Life Is the End-Game

March 19, 2009

President Barack H. Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

I watched with interest last week when you reversed the government’s moratorium on using public funds for stem cell research. During this media opportunity, your claim to be a man of faith did not go unnoticed. With all due respect Sir, it may be you don’t understand what that means, or, more likely, you do but it requires more than you are able to give.

Your campaign was built on the premise that you will be the guardian and defender of the common man, the laborer, the disadvantaged, the persecuted, and the weakest and poorest among us. How then can you ignore the life conceived and living within its mother’s womb? I realize this is the crux of the matter – when does this new creation become life and become worthy of our protection? I’m not confused on this issue but evidently you are. However, confusion is the most compelling argument to err on the side of caution. Unless you have indisputable, irrefutable evidence of when life begins, it is your sacred duty to provide the safeguards for every potential and actual life even when it infringes on the rights of others. Are you willing to decide which life is more valuable than the next? I believe you stated that such decisions are “above your pay grade”. I often wonder at how many great achievements have been postponed because the achiever was aborted.

The lifting of this moratorium also says volumes about your faith and confidence in American ingenuity, creativity and imagination. There are always other ways to achieve the desired results and it is your role to challenge our best and brightest minds to explore beyond the boundaries of our current knowledge. It is your role to provide the leadership, the encouragement and the incentives necessary for great achievement.

I have observed in my lifetime that unwanted pregnancies are never “punishment” for indiscretions or poor judgment. I can’t recall ever having heard or learned of a woman who said having an abortion was a good decision. And, as I said in a previous letter, if life is the end-game, then everything else are just simply rules of the game.

All the best,


Bill Monroe