Write your Letter for Life and send it to your representatives as soon as possible

Sending a signed, typed up letter is much more personal than sending an email. It’s easy and fast to do and postage is cheap enough to do this once a month. The following information is from the Facebook group Letters for Life. The difference is that we are asking you to do this once a month and our message is that our representatives should defend life and oppose abortion and human killing research.

Here are some guidelines and suggestions for your Life Letter:

(1) Type your letter and send it through the mail. A typed letter with your signature and return address is significantly more effective than an email or an online petition. Ask for a reply to your letter. Send your letters ASAP—mail can take up to 3 months to reach the White House due to security reasons.

(2) Send (at least) three copies of your letter.

ONE:
President Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

TWO: Send a second to your House Representative. Find your representative and mailing information using the link below:
http://www.house.gov/
Click on the “Write Your Representative” link on the left side.

THREE: Send a third to one (or both!) of your state Senators
Find your Senators and mailing information using the link below:
http://www.senate.gov/
Use the drop down menu on the top right of the website to find your Senators by state.

(3) Try to limit your letter to one page. Here is a sample format for your letter:

Paragraph 1: State that you are writing to ask ____ to oppose abortion and human-killing research and protect unborn babies, and say who you are. You may include any personal experience or connection to the abortion issue—for example, are you a mother or father who has chosen life? Are you a mother who has had an abortion and regrets the decision? Are you an ob/gyn or related to one? Do you work in a hospital that will not provide abortions because of religious reasons? Etc.

Paragraph 2: Make your argument using facts and logic, not just emotion. Give specific examples of how abortion and human-killing research affects you and your community (i.e. your tax dollars will support abortions, your local religiously-affiliated hospital may have to close rather than be forced to provide abortions, your friends/relatives who are doctors or obstetrician/gynecologists do not want to be forced to perform abortions against their consciences, etc.

Paragraph 3: Conclude with a call to action. Check if your Senator or Congressional Representative is a co-sponsor of the bill, so that you know what your call to action should be—are you asking him or her to speak for the defenseless and the unborn? Finally, Urge President-elect Obama, your Senators, and your Representative(s) to work to decrease the number of abortions by aiding pregnant women in need and creating incentives to promote adoption as a loving option.

(4) While this is a very emotional issue for all of us, we are more likely to be taken seriously if we write intelligent, reasonable letters, than if we write in a melodramatic, emotional manner, write angrily or accusingly, or come off as vindictive or “holier-than-thou.”

(5) The following website has excellent information on how to write an effective letter to Congress, as well as the appropriate way to address your Senators and House Representatives: http://usgovinfo.about.com /library/weekly/aa020199.h tm

(6) Finally, here are some resources and facts to get you started writing the body of your letter.

RESOURCES:
* For quick facts and information on FOCA, visit http://www.fightfoca.com
* Read the House version of FOCA here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c110:H.R.1964:
* Read the Senate version of FOCA here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi- bin/query/z?c110:S.1173:
* Read about National Right to Life Bill here: http://www.monthcallforlife.com/RightToLifeBill.htm:

FACTS & THOUGHTS to consider:
* The Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” FOCA denies the most basic right to life to the unborn.
* FOCA would wipe away every restriction on abortion nationwide
This would eradicate state and federal laws that the majority of Americans support, such as:
• Bans on Partial Birth Abortion
• Requirements that women be given information about the risks of getting an abortion
• Only licensed physicians can perform abortions
• Parents must be informed and give consent to their minor daughter’s abortion
* FOCA would compel taxpayer funding of abortions.
* FOCA would force faith-based hospitals and healthcare facilities to perform abortions.
* The right to life is a Civil Rights issue. Consider America’s blindness to Civil Rights issues in the past. For a long time, the majority of Americans supported another humanity-denying practice—that of slavery; African-Americans were not considered to be human beings deserving of liberty. It took many brave people to speak out and convince the rest of America that African-Americans deserve every right that the white majority already enjoyed. Similarly, the unborn are not seen as fully human or deserving of basic rights. It will take many brave people to speak out to show the rest of America the humanity of the unborn.
* FOCA states that its aim is “To protect, consistent with Roe v. Wade, a woman’s freedom to choose to bear a child or terminate a pregnancy, and for other purposes.” The “choice” that FOCA would guarantee is the choice of death for one’s own child. Shall we then say that we should have the choice to kill any unwanted American citizens? Do we define life in terms of being wanted or useful to society, or will we protect all life as sacred?
*People argue that abortion is a “religious issue,” when it is actually a human rights issue based on the same natural law that tells us that murder, rape, discrimination, and theft are wrong. Why are all of these wrong—because one’s religion tells them so? No, it is because they violate basic human rights that we believe all human beings deserve. Thus, it is not enough to say you are “personally” against abortion, but you think women should have the right to choose to kill. Certain actions are inherently wrong and we must be willing to say so, even though it may be unpopular to pass such judgment.

*The book Anti-Abortionist at Large by Raymond Dennehy offers an exceptionally clear, reasonable argument against abortion.

To summarize his argument (which may be very useful to you in your letters…):

If the fetus is a human being, then induced abortion is the direct killing of an innocent human being, and what reason could justify that?

To prove that the fetus is, indeed, a human being, consider the following:

(1) The fetus is the product of a human father & a human mother. If it’s not a human being, what is it?

(2) Scientific evidence comes down on the side of the fetus being a human being. For example, consider this quote from Bruce M. Carlson’s Petten’s Foundations of Embryology, “Essentially all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote)… The time of fertilization, when the sperm meets the egg, represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny of the individual.”

(3)The field of medicine known as perinatology, concerned with the unborn and the mother, considers the unborn a patient, who should be given the same care that is given to pregnant women.

(4) As late as 1963, Planned Parenthood made public its acceptance of the view that the human fetus is indeed a living human being. In its official pamphlet for 1963, it states, “Is birth control an abortion? Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun… Birth control merely postpones the beginning of a life.”

(5) In People v Davis, 1993, the California State Supreme Court ruled that a third party who kills a fetus could be charged with murder, even when the fetus in nonviable. The court added that this does not affect a woman’s right to an abortion. So basically, Americans have decided that it should be considered “murder” if the child is wanted, but a woman’s “right to abortion” if the child is unwanted. Since when can we say that any human being who is unwanted can be killed?

(6) Logically, how would one deny that the fetus is a human being from the moment of conception? From conception every element is present in the child’s DNA. Nothing is added or taken away to create the human being that emerges from the womb. “Fetus” simply refers to a stage in life, like adolescent or adult; it does not mean that the fetus is not a human being.

Thus, if the fetus is, indeed, a human being, how can we as a society allow these innocent babies to be killed, just because they are unwanted?