A Word of Encouragement to Bishops on Hospitals

Would Catholic hospitals close rather than obey proposed new federal rules that would force them, and the medical professionals who practice within them, to perform abortions?

That's the expectation if the badly mis-named Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) is brought forward and passed. There's already an air of expectation among pro-death adherents across the fruited plain that such will come to pass, especially as Mr. Obama's administration has already gutted "conscience rules" that were put into place by the outgoing Bush administration. Tim Townsend, reporting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, discussed the FOCA situation:

The legislation has some Roman Catholic bishops threatening to shutter the country's 624 Catholic hospitals — including 11 in the Archdiocese of St. Louis — rather than comply.

Speaking in Baltimore in November at the bishops' fall meeting, Bishop Thomas Paprocki, a Chicago auxiliary bishop, took up the issue of what to do with Catholic hospitals if FOCA became law. "It would not be sufficient to withdraw our sponsorship or to sell them to someone who would perform abortions," he said. "That would be a morally unacceptable cooperation in evil."

But even within the Catholic community, there is disagreement about the effects FOCA might have on hospitals, with some health care professionals and bishops saying a strategy of ignoring the law, if it passes, would be more effective than closing hospitals.

I would not only encourage Catholic hospitals and medical professionals to ignore the law but go farther. I would encourage them to very publicly disobey the law in an act of civil disobedience that would force a Constitutional showdown on the issue while there is still a 5-4 majority of relative sanity on the Court.

Yeah, yeah, I know that conservatives are loathe to do such things, but there are great issues at risk here. You can justify breaking a law that is immoral at its core, that violates the fundamental rights of individuals enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Besides, closing hospitals will hurt people, patients with real sicknesses and medical needs that deserve quality care. Let the federal government be the bad actor, closing a hospital for non-performance of an immoral action. Despite the watering down of moral standards, the American people are still mostly a life-affirming crowd that will understand the evil of government over-reach and will not stand for it come the 2010 elections.

We are several months, probably, away from this taking place, but it is not too early to consider the option of civil disobedience. This is going to take some faith and some courage, but that's why the bishops get to wear those pointy miters that signify the flames of the Holy Spirit. Not only will most of the Catholic faithful be with you on this, but so will a lot of our Christian brothers and sisters who are not Catholic.