We are facing the most serious threat to pro-life policies ever the "Freedom of Choice Act", or FOCA. This bill would create a right to abortion the government Could not limit and bring about a national abortion policy far worse than the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. For the first time, abortion would become an entitlement the government must fund and promote. Citizens would lose the freedom they now have to enact even modest regulation of the abortion industry. FOCA would:

• Eliminate regulations that protect women from unsafe clinics and unscrupulous abortionists.
  
• Force American taxpayers to fund abortions.
  
• Force every state to allow partial-birth abortions - its sponsors have said a primary purpose of the bill is to ensure that killing partially born children will again be permitted nationwide.
  
• Run roughshod over the conscience rights of physicians, nurses and hospitals that oppose abortion on religious, moral or ethical grounds.
  
• Strip parents of their right and responsibility to be involved in their minor daughter's abortion decision

Simply put, if FOCA becomes law, it will put at risk all the widely-supported laws that for 35 years have promoted women's health, ensured informed consent, protected minors, ensured parental involvement, safe- guarded rights of conscience, and respected the desire of most citizens not to support abortion with their tax dollars.

FOCA also explicitly encourages challenges in court against any law or regulation that protects unborn children and their mothers and families in the abortion context, promising a virtual cottage industry of lawsuits.

And FOCA'S tentacles would reach beyond federal policies to every state and local law or regulation having to do with abortion.

FOCA is without doubt the most radical abortion legislation ever considered in the United States.

Abortion supporters have been trying to pass FOCA since 1989 - and now we have a Congress more disposed than any in recent years to pass the bill, and a new President who has said he will sign the measure into law.