Whenever January rolls around and the roads ice up, I find myself thinking back to the year my son was born.  Of course he was born in January, because we’ve never had all that much sense and didn’t really consider winter driving conditions to the hospital on the particular night that romance was in the air.

Approximately 40 weeks later, we were slip-sliding our way to the hospital, sometimes facing forward, sometimes facing sideways, but generally heading in the right direction.  This was our fourth time to the hospital with this eager little fellow once again claiming that it was time for him to make his arrival, so the car pretty much knew the way.  It fell to me, however, to try to keep the road under us in the meanwhile.

We had been fooled by my son’s antics so many times already, that my wife was absolutely opposed to getting out of bed at 10:30 at night just to be patted on the head and told to go home empty-handed yet again.  As a result, we might have a waited a bit too long that day.  It seems that this time, when the boy cried wolf, he was serious.  I knew we were in trouble, too, when my darling wife stopped critiquing my driving.  Before, it had been “Speed up!” alternated with “Slow down, are you trying to kill us?”  Now, it was just a kind of resigned silence, punctuated with the occasional groan. 

She had accepted the fact that our son would be born on the shoulder of I-435, with only the most incompetent midwife in history to provide assistance.  I commented to her on the biblical aspects of such a delivery, “Away in a Ranger, and all that,” but I won’t besmirch my wife’s name by quoting the responses that were than issued from her lovely mouth, accurate as those quotes might be.

What if I told you that I could now present legislation that would ensure that we’d have had another hour of driving in order to reach the hospital?  What if I told you that this legislation would guarantee that the ER was so crowded that we’d have had to wait even after we made this perilously lengthened journey?  You’d call me a blooming idiot, wouldn’t you? 

This legislation has been promised.

In a 2007 speech before Planned Parenthood, Barack Obama, who will be president next Tuesday, said, “The first thing I’d do, as president, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.  That’s the first thing that I’d do.”

The FOCA would repeal the federal ban on partial-birth abortions and eliminate protections given to those who have moral and religious objections to abortions and sterilizations.

“Now hold it right there,” you may be saying, “I thought this article was about hospital care, not abortion.”  You’re exactly right.  The unintended consequences of the FOCA have an impact far beyond the issue of abortion.  In fact, the medical impact of FOCA has been completely ignored in an effort to assure that people for whom abortion is the be-all and end-all of human existence might be satisfied with their presidential candidate.  Surprisingly enough, the people who are most affected by this impact, low income and rural communities, are the very same communities for whom the government decries the shortcomings of our current healthcare system. Go figure.

What’s the link between FOCA and hospital closings?  The answer is that it isn’t really FOCA in its entirety that causes these horrific consequences.  The biggest problem is with removing the freedom of conscience for medical care providers.  In any other industry, such an attempt by the government to regulate business services would be laughed at … just before being kicked to the curb.  Imagine going in to a kosher deli and telling the owner that he HAD to serve you a sausage hot link, because he was a food provider and it was his job to provide that food without any discrimination based on his own personal beliefs.  Does this sound like a silly example?  Sure … until hot links reach the level of a sacrament in our secular culture.  Then, look out!

That’s exactly what is being done.  Doctors will be told that if their patient wants an abortion, then they must provide one.  Wouldn’t it be cool if we got to make all of our medical decisions like that?  “Doc, I need codeine and whether or not you think it’s a good idea to give it to me…” 

We’re not talking about abortion in an effort to save the life of the mother, either.  With the level of medical care available today, this is very, very rarely the case, and I’ve never heard of an abortion being denied in such extremely rare and dire circumstances.  No, we’re talking about abortion on demand - in the vast majority of cases, a form of retroactive birth control.

How do I know, how can I be so absolutely certain that stripping doctors of their freedom of conscience will close hospital doors?  Easy.  Nine percent of the hospitals in Kansas are Catholic institutions.

It’s even more significant than a mere 9 percent figure may suggest.  There are only three Level I trauma centers in Kansas.  Chalk one off if FOCA becomes reality.  Via Christi is Catholic.  Immediate boost of patients by 17 percent to each of the two remaining Level I trauma centers.  Can they handle the strain?  They’re going to have to.  And you’re going to have to handle the wait resulting from the increased demand.

Less dramatically, but more significantly, Catholic hospitals closing their doors will disproportionately affect rural areas and low-income communities.  When rural Catholic hospitals close as a result of FOCA, there will be 13 counties in Kansas with no hospital whatsoever!  Rep. Lynn Jenkins should be very concerned about that figure, because six of those 13 counties are crowded into the Second Congressional District!  I sure hope the folks in eastern Kansas are never in such desperate need of care that they can’t make it to Johnson County!  Ironically enough, Wichita will also be hit hard.  They only have five general hospitals, three of which are Catholic.  They’ll lose 60 percent of their general hospitals and one of their two Level I trauma centers.  Looks like the only medical service that the lower-income folks in Wichita will be able to receive is an abortion!

Do you think I’m fear mongering?  Well, I wouldn’t put it past me, but in this case I’m not.  A Catholic institution closing its doors rather than being forced to deny church teaching and the consciences of its employees is a matter of record.  Consider the goings-on in Boston a few years back when state law mandated that Catholic Charities provide adoption services to homosexual couples.  Rather than comply with such a state law, Catholic Charities said, “Yeah, well bless you, too!” and got out of the adoption business entirely.  Massachusetts is feeling the pain now because Catholic Charities handled the most difficult placements, older children and those who have significant physical or emotional disabilities.

Believe me when I say that it’s not the fear of losing all that high-profit medical business that keeps Catholic hospitals in business.  Keep in mind that with the Catholic hospital business model, if someone ever sees anything like a profit, you’d better bring in an auditor.  Someone’s going to jail. 

Catholic hospitals are set up, for the most part, in areas in which they will lose money.  They serve low-income and rural areas almost exclusively.  In fact, it has only been recently that Medicare and Medicaid payment requirements were changed and these hospitals were able to break even on about half their patients.  The other half is still hit-or-miss as far as ever seeing any money is concerned. Catholic hospitals would make more money renting out their cafeterias for bingo night than they would ever see as a medical care provider. 

If these hospitals are forced to deny the only thing that keeps them in business – their values and principles – then they will most certainly close their doors.

FOCA is an ill-conceived attempt to placate the abortion-on-demand voting bloc.  There has been no consideration given to the long-term impact this will have on thousands of rural Kansans and lower-income urban Kansans.  Rep. Dennis Moore won’t be concerned about this impact because Johnson County has a hospital on every other block.  The effect on the First Congressional District, though substantial, won’t be disastrous, so Rep. Jerry Moran is free to vote his conscience.  Rep. Todd Tiahrt is probably very concerned because of the damage this will have on the lower-income areas of Wichita.  Lynn Jenkins should be scared to death; District 2 will be hit harder than any other district in the state.

Remember the commercial that used to play – I think it was for some kind of shampoo – in which a model looked into the camera and said, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful"?  

Well, FOCA is kind of like that model.  You don’t have to hate it because it promotes abortion on demand.  There are a whole bunch of other reasons to hate it.  It will reduce the number of hospitals in rural Kansas.  It will drastically reduce the number of trauma centers in Kansas, which is only a problem if you have some particular disdain with hanging out in an emergency room waiting for your number to be called, as if you’re in some giant Burger King with everyone making their own life-endangering special orders … only, it’s the Burger King from hell, so you can’t have it your way.  The hospitals in Wichita will have ER waiting-room stories to rival the most heinous you’ve read about in Los Angeles or New York City, where people die of asthma attacks before they can get in to see a doctor.

Back to the delivery of my son.  Suffice it to say, we made it about 45 minutes prior to my son’s birth, and because of the dry runs we had unwittingly conducted, I even remembered to bring my wife with me when running into the ER admittance, a welcomed departure from a couple of our previous efforts.  Also fortunate was the fact that the ER, although pretty full, wasn’t so crowded as to slow us down much on the way to delivery.  Obviously, this entire scenario took place prior to the Freedom of Choice Act.  I shudder to think of how a similar situation would play out for tens of thousands of Kansans if this extreme piece of ill-considered legislation ever sees the light of day.

Bill Sutton is the President of the Proud Catholic Voters Association of Kansas, an organization dedicated to unifying the Catholic vote to achieve a government more representative of Catholic beliefs and ideals. 

The Week in Review