Dear Mr. President, You said in your State of the Union address "America is the greatest country in the world", and I say, no, it is not. It will be when all the parents of this country take responsibility over each child they bring into the world. Every child needs and was given by its Creator the inalienable right to his biological father and his biological mother; that is the best way to guarantee us all Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhCJ4tupX3I Mr. President, you said in your State of the Union address that we have to stop weapons from falling into the hands of criminals and I say, what we need to do is stop generating criminals. Every child abandoned or neglected by a parent is likely to become a criminal. I am not implying that every abandoned or neglected child becomes a criminal, but it is a fact that most criminals were abandoned or neglected as a child. All of us who have suffered from the absence of one or both of our biological parents know the profound effects that this caused on us, so then we cannot cross our arms and watch how other children are victimized the same way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIw_MiPFYrs The justifications given for abandoning or ignoring a child are varied: "I am very poor", "the pregnancy was an accident", "I'm too young", “I do not want the responsibility", "the other parent abandoned us and I cannot take care of our child by myself"," I cannot get along with my child’s other parent, or I do not love my child’s other parent", etc. The real reason is that there are no consequences for the parent who abandons a child; the only thing being asked from the parent abandoning a child is to leave the child in a place deemed as safe, like a hospital. No crime is committed, no fault and therefore there are no charges. Not even a fine is assessed; society will take care of the abandoned child. How ironic, if we do not want to pay a traffic violation ticket, can we give the same reasons for not taking responsibility? I am very poor? I'm too young? I do not want the responsibility? The authority is never going to say, "Okay, just leave your ticket in a safe place and someone else will pick it up and pay for it". There is no excuse or reason valid enough to stop us from fulfilling such an obligation and we can even go to jail if we do not. Not paying a traffic violation ticket is only a trivial matter of money, isn’t abandoning a child a far more serious act? Abandoning a child is making deep, permanent, mental, and emotional harm to a defenseless human being. Why is this tolerated? Why is it dismissed as a sorry consequence of something else? If what is most important for the mental and emotional health of children is to have their biological parents and if the consequences of not having them can be serious and can even have fatal implications for society (mass shootings for example where the true toll of violence is borne by the tens of thousands of sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, and wounded survivors left behind) then why is taking responsibility for one’s own child only a matter of moral obligations and not an obligation enforced by law? The legal obligations of parenthood are merely of economic nature (child support) and are only enforced when the other parent demands them. Why can an adult choose to be a single parent and victimize his child to suffer the absence of the other parent? Does conceiving a child confer to the parents the right to abuse the child in this way? So every adult has an inalienable right to have a biological child but the child has no right to have both biological parents? At what age does a child become a real U.S. citizen with its own inalienable rights guaranteed by the constitution and when does a child stop being a sort of property of the parents? “All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”. I ask then to the President of the United States to stop these abuses and thus all the consequences that derive from them. I ask you Mr. President to: 1) Create and enact specific legal obligations towards children that parents acquire when they bring them to the world guaranteeing their physical, mental and emotional wellbeing. 2) Educate society about the legal obligations acquired when conceiving a child. 3) Not leave to the discretion of a parent to ask the other parent for financial and emotional support for their child. In fact, any person who fails to report the abandonment or neglect towards a child should be considered an accomplice to such abuse. 4) Raise social awareness about how important both biological parents are for mental and emotional health of children. 5) Create awareness in men that it is not only the responsibility of women to have birth control. 6) Promote sexual education included instruction in topics related to human sexuality, sexual relationships, reproductive health, couple relationships, rights and responsibilities of parenthood, birth control, abstinence and other aspects of human sexual behavior. Moral conscience alone has proven ineffective to ensure that all children are brought into and maintained in a physically safe and emotionally nurturing environment. This way we are protecting the most defenseless members of society that cannot speak for themselves. Up to the present, when adults make mistakes in their relationships their children pay the consequences. If adults are made legally responsible for actions considered to affect or even victimize their children, they will carefully consider options for said actions. * I personally worked with children with emotional problems and the problem of more than half of these children was that their father had abandoned them. All the people working around these children said they were aggressive, temperamental, dangerous and problematic. But as I got to know them, I realized they were deeply hurt. They could not bear with the pain that the abandonment of a parent caused them and the consequence, as when a father abandons his family, that the mother has to work to support the family and becomes distant.