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What is the Legal Impact of FOCA?
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FOCA creates a new and dangerously radical “right.” It establishes the right to abortion as a “fundamental right,” elevating it to the same status as the right to vote and the right to free speech (which, unlike the abortion license, are specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution). Critically, the U.S. Supreme Court has never (in Roe v. Wade or in any subsequent decision) defined abortion as a fundamental constitutional right. Thus, FOCA goes beyond any U.S. Supreme Court decision in enshrining unlimited abortion-on-demand into American law.
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What is the Practical Impact of FOCA?
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In elevating abortion to a fundamental right, FOCA poses an undeniable and irreparable danger to common-sense laws supported by a majority of Americans. Among the federal and state laws that FOCA would nullify are:
- Informed consent laws
- Waiting periods
- Parental consent and notification laws
- Health and safety regulations for abortion clinics
- Requirements that licensed physicians perform abortions
- Bans on partial-birth abortion
- Bans on abortion after viability. FOCA’s apparent attempt to limit post-viability abortions is illusory. Under FOCA, post-viability abortions are expressly permitted to protect the woman’s “health.” Within the context of abortion, “health” has been interpreted so broadly that FOCA would not actually proscribe any abortion before or after viability.
- Limits on public funding for elective abortions (thus, making American taxpayers fund a procedure that many find morally objectionable)
- Limits on the use of public facilities (such has public hospitals and medical schools at state universities) for abortions
- Legal protections for individual healthcare providers who decline to participate in abortions.
- Legal protections for Catholic and other religiously-affiliated hospitals who, while providing care to millions of poor and uninsured Americans, refuse to allow abortions within their facilities
*H/T Americans United for Life
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3 comments:
remember, under equal protection, not just informed consent and safety laws relating to abortion, but all other medical care.
You know, what's especially strange about this to me is, is abortion a fundamental right for WOMEN? Or will we eventually have cases where men insist on exercising THEIR fundamental right to the abortion of a child they have no interest in?
That's where my brain went immediately.
(Not using my blogger ID because I try not to get too political online.)
Good point, Katie
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