Russell Shaw (CR, Jan. 8) rightly encourages the “Catholic left” to re-evaluate President-elect Obama’s pro-abortion ferocity. Here we are on the goal line facing his administration’s jumbo package Freedom of Choice Act. “Freedom of Choice” is golden. Major manufacturers advertise products as “America’s Choice!” “The Right Choice!” or “The Choice of Today.” The American psyche was founded on freedom and choice.
We have more than 250,000 laws, orders, and local ordinances of every type governing or curtailing activities from capital murder to double parking, and each of these restrictions limits our freedom of choice. Otherwise, rapists would be free to choose rape, or those who dislike homosexuals could freely choose to beat them up. The “perfectly legal” voices of the anti-life movement ring of nightmare nationalism historically.
The Reichstag (German legislature) legalized the wholesale killing of Jews and others in 1938. Apartheid was ensured wide social acceptance since it was “perfectly legal” under South African law until 1992. The freedom of the United States in choosing to limit food supplies to developing countries in exchange for population control measures has allowed China, not so freely, to choose to mandate forced abortion. Making abortion a fundamental right, and undoing all hard-fought for abortion restrictions, FOCA will sign, seal, and deliver millions of death warrants the instant it is signed. The unchecked freedom provided by the FOCA will grease the skids toward personal slavery.