Bill's Notes

The Freedom of Choice Act is unlikely to pass this Congressional term. However, Congressional Democrats plan to re-introduce it next Congress and Barack Obama in July 2007 that signing it would be his first act as president. Obama is a co-sponsor of the current legislation, which remains in committee and is unlikely to come up for a vote this session.

From the current legislation:

(a) Statement of Policy- It is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to bear a child, to terminate a pregnancy prior to fetal viability, or to terminate a pregnancy after fetal viability when necessary to protect the life or health of the woman.
(b) Prohibition of Interference- A government may not--
(1) deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose--
(A) to bear a child;
(B) to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability; or
(C) to terminate a pregnancy after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; or
(2) discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in paragraph (1) in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.
(c) Civil Action- An individual aggrieved by a violation of this section may obtain appropriate relief (including relief against a government) in a civil action.

And in the last line of the current legislation: "This Act applies to every Federal, State, and local statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy, practice, or other action enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of enactment of this Act."

FOCA would codify a right to abortion in federal law for any reason whatsoever and invalidate every federal, state and local restriction on abortion. For post-viability, a woman would only have to have it say it affects her health.

That's what a vote for Obama risks. Here's his quote from the July 2007 meeting with Planned Parenthood:

"Well, the first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. [Applause.] That’s the first thing that I’d do."

I'll leave you with a quote from Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who fought the fight to legalize abortion in all 50 states, and then, after the invention of ultrasound, switched sides and became pro-life:

“I’m going to set it against my Jewish heritage and the Holocaust in Europe. The abortion holocaust is beyond the ordinary discourse of morality and rational condemnation. It is not enough to pronounce it absolutely evil. Absolute evil used to characterize the abortion tragedy (forty-three million and counting) is an inept formulation. The abortion tragedy is a new event, severed from connections with traditional presuppositions of history, psychology, politics and morality. It extends beyond the deliberations of reason, beyond the discernments of moral judgment, beyond meaning itself. It trivializes itself to call itself merely a holocaust or a tragedy. It is, in the words of Arthur Cohen, perhaps the world’s leading scholar on the European Holocaust, a mysterium tremendum, an utter mystery to the rational mind—a mystery that carries with it not only the aspect of vastness, but the resonance of terror, something so unutterably diabolic as to be literally unknowable to us.”