If you’re one of millions taking President Obama up on his invitation to e-mail him, you already know you get an instant confirmation. Not a response, mind you, but an acknowledgement at least that the White House has received your e-mail.

I’ve been e-mailing him regularly over the last week in response to actions he’s taken or reportedly may take on life issues: from abortion to stem cell to Planned Parenthood. It’s been remarkably easy so far to have my say to whoever it is in the White House screening messages.

All you have to do is go to www.whitehouse.gov, go to contact us and up comes the e-mail prompt. You type in your message – 500 characters or less – send it and in a nanosecond, you’ll have confirmation.

Before anyone dismisses the idea of a pro-life RSVP to the e-mail invitation, consider this: the president responded to a national pro-life Internet outcry against a proposal to include Planned Parenthood in the economic stimulus bill. Numerous reports say he urged the sponsors to withdraw it.

Though by press time Jan. 27, I hadn’t been able to confirm congressional sponsors heeded his request, at least it shows he’s tuned in to some degree about life-minded e-mailing.

Marie Tasy of New Jersey Right to Life is one of the key advocates for life in our state encouraging people to keep the world-wide web humming with messages in support of life from conception to natural death.

Tasy wants us to use snail mail, phone calls and faxes as well to continue to make the case that we need dialogue on life concerns.

People can and should write to the White House, e-mail them and urge them to reconsider any attempt to compel people to subsidize with taxes something they oppose to the core of their being, Tasy said.

With the reversal of the so-called “Mexico City Policy” ending the ban that prohibits funding to international family planning groups that provide abortions, the anticipated support for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research and the looming spector of the Freedom of Choice Act, the time to write, phone and fax is now, she said.

“We need to ask for dialogue and we’re going to have to monitor executive orders more carefully than in the past,” she said. “We need to pay as close attention as we can to the other initiatives that may be coming down the pike.”

While you’re e-mailing the White House, don’t forget to keep in close contact with your congressional representatives, Tasy advises.

“We’re going to have to keep in constant contact with members of Congress and the Senate,” she said. “We’re going to have to be conscientious about opposing any bills that threaten human life.”

A lot of the measures capable of doing that will be written quietly into budgets and inserted into bills that are going up before congress, she said. “We’re going to have to be vigilant and get hold of bills and budgets that deal with appropriation.

“You know, we’ve been in this situation before and we’ve never shirked from the responsibility,” Tasy said. “I think we should take heart and press on.”