Plus National Petition to stop FOCA attached
On a hot summer morning in 2003, I found myself in the hospital not knowing what was wrong with me. At three-months-pregnant, the last thing on my mind was that I was loosing my baby. As I waited for the doctor to come in the room, nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to hear. After his examination, the doctor concluded, “You are having a miscarriage”. A miscarriage is the unintentional loss of a desired pregnancy– a pregnancy that ends spontaneously. I could not believe what I was hearing—my world was falling apart. I began to weep immediately. My baby was leaving me, and I didn’t get the chance to see him or hold him in my arms and kiss him, and let him know that everything was going to be alright. My heart was broken, my spirit crushed, my loss was immense and the emotional pain was severe.
This is the closest one will ever get to experiencing what it must be like to have an abortion without actually having one. The same feeling of loss, anguish, despair and pain, but without the guilt that an actual abortion will inflict. The feeling of loss is tremendous!
A year later, I had another miscarriage. I’ve lost two babies, not doubt about that. My body knew it. My spirit knew it. I knew it. I mourned inconsolably the deaths of my babies each time. The second time was not any better than the first. As my hope for having a baby got dimmer, the pain became greater. I had to fight through the depression, the pain, and a deep, deep feeling of loss to embrace myself to try again. This is the kind of pain one will never know about until one actually goes through it. The kind of pain one would not wish upon anybody, “not even your worst enemy.” Now, add to this pain the guilt that comes along with knowing that you’ve made this choice to terminate the life of your baby, that you brought this upon yourself when you really didn’t have to. This is what abortion does to a woman! This is what President Obama is facilitating for women to experience through the Freedom of Choice Act.
The truth is that Obama’s Freedom of Choice Act doesn’t help women at all, it doesn’t help families, and it doesn’t help anyone, but the pockets of those performing the abortions. Instead of helping, FOCA will act as a license for women to engage in irresponsible sexual behaviors with the false sense that it will be without any consequences. That will only cause promiscuous behavior and sexually transmitted diseases to sky rocket. But most importantly, the worst thing in all of these is the end result of abortion–ending the life of a child, and the guilt and emotional pain that it will inflict on those women that will have them. Sure, there is healing and forgiveness for women after an abortion, but much better it is not to have to go through that at all. Now that I have two children, I know more than ever that the two babies I miscarriage could have been just like them, would their development process had not been stopped. I lost two babies no doubt about that, and even dough it has helped me appreciate my children even more, I would of much rather not to have that happened to me at all. The memories will always be there. The truth is that FOCA will only take women down a path of depression, tremendous sense of loss, emotional pain, guilt, despair and regrets.
We live in an America whose core people are conscious, caring and compassionate. We have all of slogans to prove it, such as: “Save the Whales”, “Save the Manatees”, “Save the Wild Life”… Now then, on behalf of all the unborn children in America, I would like to say: Let’s SAVE THE BABIES!!!
To cast your vote against The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), click here: The National Petition to Stop FOCA
What is the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)?
Simply said, the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is a bill which “declares that it is the policy of the United States that every woman has the fundamental right to choose to terminate a pregnancy when necessary…”
The lawmakers proposing the legislation, and groups endorsing it, repeatedly emphasized that the bill would, among other things, completely nullify the national ban on partial-birth abortion that the Supreme Court upheld on April 18 in Gonzales v. Carhart.
In addition, PPFA explained, “Parental consent or notification statutes have been used as a tool to deny access to abortion services for minors. When such laws deny or interfere with the ability of minors to access abortion services, they would violate FOCA.” http://www.nrlc.org/FOCA/LawmakersProposeFOCA.html(NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE).
(About half of the states have parental notification or consent laws in effect, which the Supreme Court has said are permitted under Roe v. Wade as long as they meet certain requirements, including availability of judges to authorize abortions without parental notification or consent.)
In a press release issued when she introduced the FOCA in 2004, Senator Boxer gave a number of examples of current laws that would be invalidated by the bill, including the following:
– Laws restricting government funding of abortion. (The Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding of most abortions, and many states have similar laws. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that these laws do not violate Roe v. Wade.)
– Laws prohibiting abortions in public hospitals. (The Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that such policies do not violate Roe v. Wade.)
– Laws requiring that girls and women seeking abortion receive certain information on matters such as fetal development and alternatives to abortion, and then wait a specified period before the abortion is actually performed, usually 24 or 48 hours. In her press release, Boxer referred to these as “antichoice propaganda lectures.” (The Supreme Court said in its 1992 Casey ruling that such regulations are constitutional as long as they do not impose an “undue burden” on obtaining an abortion.)
– All laws allowing doctors, nurses, or other state-licensed professionals, and hospitals or other health-care providers, to decline to provide or pay for abortions. (Such “conscience rights” with respect to abortion are generally protected by certain federal laws, and by the laws in many states. Supporters of the laws usually call them “conscience laws,” but pro-abortion groups refer to them as “refusal clauses.”)
– All laws prohibiting medical personnel other than licensed physicians from performing abortions would be invalid because they may “interfere with” access to abortion. (All but a handful of states currently enforce such “doctor-only” laws, which are specifically authorized in Roe v. Wade itself.)
– The provision of the FOCA that prohibits any government agency or official from taking any action that would “discriminate against the exercise of” the FOCA-created legal rights, with respect to any “benefits, facilities, services, or information,” would leave government officials open to lawsuits for anything that anybody thought “discriminate(s)” against abortion. Johnson observed, “This sweeping mandate could cover everything from rural health clinics, to health education programs in public schools – and even to pro-life speeches by public officials.” http://www.nrlc.org/FOCA/LawmakersProposeFOCA.html (NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE).
History of the FOCA
An earlier version of the FOCA was pushed by pro-abortion forces beginning in the late 1980s, when they feared that the Supreme Court was preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade. When President Clinton, a FOCA supporter, took office in January 1993, Planned Parenthood predicted that the FOCA would be law within six months. But the bill died after an education and lobbying campaign, led by NRLC, persuaded many pro-Roe lawmakers that the bill went beyond Roe and would strike down many state laws that had broad support.
Johnson noted that during the debates over the FOCA in the early 1990s, many proponents of the bill often tried to deny some of its more radical effects – effects that they have already admitted with respect to the new bill, such as the invalidation of all restrictions on government funding of abortion.
The original FOCA faded from view after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 election. http://www.nrlc.org/FOCA/LawmakersProposeFOCA.html (NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE).
To cast your vote against The Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), click here: The National Petition to Stop FOCA
