IF President-elect Barack Obama goes through with his campaign pledge to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, holy hell is going to break loose.
FOCA may be the most radical social legislation in decades. It seeks to strip every last restraint from abortion – outlawing states’ requirements for waiting periods, informed consent or parental consent; preventing health and safety regulation of abortion clinics and abortionists – and even ending restrictions on partial-birth abortion.
With one stroke of the president’s pen, it would nullify every one of the 330 or so federal, state and local abortion laws on the books, most of them supported by a majority of Americans.
And that’s just the start. The law would also compel taxpayers to fund abortions and provide abortions in military hospitals. Most provocatively of all, it would force religious hospital and health-care institutions to perform abortions in violation of their convictions.
The incoming president is all for this draconian bill. In the Senate, no one held more extreme views on abortion. Abortion-rights groups have given him a 100 percent rating for every year he has held public office.
When he began his White House run, back on July 7, 2007, he told a cheering Planned Parenthood conference, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do . . . On this issue I will not yield.”
The Catholic Church, for one, won’t stand for it. The ranking American prelate to the Holy See, James Cardinal Stafford, denounced Obama’s vision as “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic.”
FOCA means war.
The US bishops have always been united in their moral condemnation of abortion. But they have stopped short of flexing political muscle, evading a head-on confrontation. That may now change.
Obama’s commitment to FOCA dominated their discussionsat their annual convention in Baltimore last month. Their president, Francis Cardinal George, warned that FOCA would destroy the freedom of conscience of doctors, nurses and health-care workers. “It would threaten Catholic healthcare institutions and Catholic Charities. It would be an evil law that would divide our country and the church should be intent on opposing evil.”
Chicago’s Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki went further. He said flatly that if the Obama administration attempted to force Catholic hospitals to provide abortions, they’d shut them down rather than comply.
“There are grave consequences,” he said. “It would not be sufficient to sell them to someone who would perform abortions. That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil.”
With nearly 300 prelates in attendance, one after the other rose up to demand a tough, unequivocal response to FOCA and the new president.
“This is not a matter of political compromise or finding some common ground,” said Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steuvenville, Ohio. “It’s a matter of absolutes.”
New York’s Edward Cardinal Egan said, “We have one important thing to say and we should say it clearly.”
The bishops have had it. They’re moving into the trenches, which is most uncharacteristic of them. Said Catholic commentator, Christopher Manion: “The Baltimore meeting could be historic. We saw the rumblings of the giant stirring from his slumber.”
Largely unspoken but lurking like a storm cloud over the discussions was the dread prospect of excommunication.
The American hierarchy has been sharply split for years over what to do with high-profile politicians who campaign on their Catholicism but support abortion policies contrary to church teaching. Everyone knows the culprits: Vice President-elect Joe Biden; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Sens. Ted Kennedy, Chris Dodd and Pat Leahy; Rep. Charlie Rangel, and many, many more.
But if FOCA becomes law, the Catholic politicians who vote “aye” or otherwise help pass it risk the ultimate penalty of the church.
Asked whether politicians voting for FOCA would incur automatic excommunication, Cardinal George refused to rule it out, saying: “The excommunication is automatic if that act is in fact formal cooperation and that is precisely what would have to be discussed once you see the terms of the act itself.”
Put plainly, Catholic politicians can’t “cooperate in evil” and escape penalty.
It is hard to imagine that an incoming president would declare war on the church, especially when 54 percent of its faithful voted for him. But he is convinced that a federal abortion law will end the national divisive debate over the practice. In fact, it will do the opposite.
Obama can’t say he hasn’t been warned. If he pulls the trigger here, the repercussions will be ugly.
Ray Kerrison has been a Post columnist for 20 years.