As a prerequisite for any other right, the right to life is the great civil-rights issue of our time. It is what slavery and segregation were to generations past. Our response to this issue is the measure of our fidelity to a defining American principle: “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life.”

    You have asked me to vote for you. In turn, may I ask you three simple questions? They are straightforward questions of fact about abortion. They are at the heart of the debate. In fairness, I believe that you owe the people you would lead a good-faith answer to each:

    1. The heart whose beating is stilled in every abortion — is it a human heart?

    2. The tiny limbs torn by the abortionist’s scalpel — are they human limbs?

    3. The blood that flows from the fetus’s veins — is it human blood?

    If the stopped heart is a human heart, if the torn limbs are human limbs, if the spilled blood is human blood, can there be any denying that what is killed in an abortion is a human being? In your vision for America, the license to kill that human being is a right. You have worked to protect that “right” at every turn. But can there be a right to deny some human beings life or the equal protection of the law?

    Can we become a society that does not sacrifice some people to help others? Or is that hope too audacious? You have said that abortion is necessary to protect women’s equality. But surely we can do better. Surely we can build an America where the equality of some is not purchased with the blood of others. Or would that mean too much change from politics as usual?

    Can we provide every member of the human family equal protection under the law? Your record as a legislator gives a resounding answer: No, we can’t. That is the answer the Confederacy gave the Union, the answer segregationists gave young children, the answer a complacent bus driver once gave a defiant Rosa Parks. But a different answer brought your father from Kenya so many years ago; a different answer brought my family from Egypt some years later. Now is your chance, Senator Obama, to make good on the spontaneous slogan of your campaign, to adopt the more American and more humane answer to the question of whether we can secure liberty and justice for all: Yes, we can.

I suppose that among those discriminating moralists who elevate abortion above any other consideration, this is a pretty speech Sherif being young and a Rhodes Scholar and all.

Don't know if this Senior Philosophy Major Rhodes Scholar has a religious affiliation, but I'm assuming so. Either way, if one is to throw the Book at Obama or anyone else as a scriptural critique, one should be willing to address one's own moral worthiness as well.

So I'll write an open letter to Sherif Grgis, Senior at Princeton,

2008 Rhodes Scholar,

and apprentice rhetoretician.

Sherif,

Do you believe the all-encompassing aspect of the Sermon on the Mount - that it encompasses and includes every human being on the earth? Do you believe that also?

If you do, as much as your advocacy for the unborn is laudable, so long as you leave out any advocacy for all other human beings at risk and in harm's way on this planet, could we not say that your letter to Mr. Obama is nothing more than preening; a grandstand performance with an eye single to who is impressed rather than whether or not Mr. Obama is convinced by your literary flourish?

If as you say, the right to life is the great civil rights issue of our time, how say you regarding those who have been murdered in Darfur, Iraq and other scenes of ugliness more obscene than a detached surgeon wielding a D&C weapon?

Do you have on your conscience a vote or two for a President who has killed more people in Iraq than he upon whom he places blame for the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq?

If you take a pious and compassionate posture, Sherif, ought you not take a pious and compassionate posture regarding ALL human atrocity and not just the most politically publicized?

Do you not risk diminished credibility if you are willing to risk your reputation for some but not all of those who suffer?

As for your 3 simple questions, I'm not asking for permission to ask of you 4 similar questions. I'm asking them regardless of whether you approve or not.

1. The heart whose beating is stilled in every act of war — is it a human heart?

2. All  limbs torn by the warrior's bombs — are they human limbs?

3. The blood that flows from the Iraqi child's veins — is it human blood?

4.  Is there any difference between the abortion opposed by self-righteous believers and the killing of a pregnant mother in Iraq or Darfur - a genuinely more horrendous abortion in the eyes of genuine compassionate Christians?

Your own words need to be expanded in light of my 4 questions? How would you answer your own questions below?

    Can we become a society that does not sacrifice some people to help others? Or is that hope too audacious? You have said that abortion is necessary to protect women’s equality. But surely we can do better. Surely we can build an America where the equality of some is not purchased with the blood of others. Or would that mean too much change from politics as usual?


    Can we provide every member of the human family equal protection under the law?

I seriously doubt that the Master will be impressed by collegiate credentials that constitute a limited definition of what it means to be a genuine religious humanitarian.

Now is your chance Sherif.

If you can hit it out of the park with a scholarly and philosophical reply that keeps your cherry-picking personal morality elevated above that of Mr. Obama,  human being who has genuinely moved your generation, show me your stuff.

Sincerely

Arthur Ruger
BA International Relations,
University of Houston, 1976
BA International Relations, Russian Studies

American Veteran, Opinionated