FOCA - Freedom of Choice Act

Obama Wants to Keep His Promise Stealthily

I received the following today from Mike Huckabee who ran for the Republican nomination in the last US election. It is about a disgusting piece of legislation, that Christians and people of goodwill have to oppose, and that I was following while in the US last winter. His piece read:

In July 2007, Barack Obama promised a group of his supporters that, if elected president, he would sign perhaps the most evil piece of legislation in the history of our republic.

It's called the "Freedom of Choice Act," or FOCA -- but don't let the Orwellian title fool you. It isn't about "freedom" or "choice" at all. It's about forcing each and every American citizen -- regardless of his or her view on abortion -- to support abortion-on-demand not just as a "fundamental right" but as a taxpayer-funded entitlement.

But the compulsion wouldn't stop there. Because FOCA would also run roughshod over the conscience rights of doctors, nurses, and hospitals that oppose abortion on religious or moral grounds -- forcing them to provide or counsel for abortion or face professional de-certification, loss of funding, lawsuits, and even prosecution.

Not only that, FOCA would immediately strike down any and all state restrictions on abortion -- even those with wide popular support, such as prohibitions on partial-birth abortion and parental notification requirements for minors seeking abortions.

Make no mistake: FOCA is the most radical piece of pro-abortion legislation ever proposed, one that would go far beyond Roe v. Wade in making abortion a government-protected and taxpayer-supported "right," through all nine months of pregnancy.

He explained a bit more why there has been a delay with this abomination:

You see, in his 2007 campaign pledge to Planned Parenthood members, Obama promised that signing FOCA would be "the first thing I'd do as president." The only reason he hasn't followed through on that promise is that Democratic-controlled Congress has yet to introduce and pass it.

Why the delay? For one thing, they've had bigger fish to fry -- such as trillion-dollar "stimulus" packages and a new government-run health care system. They learned from Bill Clinton's immediate post-election action on gays in the military not to squander a new president's honeymoon period on divisive social legislation.

But also, by delaying, they can lull their pro-life opponents into thinking that FOCA has been tabled, while quietly building support for it in a stealth propaganda campaign that is already underway using major media outlets -- such as the Washington Post, which recently ran a piece in its "On Faith" section called "Why Fear FOCA?"

Human Events, an organisation that has taken on stopping FOCA as one of their projects plans to use the media to halt FOCA as follows:

The main weapon in HUMAN EVENTS' media blitzkrieg will be an in-depth Special Report called, "The Facts About FOCA: Truth vs. Propaganda in the Battle Over the Most Radical Pro-Abortion Law in American History."

Written in consultation with the finest legal minds of our time, "The Facts About FOCA" will reveal how, despite pro-abortionists' attempts to soft-pedal its potential impact in order to ensure swift passage, the Freedom of Choice Act would:

• Establish abortion as a "fundamental right," elevating it to the same status as the right to vote and the right to free speech -- going beyond any Supreme Court decision in enshrining unlimited abortion-on-demand into American law
  
• Eliminate every restriction on abortion nationwide -- including 44 states' laws concerning parental involvement, 40 states' laws on restricting later-term abortions, 46 states' conscience protection laws for individual health care providers, 27 states' conscience protection laws for institutions, 38 states' bans on partial-birth abortions, 33 states' laws on requiring counseling before an abortion, and 16 states' laws concerning ultrasounds before an abortion
  
• Compel taxpayer funding of abortions through state and federal welfare programs, federal employee insurance plans, and in military hospitals.
  
• Force faith-based hospitals and healthcare facilities to perform abortions
  
• Force doctors and nurses to provide counseling and referral for abortions

But creating "The Facts About FOCA" is just the beginning. HUMAN EVENTS will then publicize and distribute it on a massive scale, both in print versions and online, to provoke a massive outpouring of voter outrage that will stop this evil law from being enacted.

Included among the activists, opinion-makers, and other influential citizens to whom HUMAN EVENTS will distribute "The Facts About FOCA" will be:

• Pro-life, conservative, and/or Republican activist groups on HUMAN EVENTS' own extensive nationwide list, with an invitation to help spread the word by ordering and distributing inexpensive bulk reprints of the report
  
• Top editors, reporters, and syndicated columnists on every major metropolitan and regional paper in America, plus many local ones. HUMAN EVENTS will give them blanket advance permission to reproduce the report in whole or in part, without paying royalties
  
• Talk-radio hosts in every radio market in the country, from Rush Limbaugh on down. Again, HUMAN EVENTS will allow them to quote from it as extensively as they wish, at no cost
  
• TV news editors, anchors, and reporters at all the networks and cable news channels, as well as local affiliates
  
• All 435 members of the U.S. House and Senate, with additional copies for their staff members and committee aides
  
• More than 150,000 dedicated HUMAN EVENTS readers

Needless to say, they want and need money. If you are interested you can support them here. Their main site is here. But, SHHHH, they're the Conservative Underground, though they seem pretty on top to me.

I'm not sure that I see eye to eye with everything they are doing, but FOCA is bad news, and stopping it in the US is good for us, because it's ugly sister will get here soon.