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FREEDOM OF CHOICE ACT HIDDEN WITHIN OBAMA HEALTH CARE REFORM - PLEASE ACT NOW
July 21, 2009
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
This note is concerning the devastating effects of the health care reform bills now being finalized in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House. Congressional leaders are aiming to vote on these bills during the last week of July. If you have not already done so, please take action to oppose these bills as soon as possible.
National Right to Life says that, if passed, these health care reform bills, “would result in the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.”
These bills, supported by President Obama, would result in federally mandated coverage of abortion by nearly all health plans, and nullification of many of our state abortion laws such as Idaho’s parental consent and informed consent laws. These bills would also mandate federal funding of abortion on a massive scale.
Right to Life of Idaho has long opposed The “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA). Although FOCA has not been introduced this session, many of its provisions have been placed into these health care reform bills.
If you have not called or emailed your U.S. Idaho representative, Congressman Walt Minnick or Congressman Mike Simpson, and our two U.S. senators, Senator James Risch and Senator Michael Crapo to oppose this legislation, please do the following:
Go to the National Right to Life website and sign the email at the bottom to send to your three representatives.
Also, please call Congressman Walt Minnick (First Congressional District) or Congressman Mike Simpson (Second Congressional District) and Senators James Risch and Michael Crapo at their local and D.C. offices. Click here to find their local and D.C. contact information.
Friends, we all need to act to oppose these health care reform bills. If we don’t take action, we will end up with a health care reform bill that will radically expand abortion and abortion funding.
Thank you so much for defending life!
No Consensus Yet on S1114 - Please Act Now
March 20, 2009
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
Because of the many concerns raised about S1114, the Idaho House did agree to postpone the scheduled hearing on S1114. We are very grateful to the House leadership and the chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee for doing this to allow for further study of this bill.
This last week, representatives of Right to Life of Idaho and one of our attorneys, Burke Balch with the Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics of the National Right to Life, and other pro-life organizations have been meeting with the various medical and disability rights groups who were involved with the drafting of S1114. Presently, certain provisions of this bill would allow a doctor to deny life-saving medical treatment, i.e. food and fluids, against the will of the patient and his/her family. We have and are still making attempts to amend the bill to ensure that it will not allow for the involuntary denial of life-sustaining medical treatment.
We made it very clear that we were not impugning the motives of the sponsor who has always voted pro-life or the groups drafting S1114. We are only pointing out the dangerous effects certain provisions of this language would have here in Idaho, and have had in states that have similar laws, such as Texas.
Unfortunately, although we are still negotiating with the various groups, our attempts thus far to amend S1114 to achieve the right for patients and their families to choose life have not yet been achieved.
It is crucial to contact your two Idaho House representatives asking them to oppose S1114 unless the pro-life amendments to this bill are accepted.
Please read previous updates below for further information about S1114 and how to contact your two House representatives.
Thank you very much!
RADICAL PRO-ABORTION FOCA BILL COMING SOON
March 11, 2009
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
Please read LifeNews.com editor, Steven Ertelt’s update on the Freedom of Choice Act.
Radical Pro-Abortion FOCA Bill Coming Soon, Pro-Life Advocates Must Prepare
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 6, 2009
Washington,
DC (LifeNews.com) -- Leading pro-life advocates have been
criticized by the mainstream media for organizing an active opposition
to the radical Freedom of Choice Act because the bill has yet to be
filed in Congress. However, a leading pro-abortion Congressman calls
FOCA a top priority and says the bill is coming soon.
A spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who is chairman of a House Judiciary subcommittee that could consider the bill, says the bill is forthcoming.
FOCA "is among the congressman's priorities. We expect to reintroduce it sooner rather than later," Ilan Kayatsky told the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
"We expect it to be more or less the same bill with some minor tweaks," Kayatsky said. He indicated he expects pro-abortion Sen. Barbara Boxer to introduce a companion bill shortly.
If the bill is introduced in roughly the same form as it has been in previous Congressional sessions, then pro-life advocates will be preparing to vigorously oppose it.
Douglas Johnson, the legislative director for National Right to Life,
says his group would "continue to work to heighten the barriers
to the FOCA, no matter when it is re-introduced."
Johnson said pro-life advocates need to be aware of all of the threats
to pro-life laws such as the concerns presented with FOCA.
"We will also be working against the immediate threats posed
by the Obama Administration's radical abortion agenda, such as its
efforts to enact abortion mandates in health care legislation, and
to repeal the Hyde Amendment," he added.
The Freedom of Choice Act would make unlimited abortions for any reason throughout pregnancy the national law. It would also overturn hundreds of pro-life laws approved in states across the country.
Matt Bowman, a pro-life attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, estimates that FOCA could result in an increase of 125,000 abortions or more annually throughout the country.
"Advocates and opponents of FOCA all agree that the bill would nullify every legal limit on abortion, state, federal or otherwise," he explains. "Abortion advocates who want FOCA concur: NOW, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, and FOCA sponsor Senator Barbara Boxer all contend that FOCA will strike down all state pro-life laws."
"The shockwaves that FOCA would cause are immense and wide-ranging, but recent research shows one effect in particular. Certain state laws that are doomed under FOCA actually prevent a statistically significant number of abortions. These laws include parental involvement requirements, informed consent laws, and restrictions on government funding of abortions," Bowman adds.
Meanwhile, Catholic leaders worry that they would have to close some hospitals because of the threat FOCA poses.
Michael Moses, a top attorney for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, adds that the language of FOCA is so far-reaching that it will remove any conscience clause measures from state laws that protect doctors, hospitals and medical professionals who don't want to be involved in abortions.
Moses' reading of the proposed legislation is that if abortion is a fundamental right that can't ever be infringed, then every hospital and medical center must do abortions -- including Catholic and other religious or private hospitals that object to doing them.
Some of the bishops, during their annual national meeting in November, went as far as saying the Catholic Church should be willing to close some health facilities rather than allow them to be subject to a mandate to do abortions FOCA may impose.
Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago spoke up about the threats to Catholic health care under the bill.
“It could mean discontinuing obstetrics in our hospitals, and we may need to consider taking the drastic step of closing our Catholic hospitals entirely,” Paprocki said. “It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions. That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil.”
“I do not think I'm being alarmist in considering such drastic steps,” he said. “We need to respond in a morally appropriate, responsible fashion.”
Should Congress approve FOCA, President Barack Obama has already indicated he would sign the measure. During the presidential campaign, Obama promised in a speech to Planned Parenthood that the bill would be the first he would sign as president.
ACTION: The best way to keep informed about the FOCA bill and how you can help defeat it is to sign up for news from LifeNews.com. Use the links below to get our free daily or weekly pro-life news via email.
ACTION ALERT: S1114 WOULD BRING INVOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA TO IDAHO
March 10, 2009
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
It has come to our attention that S1114,
has just passed the Idaho Senate and has been assigned to the House
Health and Welfare Committee. Right to Life of Idaho and other pro-life
ethicists, have some grave concerns about this bill since
it would allow health care providers to deny life-sustaining procedures,
including tube and IV food and fluids against the will of the patients
and their family.
Please read the statement below
by Burke Balch, with the Powell Center for Medical Ethics. Also please
see the link
from Wesley J. Smith, a Senior Fellow in Human Rights and Bioethics
at the Discovery Institute, and associate director of the International
Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, in which he shares
his definite concerns about this bill, as well.
RTLI also has been in touch with the Director of Texas Right to Life.
She, too, shares our unease with the language of this bill, as they
have a similar yet less extreme law in Texas. She is willing to come
to testify against certain dangerous provisions in the bill. The bill
is tentatively scheduled for hearing this Thursday at 1:30 pm. We
are attempting to have this hearing rescheduled in order to have time
for those giving expert testimony to travel. We will be prepared to
offer amendments to the bill.
ACTION NEEDED IMMEDIATELY:
- Click S1114 to get a copy of S1114.
- Please read the statements by Burke Balch and Wesley J. Smith (below).
- Call or email your two Idaho House Representatives to tell them about RTLI’s concerns about the bill. Ask them to support postponing the hearing and to support the RTLI amendments. See above for infomation on how to contact your Idaho state legislators.
Burke Balch Statement:
S1114, which has already been passed by the Senate and is now before the House Health and Welfare Committee, would authorize health care providers to deny life-sustaining procedures, including tube and IV food and fluids, AGAINST THE WILL of patients and their family members.
It would authorize health care providers to deny health care they choose to term “medically inappropriate or futile,” language undefined in the bill, but well understood in the medical profession to include life-saving care given to patients whose “quality of life” the providers consider unacceptable because of their degree of disability, even though treatment could preserve their lives, perhaps indefinitely. See details and documentation at www.nrlc.org
S1114 provides for a procedure, adapted from a controversial Texas law, under which patients or their family members would be given only 24 hours notice before having to appear before a facility-appointed “ethics committee,” which, after hearing from them and the doctors who advocate the patient’s death, would have authority to decide against treatment. In that case, treatment would be provided for up to 15 days while transfer to a willing provider was sought. While the patient or family could seek a court-ordered extension, it would be granted only if they could prove a “reasonable probability” of finding a willing provider within the extension period – there could be no appeal of the decision to deny treatment itself.
While the option to transfer may seem to help the patient, experience in Texas has shown that once one institution has refused to treat, it is normally extremely difficult to find other facilities willing to buck “medical solidarity” or conduct a serious independent review of the facts and accept transfer.
Moreover, Idaho facilities would NOT EVEN BE REQUIRED TO USE THE ETHICS COMMITTEE/TRANSFER procedure. The bill specifically makes it “voluntary”for each facility and states, “Nothing in this chapter shall require a health care facility to establish or utilize an ethics committee, nor shall this chapter require a health care provider or surrogate decision maker to submit a matter to the ethics committee before withdrawing or withholding health care to a patient.” In short, the bill completely overrides patient and family rights, instead giving essentially absolute immunity to health care providers who involuntarily deny life-saving treatment, food and fluids so as to bring about the deaths of those patients they in their sole judgment consider too disabled to be worth saving.
Also see “Duty to Die in Idaho” at www.wesleyjsmith.com.
Burke J. Balch, J.D.
Director, Powell Center for Medical Ethics
IDAHO LEGISLATURE CONSIDERING DANGEROUS FUTILE CARE BILL PUTTING PATIENTS AT RISK
March 10, 2009
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
Please read the following article by Steven Ertelt, editor of Life News, regarding S1114.
Idaho Legislature Considering Dangerous Futile Care Bill Putting Patients at Risk
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 10, 2009
Boise, ID (LifeNews.com) -- The Idaho legislature is considering
a dangerous futile care bill that could put elderly, disabled and
terminally ill patients at risk. The legislation is similar to a
Texas law that has concerned
pro-life advocates because it can easily lead to revoking lifesaving
medical treatment and euthanasia.
The Idaho Senate has approved the bill, S1114, and bioethics watchdog and attorney Wesley J. Smith is very concerned about it moving further.
Smith says the bill "is so bad it permits doctors who want to refuse wanted treatment to violate a patient's written advance directive."
The bill essentially gives the family members of a patient who can't make his or her own medical decisions just 15 days to find a new health facility that will provide appropriate care when the current facility refuses to provide needed medical treatment.
With doctors increasingly giving up on patients they consider too far gone, that presents a host of problems for family to make sure their loved ones receive care before a feeding tube is removed or a ventilator shut off.
Smith says the bill is plagued with undefined terms that make the process even more difficult.
"So what precisely is care deemed medically futile or inappropriate? The term isn't defined precisely, meaning it is what the doctors or ethics committees say it is," he says.
The bill authorizes guardians to refuse or withhold life-sustaining treatment if "the respondent is in a persistent vegetative state, the provision of such treatment would merely prolong dying, or the provision of such treatment would be virtually futile in terms of the survival of the respondent, and the treatment itself under such circumstances would be inhumane."
"This idea of 'prolonging the dying' used to be called extending life," Smith responds. "If that is what the patient wants, it is the quintessential purpose of medicine."
"If this section of the bill is found to apply to the futile care portion of the proposal, imagine the possibilities to force the most weak and vulnerable out of the lifeboat. Duty to die--here we come," Smith adds.
Smith explains that other sections of the bill contain extremely objectionable clauses that show the intent to create a duty to die for the most infirm and expensive for whom to care.
He says the bill creates a situation where "the doctor has the right to just say no [to medical care] based on his or her own biases regarding the 'quality' of a patient's life."
"Doctors should not have the right to decide whose life is worth living," he concludes.
Related web sites:
Idaho Legislature - http://www.legislature.idaho.gov
Idaho Right to Life - http://www.rtli.org
National Petition to Stop the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA)
February 15, 2009
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
If you have not already signed a petition to stop the Freedom of
Choice Act please read the following and act soon.
National Right to Life, the largest pro-life organization
in America, and its affiliated state right-to-life groups are sponsoring
a National Petition Campaign to Stop the Freedom of Choice Act. The
results of the petition will be sent to Congress.
WE NEED YOUR HELP !
WE MUST ACT IMMEDIATELY !
1. Please go to www.nrlc.org
and download the petition.
2. Please collect signatures on the petition from your friends, family
and neighbors. Arrange to have petitions signed at churches, fairs,
shopping centers, and any other places where pro-life people may gather.
For example, petitions can be circulated at church Bible study and
adult discussion meetings.
3. Feel free to photocopy the petition. Give copies to anyone who
can help gather signatures. Collect signatures on only ONE SIDE of
each petition form.
4. Advertise the petition by announcements at appropriate meetings,
or through inserting a notice in your church bulletin.
Here is a sample announcement:
PETITION TO STOP THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE ACT
You are invited to sign a petition to members of Congress asking them
to stop the Freedom of Choice Act, a bill under consideration in Congress
that would make partial-birth abortion legal again, require tax funding
of elective abortion, and nullify nearly all limits on abortion. The
petition will be located at (place) on (day, date) at (times).
5. Choose a convenient method of gathering signatures. A long table
or several card tables can be used, or a number of clipboards with
petitions and pens attached. Have an ample supply of PENS, NOT PENCILS.
6. Please mail the signed petitions AS SOON AS POSSIBLE to National
Right to Life, STOP THE ABORTION AGENDA, 512-10th Street NW, Washington,
D.C. 20004. Send the sheets in as they are completed -- we’ll be happy
to receive additional signatures later.
7. For more information on the Freedom of Choice Act, visit NRLC's
website at www.stoptheabortionagenda.com.
Thank you for all your efforts on behalf of unborn children!
HELP STOP THE FREEDOM OF CHOICE ACT (FOCA)
January 29, 2009
Dear Pro-Life Friends:
This last Saturday, January 24th, hundreds of pro-life citizens
across Idaho marched in Boise to comemorate the 36th anniversary of
the 1973 Roe v Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand throughout
the entire 9 months of pregnancy. This decison has resulted in the
deaths of over 50 million unborn children.
Many of us began praying together at the Mass for Life at St. John's
Cathedral with Bishop Michael Driscoll officiating and Fr. Rob Cooke
giving a beautiful homily on the sacredness of human life. Fr. Rob
also gave the benediction at the rally.
In his keynote speech, David Ripley, with Idaho Chooses Life, gave
an insightful speech in which he told us of his conversion through
grace from being actively pro-abortion to becoming pro-life. He and
I warned the crowd of the extreme danger of the Freedom of Choice
Act (FOCA). We also thanked President George W. Bush for his courageous
pro-life stance these last eight years. I quoted prominent pro-life
leaders across the nation who have saluted him for his eight years
of outstanding pro-life service and who agree that as president, George
W. Bush will leave behind a very strong and lasting legacy as a dedicated
champion of the pro-life cause.
In the months ahead the pro-life community will be severely challenged
to deal with a new administration--one who is promising to be radically
pro-abortion.
Within hours of the new administration’s take over, the White House
website was changed from having a strong defense of life position
to this statement on abortion: “He (President Obama) has been a consistent
champion of reproductive choice (abortion on demand) and will make
preserving women’s rights under Roe v. Wade a priority in his Administration.”
President Obama has already issued an executive order to reverse the
Mexico City policy which will force taxpayers to fund abortions in
other countries.
One of the most important battles pro-lifers will face in Washington
is the defeat of the Freedom of Choice Act which President Obama has
promised to sign. If passed by Congress it will be "an oppressive
law elevating abortion to a fundamental right and mandating participation
and cooperation from every American citizen in unlimited abortion
on demand. "
If passed FOCA would eliminate all state and federal laws protecting
the unborn babies and their mothers. Gone would be our parental consent
and informed consent laws. Partial birth abortion would once again
be legal. Gone would be the Hyde Amendment. Thus, we will be forced
to pay for abortions with our tax dollars here. Gone would be our
conscience laws. Pro-life doctors, nurses and other health care personnel
and hospitals may be forced to participate in the killing of the unborn.
Thirty-five years of pro-life work will be eliminated by this radical
law.
We are becoming aware that most Congressman do not know how radically
pro-abortion FOCA is and that if it came up for a vote today, it would
pass. We have to let our congressmen know the facts.
Please help us call and write our Idaho Congressman. NRLC has an online
petition going to President Obama and Congress asking them to stop
FOCA. We encourage all of you to please go to www.nrlc.org,
print this petition, sign it and get others to sign it and mail it
to the NRLC office.
Please also pray daily for President Obama that God will touch his
heart and lead him to be a strong defender of the culture of life.
God Bless All of You,
Kerry Uhlenkott
Legislative Coordinator
Right to Life of Idaho
Jason Herring
Assistant Legislative Coordinator
Right to Life of Idaho
Right to Life of Idaho - PO Box 7404, Boise, ID 83707 - 208.367.9378 -