On the end of Catholic Hospitals

Ed Morissey at Hot Air tells us how serious the bishops are about not allowing Catholic Hospitals to be forced into performing abortions under FOCA:

[The bishops will] shut them down and take the losses in order to prevent their use as abortion clinics. To do otherwise, the bishops stated, would be to cooperate in the evil of abortions.

What kind of impact would that have? The Catholic Church is one of the nation’s biggest health-care providers. In 2007, they ran 557 hospitals that serviced over 83 million patients. The church also had 417 clinics that saw over seven million patients. If they shut down almost a thousand hospitals and clinics nationwide, the US would not just lose a significant portion of available health care, but the poor and working-class families that received the health care would have fewer options.

Also, the Catholic Church runs this on a non-profit basis, spending vast sums of its money to ensure access for those unable to pay. That’s the kind of model that many on the Left believe should exclusively provide health care — and FOCA would spell the end of the major provider already in that model.

Notice that point about Catholic hospitals being non-profits? And to think that a common criticism of the Catholic pro-life movement during this election was that, somehow, we aren't serious about providing concrete medical care and assistance to the poor. Simply unbelievable.

So how serious are democrats and Obama about FOCA? Serious enough to push the Catholic Church in the US out of the health care industry?

Let's hope drawing these clear lines in the sand will give them pause. We're not blinking first.