It’s more than just a threat to the unborn, as Melinda Henneberger suggests in this piece from Slate:

Though it’s often referred to as a mere codification of Roe, FOCA, as currently drafted, actually goes well beyond that: According to the Senate sponsor of the bill, Barbara Boxer, in a statement on her Web site, FOCA would nullify all existing laws and regulations that limit abortion in any way, up to the time of fetal viability. Laws requiring parental notification and informed consent would be tossed out. While there is strenuous debate among legal experts on the matter, many believe the act would invalidate the freedom-of-conscience laws on the books in 46 states. These are the laws that allow Catholic hospitals and health providers that receive public funds through Medicaid and Medicare to opt out of performing abortions. Without public funds, these health centers couldn’t stay open; if forced to do abortions, they would sooner close their doors. Even the prospect of selling the institutions to other providers wouldn’t be an option, the bishops have said, because that would constitute “material cooperation with an intrinsic evil.”

The bishops are not bluffing when they say they’d turn out the lights rather than comply. Nor is Auxiliary Bishop Robert Hermann of St. Louis exaggerating, I don’t think, in vowing that “any one of us would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow—to die tomorrow—to bring about the end of abortion.”

Whatever your view on the legality and morality of abortion, there is another important question to be considered here: Could we even begin to reform our already overburdened health care system without these Catholic institutions? I don’t see how.

People on both sides of the abortion argument have told me that despite a clear pro-choice majority in Congress, it’s not clear the Democrats have the votes to pass this particular bill. It hasn’t been put forward in a serious way—with any real chance of passing—in 15 years, and many members have never cast a vote on it. Some of the newly elected Democrats are pro-life—backed by their party for seats that would otherwise have gone to pro-life Republicans—and others are in the center on the abortion issue, meaning that they favor keeping it legal but with some limits. There are also serious questions about whether FOCA as currently drafted exceeds congressional authority. But when Obama was campaigning on FOCA, he didn’t say anything about wanting to change it.

You’ll want to check out the rest. And, as a chaser, drop over to CNS, where they are reporting similar sentiments — but making clear the bill’s chance of passage right now is slim:

Although there was no effort in the 110th Congress to move the bill along, pro-life organizations have since the summer been sounding the alarm about what would happen to current restrictions on abortion if a Democrat was elected president.

They also voice concerns for possible administrative actions under Democratic President-elect Barack Obama, such as reversing the ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research; and repealing the Hyde amendment, which bars federal funding of abortions, and the Mexico City policy, which prohibits foreign aid money from going to family planning programs that promote and offer abortion.

But stopping FOCA has become the rallying cry for the American Life League, the National Right to Life Committee and Priests for Life, among other pro-life groups. It was the central focus of a statement about the government transition issued Nov. 12 on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops by its president, Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, during the bishops’ general fall meeting.

A legal analysis of the most recent version of FOCA by the general counsel’s staff of the USCCB warned that it would wipe out many existing state laws and impede states’ ability to regulate abortion.

The analysis cited as examples laws that could be overturned if FOCA became law such as: parental notification requirements; abortion clinic regulations; bars to government funding of abortion; prohibitions on procedures such as partial-birth abortion; and laws protecting the right of medical personnel and institutions to decline to participate in abortions.

In statements by pro-life leaders, much of the concern about FOCA refers to President-elect Barack Obama’s July 2007 answer to a question during an address to a Planned Parenthood group that signing the bill would be “the first thing I’d do as president.”

But that presupposes FOCA gets out of Congress.

Spokesmen for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and the bill’s chief sponsor, Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, all declined to discuss the prospects of any specific bill in a legislative session that doesn’t start until January.

All pending bills expire at the end of each two-year congressional session, so FOCA would have to be reintroduced.

Erica Chabot, press secretary to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said she can’t recall Leahy “ever mentioning this piece of legislation.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t suddenly move up on the committee’s priority list, she said.

However, “if there were overwhelming support for a bill, chances are I would have heard something about it,” Chabot told Catholic News Service.

Staffers for those Democratic leaders and staffers for other members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans — all emphasized that the priorities of the 111th Congress will be the economy and the Iraq War. Speaking on background, several said passing FOCA is not a priority for members of Congress.

Kristin Day, executive director of Democrats for Life, called FOCA a radical bill, but while it’s worthwhile to highlight its problems, “I don’t think it’s likely to pass anytime soon.”