Catholics Cannot Accept FOCA As 'Common Ground,' Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 12 Dec 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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People "of good will," including Roman Catholic bishops, have "pledged our prayers and our willingness to cooperate in advancing the common good of all" following the election of President-elect Barack Obama, but the "common good is not served by making wrongs, like abortion, into 'rights,'" Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Catholic Diocese of Orlando writes in an opinion piece in the Lakeland Ledger.

Wenski writes that Catholics and "others who support human life from conception [until] natural death" will "never accept Roe v. Wade as a permanent fixture of constitutional law" or "stop working to restore recognition for the human rights of the unborn child." Wenski adds that the Freedom of Choice Act, which Obama has said he will sign, "would further enshrine the bad law of Roe v. Wade in bad legislation more radical than the 1973 Supreme Court decision itself." According to Wenski, if FOCA "or a version of it were to pass," the "modest restraints and regulations (such as parental notification) on the abortion industry would be abolished."

Wenski writes that FOCA's potential passage "would only further divide our nation and do nothing to address the serious problems that call for a broad consensus of all its citizens to solve," adding that Obama "promised to be a 'uniter' and not a divider" (Wenski, Lakeland Ledger, 12/11).

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