Dear Mr. Obama...

Dear Mr. Obama,

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you on your election as the next President of the United States. Many words have been spoken and written to attempt to capture the significance of your election, and of your upcoming presidency.

Some of the expectations surrounding you are perhaps unrealistic. You have been called a "lightworker" who will "fix our souls." You have been called "evil" and even "anti-Christ".

Ever since the fourth grade, I have studied the American presidency and the men who have held that office. I know that, despite the lens of history that seems to magnify some of them, and reduces others, they were every one of them simply men; men each doing their best with the gifts they had to cope with the situations in which they found themselves. Some of those men were greater than others, some less so. Few, if any, made their own greatness. As Lincoln said, "only events can make a president."

You come to office with a long list of promises, many items on your agenda, a war to wage against a global enemy, a financial crisis at home, and a deeply divided people.

In your excellent speech this evening, you correctly said to those whose votes you did not win, "I will be your president too." Speaking as a veteran of military service and simply as an American, I don't want to not have a president. As an American, as reluctantly as I may feel it, I recognize you as my next President.

But as you also rightly recognized in your promise to listen to the people, "especially when we disagree," the relationship between citizen and government is not one-way.

And that is why I write today to ask you to change your position on the issue that I believe is the most important issue of our time: the wholesale slaughter of millions of our most innocent and defenseless citizens by abortion.

Our nation's embrace of abortion is an abandonment of the women of America. It is a rejection of who and what they are. In saying to the pregnant woman, "get an abortion," our society says to her that we reject her as she is, and something must be done to fix her. We say to her that we will not help her, we will not protect her and her child, we will not comfort her fears nor answer her questions nor aid her in her time of need.

Abortion divides our nation. The effort to justify denying personhood to an entire class of human beings dominates our politics, warps our jurisprudence, and even taints our rhetoric.

As president, the question of when a baby gets human rights will no longer be above your pay grade. Contrary to your remarks at the Saddleback forum, it is not a question of theology or science, but an essential question of law. Science teaches us that human life begins at conception. Theology teaches that human life is sacred. But it is law that must teach us that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with an inalienable right to life. And, lacking an inherent right to life, what other class of human beings may in the future (as some were in the past) also be denied personhood?

Many, many people voted today primarily on the issue of abortion. For no small number, it was important to protect the right of women to choose to kill their unborn children, and they voted for you. And many millions, who believe that human rights are inherent, and not the gift of a person or a state, voted against you.

Lincoln's great work was to lead America to live up to its ideals. Martin Luther King, Jr., is remembered because he, too, called on America to live up to its founding ideals.

Only Nixon could have gone to China. Can Barack Obama, among all the other things he must do, be the president who provides the leadership to a divided nation to unite it across its largest fault line, and like Lincoln and King bring our people to once again live up to the ideals of our founding?

Yes he can.

Can you make the case for the protection of innocent life in every stage, and face down those who demand the power to kill?

Yes you can.

Can America come together united in the simple virtue of love of children?

Yes we can.

What I ask of you, there is no evidence in your record nor your promises nor your supporters that will you even listen to, let alone consider, much less be persuaded by, my words. I do not honestly believe that you nor any sincere supporter of yours will be swayed by this plea. But I have hope.

But if President Barack Obama can change on this issue, I believe that you can change America on this issue, and that it would be a change for the better that would last far beyond your term in office, and be remembered long after your grandchildren have passed on to their reward.

And if you can, then you really will be the one we've been waiting for. My prayers, and the prayers of many who share my view, will be with you sir.