abolitionists did indeed want the Constitution rewritten.

Now, the pro-lifers, aware that the Supreme Court has declared itself in error before, are protesting the holding in Roe v. Wade that “the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense.” Although that decision also spoke of a time when the fetus becomes viable and then may be protected by the state, in fact we have abortion on demand.

As Justice Harry Blackmun said in Doe v. Bolton — decided on the same day as Roe v. Wade — the mother’s health is paramount, and that includes, among other things, “physical, emotional, psychological, familial” factors. Abortions can be obtained for these reasons, and more.

So, like the slave, the fetus is property and its owner can dispose of it. Increasingly, for instance, women are undergoing prenatal testing to find out the gender of the developing human being inside them. If it’s the wrong sex, it is aborted.

Pro-lifers who maintain the fetus should have equal protection under the law are not limited to those driven by religious convictions. There is the biological fact that after conception, a being has been formed with unique human characteristics. He or she, if allowed to survive, will be unlike anyone born before. From their point of view, therefore, pro-lifers are engaged in a massive civil rights movement. In 16 years, after all, there have been some 20 million abortions.

Some pro-lifers, like some of the abolitionists, feel that nonviolence, however direct, is insufficient. They are of the order of John Brown. As noted by James McPherson in “Battle Cry of Freedom,” Brown stalked out of a meeting of the New England Antislavery Society, grumbling, “Talk! Talk! Talk! That will never free the slaves. What is needed is action — action!”

Those relatively few — and invariably isolated — pro-lifers who follow John Brown’s flag are surely not in the tradition of Martin Luther King, and the 13 civil rights leaders have reason to keep them at a far distance. But Operation Rescue, and similar demonstrations, are not violent. Entrances are blocked, and so they were in some nonviolent civil rights demonstrations. There is shouting, some of it not very civil, back and forth across the lines, but so there was in the 1960s.

The only actual violence connected with Operation Rescue has been inflicted by the police, most viciously, in Atlanta where one of the Planned Parenthood’s 13 civil rights leaders is mayor. A member of the Atlanta City Council, Josea Williams — himself a close associate of Martin Luther King — has said: “We who were the leaders of the movement in the ’50s and ’60s are now political leaders. And we are doing the same thing to demonstrators that George Wallace and Bull Connor did to us.”

Twelve years ago, another associate of Dr. King argued against the Roe v. Wade thesis that a woman’s privacy rights justify abortion. That, he said, “was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the . . . treatment of slaves . . . because that was private.”

The civil rights leader who said that was Jesse Jackson — before he became a member of the pro- abortion congregation. By then, he was also a political leader.

Copyright 1989 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)