Time Mag Mocks Church’s FOCA Stand
Time Magazine has called the Freedom of Choice Act a ‘mythical’ bill and then mocks and questions the Catholic Church’s motives for standing up against FOCA with lines like these:
The Catholic Crusade Against a Mythical Abortion Bill…
The U.S. Catholic Church’s crusade against the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) has all the hallmarks of a well-oiled lobbying campaign…
There is only one hitch. Congress isn’t about to pass the Freedom of Choice Act because no such bill has been introduced…
At a time when the United States is gripped by economic uncertainty and faces serious challenges in hot spots around the globe, some American Catholics are finding it both curious and troubling that their church has launched a major campaign against a piece of legislation that doesn’t exist and wouldn’t have much chance of becoming law even if it did…
To many critics, it feels like the legislative equivalent of the the Dog That Didn’t Bark…
A chain e-mail of unknown origin soon began making its way into Catholic inboxes, warning of an imminent threat to the anti-abortion cause…
Priests started preaching against the legislation and churches began circulating petitions to oppose its passage.
In the midst of all this activity, the fact that there was no Freedom of Choice Act before the 111th Congress went largely unnoticed and unmentioned…
…even under Democratic control of Congress, the bill was not only never voted on but never made it out of committee…
Even if FOCA is reintroduced in the current Congress, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has indicated she has no intention of bringing it up for a vote. And even if she did, there are not enough votes in Congress to pass the bill…
So after all this mocking of the Church’s anti-FOCA efforts, Time Magazine finally drops a relevant piece of information all the way down in the tenth paragraph of the story (that’s 671 words in for those keeping score at home) which maybe makes the Church’s actions seem pretty appropriate:
In some respects, President Obama only has himself to blame for the current controversy. As a presidential candidate, the then-Senator himself pointed a spotlight on the legislation he co-sponsored when he told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in 2007 that “the first thing I’d do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.”
Oh. Well that explains things a little, doesn’t it. Not for Time Magazine but for any rational person without an axe to grind. But you see, Time Magazine shows that they don’t really believe a word that comes out of Obama’s mouth and that’s why a promise from him is buried while the majority of the story questions the motives of those who actually take Obama at his word.
After immediately changing the Mexico City policy, signing the largest spread-the-wealth scheme ever, and appeasing our enemies I think it’s just about time for America to accept that yes, Obama really did mean what he said.