After disappearing from the Catholic radar screen, the notorious Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) may be about to make a return.

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

A proposed bill promising major changes in the U.S. abortion landscape has Roman Catholic bishops threatening to close Catholic hospitals if the Democratic Congress and White House make it law.

The Freedom of Choice Act failed to get out of subcommittee in 2004, but its sponsor is poised to refile it now that former Senate co-sponsor Barack Obama occupies the Oval Office.

A spokesman for Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said the legislation “is among the congressman’s priorities. We expect to reintroduce it sooner rather than later.”

FOCA, as the bill is known, would make federal law out of the abortion protections established in 1973 by the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade ruling.

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.

Ilan Kayatsky, Nadler’s spokesman, said he anticipates that the bill’s other original sponsor, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., will introduce FOCA in the U.S. Senate. “We expect it to be more or less the same bill with some minor tweaks,” Kayatsky said.

Boxer’s office declined to comment.

Rep. William Lacy Clay, a Roman Catholic, and Rep. Russ Carnahan — both St. Louis Democrats — were co-sponsors of the legislation. Neither responded to requests for an interview. Bishop Robert Hermann, acting head of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was unavailable for comment.

Check out the link for more. And a grateful wave of the deacon’s stole to The Papist.