First act as prez? Sign FOCA!

As reported by David Brody of CBN, a new commercial produced by the Family Research Council will air in battleground states and in Washington, D.C., to make clear to voters that one candidate for president has promised Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby that his very first act upon becoming president will be to sign into the law the infamous Freedom of Choice Act, or FOCA.

FOCA guarantees freedom of choice only to those who choose death. Unborn babies, pro-life advocates of all kinds, pregnancy centers, the Church, and others are all targets of FOCA because they stand in the way of the pro-death forces who want to sweep away every last vestige of protection for the sacredness of human life.

No matter the following facts that show Americans respect human life:
— Most Americans favor banning all abortion or permitting it only in very rare cases (danger to the mother’s life or in cases of rape or incest).
— A recent Guttmacher Institute study found that the U.S. abortion rate declined 26% between 1989 and 2004. The decline was steepest, 58%, among girls under 18.
— Teens increasingly are choosing to remain abstinent until their late teens or early 20s. Tragically, however, when women do become sexually active prior to marrying, many become pregnant and choose abortion — the abortion rate increased among women aged 20 and older between 1974 and 2004, although the rate is now gradually declining.

What is FOCA? And what will it do? Justin Cardinal Rigali, in his statement for Respect Life Sunday, clearly and compellingly explains this threat to human life and why we must fight it – “we cannot allow this to happen.”

“Today, however, we face the threat of a federal bill that, if enacted, would obliterate virtually all the gains of the past 35 years and cause the abortion rate to skyrocket. The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) has many congressional sponsors, some of whom have pledged to act swiftly to help enact this proposed legislation when Congress reconvenes in January.

“FOCA establishes abortion as a ‘fundamental right’ throughout the nine months of pregnancy, and forbids any law or policy that could ‘interfere’ with that right or ‘discriminate’ against it in public funding and programs. If FOCA became law, hundreds of reasonable, widely supported, and constitutionally sound abortion regulations now in place would be invalidated. Gone would be laws providing for informed consent, and parental consent or notification in the case of minors. Laws protecting women from unsafe abortion clinics and from abortion practitioners who are not physicians would be overridden.

“Restrictions on partial-birth and other late-term abortions would be eliminated. FOCA would knock down laws protecting the conscience rights of nurses, doctors, and hospitals with moral objections to abortion, and force taxpayers to fund abortions
throughout the United States.

“We cannot allow this to happen. We cannot tolerate an even greater loss of innocent human lives. We cannot subject more women and men to the post-abortion grief and suffering that our counselors and priests encounter daily in Project Rachel programs across America.

“For 24 years, the Catholic Church has provided free, confidential counseling to individuals seeking emotional and spiritual healing after an abortion, whether their own or a loved one’s. We look forward to the day when these counseling services are no longer needed, when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law. If FOCA is enacted, however, that day may recede into the very distant future.”

Spread the word in our parishes and communities about FOCA and Obama’s militant support for passage of this law. No one who advocates radical abortion laws that endanger every unborn child and pregnant mother in America is fit to be president of a nation that enshrines the sacredness of human “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all, including unborn children and their parents who need and deserve our real support, not betrayal through abortion.