Post-Notre Dame, a Letter to the President

I listened carefully to your speech Sunday at Notre Dame's commencement ceremony. As a practicing Roman Catholic with three daughters, I will be honest; I was not pleased with Notre Dame's invitation to you. I believe a commencement speaker should embody the ideals of the institution from which the graduates are commencing. My perception of you is one of a person whose actions as an elected official, facilitates abortions. I've not viewed you as a man who sincerely sees abortion as an evil for child and woman. I'll never forget the words you spoke regarding a woman's "right to choose" when you equated the hypothetical situation of one of your own daughters having an unwanted pregnancy, likening it to "punishing her" if she were unable to abort the unwanted fetus.

Putting these stinging words aside, your words at Notre Dame "sounded" promising. I appreciate that you encouraged the graduates to champion their faith, to live by it and to not back down from the teachings of their faith. I liked your verbal encouragement regarding adoptions and the idea of supporting a woman who brings her inconvenient pregnancy to full term. If you were sincere about this, I would have cause to re-evaluate my opinion of you in this regard. I would like to challenge you to take all of this, one step further. If you honestly are desirous of minimizing the amount of abortions, I ask that you hear me out.

I have heard you appealing to man's higher good in regards to world affairs and healthcare. This spirit can be applied to our culture when it comes to sexuality as well. However, our culture is currently at odds with this. Just the other day I walked into my family room where my teenagers were watching a sitcom on ABC Family. As I was passing through the following line was said, "I've had dates that I had sex on the first night before." I stopped dead in my tracks, looked at the screen and saw two adults, parental figures, talking about sex on a first date as if it were not only acceptable but something to expect to happen. This was the message being disseminated to young kids in the middle of the day on a supposed FAMILY channel. This is just one incident among a barrage of daily assaults. With irresponsible storylines like this, how exactly are our children suppose to develop a strong sense of dignity about themselves, their sexuality their relationship to others?

Our entire culture is so warped when it comes to the beauty of a sexual relationship. We sell our children and ourselves short, as if we have no ability whatsoever to rise above lowbrow acts, with the suggestion of doing so being shot down with the automatic response of, "be realistic." We appeal to our own absence of dignity and expect our daughters, our sons to be void of dignity at the outset, taking for granted they have no hope of reserving themselves for a mature, committed, worthy relationship. Instead, we inoculate them like guinea pigs from sexual diseases, we put girls on hormones that fool their bodies into not following a female fertility cycle, wreaking havoc with their bodily systems for years to come. All the while, society is frantic about our children eating anything that isn't organic, drinking water from plastic bottles or the possibility that they might ride a bike without a helmet. Our society's concern is a joke.

We have become a society that promotes sex to our youth as long as they get the right shots, take the right pills and abort a fetus if they are too young to take care of a child on their own. Meanwhile, we all buy bedding that mimics the experience in the womb because it encourages restful sleep in humans though none of us were human beings when we were fetuses getting that "restful sleep". What are we selling ourselves? A lie, plain and simple.

Mr. President, in your speech you said you wanted to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. This, however, is NOT the same as reducing the number of abortions. In fact, in one line of thinking, reducing the amount of unwanted pregnancies could result in an increase of abortions. I hope that is not what you meant. I hope you instead meant that you wished women and men both find a higher level of respect for each other and themselves. I hope you were referring to a world where our sexuality is elevated to the beautiful, dignified, most satisfying intimacy possible, an intimacy that humans and only humans can know. This is a world where pro-choice and pro-life factions cease to exist because authentic dignity of humans washes these differences away.

I am but a mom. My only authority lies in the raising of my children but in that endeavor I wish to have your cooperation to make an environment, a society, a culture that works with me not against me. Thank you for taking time to read this.

Pax,

Amanda Lee Keller
Richmond, VA