Do you know what the first thing President-Elect Barack Obama promised to do as president is?
No, not end the war, reform health care, unite our country or improve our schools.
Rather, his top priority as president will be to reinstate partial-birth abortions, to allow individuals other than licensed physicians to perform abortions, to repeal informed consent and parental notification laws and to force taxpayers to fund abortions.
Obama addressed the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007.
He promised, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.”
Far from the Clinton-era Democratic Party’s stance that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare,” the Freedom of Choice Act will establish abortion as a fundamental right and eliminate legal restrictions on abortion that the majority of Americans support.
Let me give you a few examples of the broad scope of this act, should it pass both the House and the Senate and arrive on Obama’s desk.
FOCA would reinstate partial-birth abortion, a gruesome procedure in which the abortionist intentionally kills a partially delivered fetus. A few moments or inches later, he would be guilty of infanticide. In banning this act in 2003, Congress found that this act was never medically necessary.
FOCA would repeal informed-consent laws — never mind that women deserve to be informed about the procedure they are to undergo if they are to have a true choice.
FOCA would retract parental notification laws. I couldn’t take a Tylenol in high school without my parents’ permission, but they needn’t know that I’m pregnant or am considering abortion. What a clever way to cover up statutory rape, if you ask me.
FOCA would nullify requirements that only licensed physicians can perform abortions. A nurse practitioner could perform the abortions, which in effect means it requires less schooling to remove a live fetus than a tooth. How is this safe for women?
FOCA would remove limits on public funding of elective abortions. American taxpayers will be made to fund a procedure that many find morally objectionable.
FOCA would repeal legal protections for religiously affiliated hospitals or individual health care providers who decline to participate in abortions. Freedom of conscience, anyone?
FOCA would nullify health and safety regulations for abortion clinics. Again, how is this safe for women?
FOCA would retract bans on abortion after the fetus is viable — that is, after it has reached a stage of development where it could survive if born then. Why can’t we treat them both?
FOCA would establish abortion as a fundamental right, which would elevate it to the same status as the right to free speech and assembly.
This ignores nearly 40 years of jurisprudential experience on abortion. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the view that a woman had a fundamental right to abortion.
Further, the opinion stated that earlier decisions had too severely restricted the states’ power to restrict abortion, since “not all government intrusion [into abortion] is of necessity unwarranted.”
Obama believes this piece of legislation will end the abortion wars in America.
I could not disagree more.
The Freedom of Choice Act will not make abortion safe or rare. It will not promote meaningful discussion on the issue. It will not empower women or give them real choices.
It will serve only to profit and protect a multi-million dollar abortion industry.
President-elect Obama, please, let’s find common ground here: Pregnant women don’t need abortion — they need support. How are you going to help them?
Andrea will be writing her representatives to beg them not to sign this act. Reach her at andrea.summers@asu.edu.
