Doerflinger did warn that if abortion rights advocates succeed in lesser efforts, such as overturning the Hyde Amendment or a similar “longstanding funding rider” prohibiting abortion funding, “they will probably be emboldened to go for bigger goals.”
The novena announcement’s contention that women could be forced to undergo abortions, Doerflinger said, is “very strange.” He said such laws would “presumably” be unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade.
“But even FOCA itself is expressed throughout in terms of the woman's freedom of choice over pregnancy, birth and abortion, so such a pro-coercion amendment would have to say the exact opposite of what the text of the bill now says.”
However, he added, coercion of pro-life health care providers under FOCA is “indeed a legitimate and grave concern.”
“FOCA itself would not directly force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, but could be used to invalidate the laws that currently prevent others (including governmental bodies) from exerting such pressure,” Doerflinger explained.
FOCA’s provision that government may not “discriminate” against the exercise of the abortion right in providing public benefits, information and services, he added, “seems to insist that all health programs that involve women of childbearing age must cover abortion to the same extent that they cover childbirth.”
“That mandate would be used to nullify or undermine conscience clauses within those programs, to create new ‘basic benefits’ mandates that pro-life providers cannot provide in good conscience.”
“The effect would be to push Catholic and other pro-life providers increasingly out of public health programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, etc., making it impossible for them to survive.”
“We have to remember that FOCA is a very unusual kind of statute. It does not require or prohibit actions on the part of private individuals. It is a law about what kinds of laws you are allowed to have. It is a statute written to do the kind of thing that Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Constitution ordinarily do -- but it is even more extreme than the Supreme Court's own decisions,” Doerflinger wrote.
“In that sense, it is indeed a power grab on the part of Congress, telling all 50 states what laws they are not allowed to enact,” Doerflinger argued.
“But we also need to be careful that we don't make charges we can't back up. FOCA is radical enough to be frightening without doing that!”
(Story continues below)
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Tom Grenchik, Executive Director of the USCCB’s Secretariat of Pro-life Activities, also sent a Friday e-mail to the diocesan Pro-Life Directors and Catholic conferences of U.S. states asking that they correct the false information conveyed in the novena announcement should they come across it.
Grenchik further noted the prayer resources on the Pro-life Secretariat web site at http://www.usccb.org/prolife/liturgy/index.shtml , explaining that January 22 shall be observed as “a particular day of penance for violations to the dignity of the human person committed through acts of abortion, and of prayer for the full restoration of the legal guarantee of the right to life.”