AN OPEN LETTER TO
Pennsylvania State Senate Candidate Sean Wiley:
You just passed by our home. Your daughter gave us your literature. You have a beautiful family, and it's evident family is important to you... and your Catholic faith.
Needless to say, there's nothing in your literature or on your website about your position with regard to abortion, nor about your being endorsed by Planned Parenthood. Such an endorsement can only be obtained by your sponsorship of legal abortion, and expectation that it be funded by us.
Are you acquainted with Planned Parenthood, it's history and present activity deriving from eugenic roots which were proclaimed on it's first masthead, "More from the fit, less from the unfit"? Do you understood its disproportionate pro-abortion work in minority areas (if killing unborn children isn't enough)? Do you believe citizens should be compelled to fund much of this activity through our tax dollars? Planned Parenthood does.
By seeking and accepting their endorsement, you're on record as believing the same.
It's evident you are running as a family man. The image is there. But what does it mean to be a father? On the most basic level, how did you feel the first time one of your beautiful children got hurt, or felt any kind of pain? Is it not our most God-given quality to take care of others, indeed, to do what we can to prevent harm (whether they're aware of it or not)? If a government does not hold this most basic objective, what does it have?
But with abortion we're not merely speaking of "harm." It seems to me the most innate, built-in quality of a father (and government) is to defend human life, particularly innocent human life-- a fact not even the pro-choice people deny with regard to abortion (Faye Wattleton, past president of PP: "Women aren't stupid... they've always known a life is there").
Let's get beyond mere belief. What are we talking about?
Modern science has made this even more clear. The only physiological difference between who you are now and who you were at conception is nutrition and environment over time.
Did you know an unborn child's heart begins to beat 18 days after conception, often before a mother even knows she's there? That brain waves are detected as early as six weeks? An abortion ends "this" - a living human being who very much feels excruciating pain.
Did you know that over 4000 unborn children are killed a day in this country? Over 55,000,000 since 1973-- more than all wars combined?
A civil society must ask: What is the value of one's liberty or pursuit of happiness if it is at the expense of another's life?
Clearly, "oughts" are the basis of government, and are predicated of philosophical systems of belief. As you must know, our system is very much predicated of the good of the human person, accessible to common sense and reason, but articulated and grounded in Judeo-Christian tradition.
Against this tradition - Abortion, a right to kill (let's call it what it is) - was founded on the very tenuous "right to privacy" - in the "shadows" (penumbra) of the Constitution (Griswald, Roe, etc.), which struck down the free will of the people in all states, making it legal for nine months of pregnancy, for any reason.
You have suggested on a few occasions that your "Catholic" position derives from consultation with the Sisters of St. Joseph and Fr. Denis. They are greatly confused in this matter - as are you, if they are your sole basis of justifying your position on Catholic grounds. It is thoroughly indefensible, and even grounds for excommunication (which is not so much a punishment as it is a matter of integrity - that one is not in line with Church teaching).
Abortion does not serve women any more than would allowing them to take narcotics.
Recently I returned from a two-day conference hosted by Bethesda Healing Ministry- an organization founded by my mother - and now expanding throughout the U.S. - committed to healing of women who have suffered from abortion. This is where we belong. Working toward laws that are just for all... and loving all to embrace those truths for the good of their nature.
As it stands your intent as a candidate is to use a God-given power to allow destruction of God's greatest gift. Is this the legacy you want to leave your children and their world?
It is a lack of integrity - indeed, cowardly, that your position in these critical regards remains hidden. It's in this arena principals are tested... character revealed... if you do not embrace the fundamental precept that life precedes liberty and pursuit of happiness, that this is our highest objective as a society, if you disagree, at least have the integrity to come out with it.
Greg and Stephanie Schlueter
