-By Warner Todd Huston
Just a reminder that Barack Obama still has the inaptly named Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) on his plate. During the campaign Obama promised to work on the act as one of his first efforts as president. For those unaware, this law would take away the rights of parents to be notified when their children are undergoing abortions, will cancel state laws against partial birth abortion and nationalize rules governing abortion. It will force taxpayer funding for abortion nationwide and force all hospitals and healthcare facilities run by religious organizations to act against their religious principles by forcing them to become abortion mills.
The FOCA attempts to redefine abortion as a Constitutionally protected right and to federalize all abortion rules taking away the right of the states to make their own laws concerning the issue and, thereby, taking away the right of the voters to add their voice to the debate.
Denise M. Burke, vp of Americans United for Life, notes that the FOCA will negatively affect many measures that Americans support across the country. Just some of the effects of the FOCA are as follows:
- Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003
- Hyde Amendment (restricting taxpayer funding of abortions)
- Restrictions on abortions performed at military hospitals
- Restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion for federal employees
- Informed consent laws
- Waiting periods
- Parental consent and notification laws
- Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics
- Requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions
- “Delayed enforcement” laws (banning abortion when Roe v. Wade is overturned and/or the authority to restrict abortion is returned to the states)
- Bans on partial-birth abortion
- Bans on abortion after viability. FOCA’s apparent attempt to limit post-viability abortions is illusory. Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are expressly permitted to protect the woman’s “health.” Within the context of abortion, “health” has been interpreted so broadly that FOCA would not actually proscribe any abortion before or after viability.
- Limits on public funding for elective abortions (thus, making American taxpayers fund a procedure that many find morally objectionable)
- Limits on the use of public facilities (such has public hospitals and medical schools at state universities) for abortions
- State and federal legal protections for individual healthcare providers who decline to participate in abortions
- Legal protections for Catholic and other religiously-affiliated hospitals who, while providing care to millions of poor and uninsured Americans, refuse to allow abortions within their facilities
Now, here is the main question that comes to mind, one that illustrates the hypocrisy of the radical left on this issue. Leftists and other fans of infanticide constantly claim that the right to life lobby are “forcing their morals on everyone” when they advocate the end of abortion. These same critics of the right to life also claim that ideals based on “religion” are an illegitimate basis upon which to determine policy in a land supposedly based on “separation of church and state.”
Taking the last point first, how is it that the same nation that was supposedly founded on a separation of church and state (a policy that the left claims precludes basing abortion policy on religious pretenses) went for nearly 200 years before ruling in favor of allowing abortions? If the separation line between abortion law and religious sentiment was so clearly drawn from the beginning as these advocates seem to claim, why was abortion outlawed for so long?
But, more to the point and addressing the first claim above, if pro-life advocates are “forcing” their opinion on “everyone” by advocating for the abolition of infanticide, how is it any different than what anti-life advocates do when they push federal laws that compel everyone to support abortion on demand? Am I not being “forced” to observe abortion on demand when federal law forces me to do so under threat of the law?
If pro-abortion advocates truly wanted a fair playing field where “choice” was possible, they would be standing against federal laws and pushing for state control. That way the people would have a say in the matter. Yet, curiously, these same folks that claim “choice” is their principle are attempting to force their own opinion on abortion on the entire nation at once by federal compulsion.
Hypocrites. And murderous ones at that.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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