Some local Catholics are participating in a coordinated, national postcard campaign asking the new Congress not to expand access to abortion. The cards urge legislators to oppose the Freedom of Choice Act, among other measures.
"Our voice is needed now more than ever," a flier reads.
The flier implies that FOCA is something new; however, the bill has languished in Congress for 20 years and gotten out of committee once in that time. In fact, FOCA died with the last Congress and has not been reintroduced. Political observers say passage doesn't appear to be a priority for either abortion-rights groups or the economy-focused Obama administration right now.
"Every source I have in Washington says to me that FOCA is not something we need to worry about. It'll never get to his desk," the conservative pastor Joel Hunter told Christianity Today. "It alarms me a little bit that the Catholics and some of the very Religious Right are raising a lot of alarm on an issue that doesn't look like it has much political chance of coming to fruition, so it's like crying wolf. You only get so many of those."
That hasn't kept misleading e-mails from warning of potential consequences if Obama signs FOCA into law.
Catholic News Service, the news service of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has a story about false FOCA rumors flying from e-mail inbox to inbox.
"Internet rumors to the contrary, no Catholic hospital in the United States is in danger of closing because of the Freedom of Choice Act," the article says.
The Catholic Health Association "is strongly committed to opposing FOCA and (the board) is unanimous that we would do all we could to oppose it," said Bishop Robert N. Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., an elected member of the CHA board of trustees since June 2006."But there is no plan to shut down any hospital if it passes," he added in a Jan. 26 telephone interview. "There's no sense of ominous danger threatening health care institutions.'" ...
As introduced in previous congresses, the legislation "has never contained anything that would force Catholic hospitals or Catholic personnel to do abortions or to participate in them," said Sister Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who is president and CEO of the association.
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