Freedom of Choice Act Re-Introduced in the Senate

May 2nd, 2007 by Charles S

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision, upholding the ban on partial birth abortions, Senator Barbara Boxer (D - CA) and Representative Jerrold Nadler (D - NY) recently re-introduced S. 1173, The Freedom of Choice Act

The Act starts off with it’s “findings”, which in this case is another word for mindless propaganda. The first finding states:

(1) The United States was founded on core principles, such as liberty, personal privacy, and equality, which ensure that individuals are free to make their most intimate decisions without governmental interference and discrimination.

Please re-read the core principles Senators Boxer and Nadler state our Country was founded on. See anything missing? The Declaration of Independence says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

By denying a person life, this bill is going against the core principles our nation was founded upon. I am also of the opinion it goes against the 14th Amendment which says “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”, although the Supreme Court would disagree with me.

Moving further down the “findings”, the Senators explain why they feel the need to reintroduce this bill:

(9) Further threatening Roe, the Supreme Court recently upheld the first-ever Federal ban on an abortion procedure, which has no exception to protect a woman’s health. The majority decision in Gonzales v. Carhart (05-380, slip op. April 18, 2007) and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America fails to protect a woman’s health, a core tenet of Roe v. Wade. Dissenting in that case, Justice Ginsburg called the majority’s opinion `alarming’, and stated that, `[f]or the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman’s health’. Further, she said, the Federal ban `and the Court’s defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court’.

However if we look at the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 which is the bill the Supreme Court was ruling on in Gonzales v. Carhart we find this clause:

“This subsection does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness, or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.”

Apparently Senators Boxer and Nadler did not take the time to read the bill in it’s entirety or they would have noticed this exception. They then continue with their wrongful “findings” by stating:

(5) These decisions have protected the health and lives of women in the United States. Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, an estimated 1,200,000 women each year were forced to resort to illegal abortions, despite the risk of unsanitary conditions, incompetent treatment, infection, hemorrhage, disfiguration, and death. Before Roe, it is estimated that thousands of women died annually in the United States as a result of illegal abortions.

These facts were taken directly from the pre-Roe propaganda which was fed to the media, and the Supreme Court as fact. Although these numbers were known to be erroneous for quite some time, recently one of the men responsible for the false numbers actually admitted they were made up.

Dr. Bernard Nathanson co-founder of NARAL, originally the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, later renamed the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League has gone on record saying

“We aroused enough sympathy to sell our program of permissive abortion by fabricating the number of illegal abortions done annually in the U.S. The figure was approaching 100,000, but the figure we gave to the media repeatedly was 1 million. Repeating the big lie often enough convinces the public. The number of women dying from illegal abortions was around 200-250 annually. The figure we constantly fed to the media was 10,000.” - Whistle Blower Magazine Volume 16, No. 2 printed February 2007

I respectfully request Senators Boxer and Nadler to use sources other than the Planned Parenthood website the next time they intend on signing their names to abortion legislation.

Aside from the so-called “findings” laid out in this bill, it is the law itself which are truly frightening. The bill would make it illegal to:

(2) discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in paragraph (1) in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.

The term services is a not so obvious reference to the aforementioned Partial Birth Abortion Ban. This bill would undo that legislation and countless others. As World Net Daily says:

FOCA would wipe out every parental notification and consent law, every informed consent law, every law restricting government funding of abortion, every law prohibiting abortions in public hospitals, every law mandating waiting periods, every medical professional conscience clause law, every abortion clinic regulation, every law stating abortion procedures must only be committed by physicians, and more. Pro-life politicians would even be prohibited from giving pro-life speeches.

On a side note, something else strikes me in this bill, an item which I have yet to see mentioned. The bill says “A government may not–
(1) deny or interfere with a woman’s right to choose–
(A) to bear a child;”

This would then allow women in prison, or women whose husband/boyfriend is imprisoned to demand conjugal visits would it not? I mean after all the government cannot deny her right to bear a child.

Luckily, we do not have to worry about this bill going far. Senators Boxer and Nadler most likely will not have enough votes to pass this legislation, and even if they do, they certainly will not have enough votes to overturn the inevitable veto by President Bush.