Freedom Of Choice Act

[nemorathwald]

Barack Obama promised Planned Parenthood that the first thing he would do as President is sign the Freedom Of Choice Act. This was one of the reasons I voted for him. Essentially, FOCA will codify Roe vs. Wade into federal law. Abortion has been legal since before our generation existed, and I am comfortable knowing my mother had a choice in whether to bring me into existence. That is the one person in whose hands I would put that decision. I would like FOCA to be a definitive and unprecedented rejection of the Pro-Life movement by America.

I know that in reality, it will not reflect any such mandate. It will merely reflect the failure of the Pro-Life movement to surmount their burden of proof. They have never made a sufficient case for foetal personhood, reflected in the indecision of the vast majority of Americans on this issue. When the population regards the effects as intangible, they default to permissiveness. "Don't like abortion, don't have one" is the new climate in our culture since Roe vs. Wade, even though we would never say "Don't like slavery, don't own slaves". It may take another generation to shake our heads in wonder that we ever believed the material for a potential person is already a person. Only then will abortion rights be safe.

I am curious about the requirement, allegedly in FOCA, that all hospitals must offer abortions, or shut down. How true is this claim? Is it true that Catholic or other religiously-based hospitals will be included in this requirement? Do you think they will shut down, as some Cardinals have promised, or do you think they will have "that room in the back" and close their eyes to it?

Is it plausible or ridiculous for Pro-Lifers to claim that FOCA will force doctors to become abortionists against their will? How many branches of medicine require the student to learn how to perform an abortion? Is it true that "abortion providers would not have to be qualified with even a nursing degree", or would the opposite occur, in which it would raise the standard of institutional accreditation to perform the procedures?

How many medical professionals do you think would resign and leave the medical industry or go overseas, rather than work for a hospital that performs abortions? Not many, I postulate.

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

My appendix is both human and alive. I think the material for a potential person actually becomes a person when the lights are on and there's somebody home, and there is viability outside the mother. Around the middle of the third trimester, there are the first detectable brainwaves, and because of that scientific evidence, I think at that time a fetus gains about as much personhood as a dog or chimp. It rapidly increases from there to the point of birth at nine months.

Even at nine months and viable biological independence, it does not have full rights-- merely the right to life. We don't grant full rights in this society until adulthood. It is a gradual slope.

It's true, there is little agreement on it, and that's the burden of proof the Pro-Lifers haven't surmounted. The burden does indeed lie with them. The Pro-Choicers have consistently acted like it doesn't exist, so they haven't driven home a Pro-Choice view of it.

[drkelso.livejournal.com]

In a similar way that you don't like religion dictating science, I don't like the law dictating science. On the flip side, advances in science should change the law.

So as the definition of viability changes as science and technology progress, so should the rights of a person to retain their life. I would argue that viability today is different than viability in 1973 simply because we understand the science of pregnancy better than we used to.

My personal minimum opinion of choice is that if a fetus is scientifically capable of viability outside the womb, then it should be afforded the basic right to life no matter where it is currently located geographically. And that definition should change as science reveals more about what we don't know.