I have been letting my imagination run as I have contemplated the consequences of the Freedom of Choice Act. The FOCA will define abortion as a fundamental right which may not be denied any woman for any reason.
Roman Catholic bishops have said that if the FOCA passes that they would be forced to shut down their hospitals. Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops' fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. "It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions," he said. "That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil." *
The other option which is being discussed is for Catholic hospitals to remain opened and simply ignore the law and refuse to comply with it. Bishop Robert Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., a member of CHA's board of trustees, wrote on his blog last month that "even in the worst-case scenario, Catholic hospitals will not close. We will not comply, but we will not close." Instead, he advocated a strategy of "civil disobedience."*
Here's what I see happening if the FOCA passes and if either of these events take place.
1. Catholic hospitals which according to the CHA make up 13 percent of the country's nearly 5,000 hospitals, and employ more than 600,000 people will close and the one of every six Americans hospitalized in the United States who receives care in a Catholic hospitalal will be left without a place to go. This will lead to an immediate and overwhelming crisis in health-care. Because of the public outcry which results, but unwilling to give up their belief that every woman has the right to kill her own child as long as it is in the womb, the Democratic Congress and Administration will move to nationalize hospitals. We've seen this happening in the banking industry, so to say it could happen to hospitals is not all the far-fetched. This will result in massive protests as Catholics and like-minded people seek to block the government from assuming control of the hospitals. Because of these protesters, the government claiming that this is an issue of national security will call up the National Guard in order to open the way for the workers and patients (think racial integration of the 1960's). Eventually marshall law is ordered and Congress quickly passes a law which defines pro-life speech as a hate crime and all opposition to unrestricted abortion is squelched.
2. A more likely scenario is this. Catholic hospitals remain open but refuse to perform abortions. Some women backed by the ACLU, the People for the American Way, the National Origination of Women and other pro-abortion groups file law suits against Catholic hospitals claiming that their fundamental rights are being violated. Some liberal judges hear the cases and award these plaintiffs huge punitive damages. These lawsuits eventually bankrupt the hospitals and they are forced to sell their facilities. Since not enough investors can be found to purchase all 5,000 hospitals, the government will have no choice but to step in and nationalize these hospitals.
You may think of these as wild fantasies and I hope they are. But the point I'm trying to make is that the Freedom of Choice Act isn't about freedom of choice. It's about taking away people's right to choice to follow their conscience and just how far others may go to make it impossible for them to do so.
*St. Louis Post-Dispatch (entire article)
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