Dear President Obama

9 February 2011

Mr. Barack Obama

President, The United States of America

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

I am a firm supporter of your actions while in office. I have been impressed with your management of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and strongly applaud your handling of the situation in Libya – I believe you represented the United States as a firm supporter of democracy without committing us to another major conflict overseas. As a medical student, I am a staunch advocate of your health care bill, as I believe it contains legislation that will help all persons gain access to good care and bring down the cost of health care across our country. I support your tax policies, and I believe that your economic recovery packages did good in helping our country recover. I am impressed with your confidence and leadership, and particularly the fact that you are a strong family man who is loyal to his wife and supportive of his daughters. Finally, I appreciate your recent “We Can’t Wait” approach to enacting policies that will help our country move forward as Congress continues to stalemate.

However, I am deeply unsettled by your decision to require religious institutions to provide insurance covering contraceptives. I am a budding physician and understand the importance of these tools to family planning, and I have no personal misgivings about the use of contraceptives from a moral standpoint. However, this policy directly destroys the religious freedom that is a cornerstone of our nation. For many religious institutions, it is a moral sin to use contraceptives of any form. To mandate their endorsement of contraceptives is akin to requiring Muslim women to remove their veils and wear short-sleeved shirts while at work, even in private institutions. It is a small step away from requiring all physicians to perform abortions, which is something that I will not ever be able to do.

I believe that the eventual consequence of this policy will be that fewer people receive health coverage of any sort. When faced with the decision between adhering to their moral beliefs and continuing to provide insurance coverage to their employees, many of these institutions will choose the former. As an alternative to your current policy, I would advocate for a separate state-funded health insurance plan that would only provide family planning coverage, which individual employees of these religious institutions could choose to purchase as they see fit.

As stated above, I firmly support your progress in office and your management of our nation at this troubled time. I would be extremely disappointed were another candidate to take office and overturn such excellent measures as your health care bill. However, your requirement that religious institutions be required to provide insurance covering contraception frightens me immensely. Unless this policy is reversed, my vote will go to any other candidate who pledges to strike it down, even if it means losing all of the progress our nation has made in every other area under your administration. Please, Mr. President, reconsider your decision.

Sincerely,

Chelsea J. Slade

MD Candidate, Class of 2014

The George Washington University School of Medicine

cjslade@gwmail.gwu.edu