Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in the United States. According to their Web site, the Freedom of Choice Act is both relevant and important. Their Web site states, “Planned Parenthood will redouble its efforts to urge passage of FOCA in order to protect women’s health and secure the right to choose for future generations.”

As can be readily found on YouTube videos, while on his campaign trial, President Obama promised Planned Parenthood that one of his first acts would be the signing into law of the Freedom of Choice Act. While the economy may currently be overshadowing FOCA, this is an issue we cannot afford to overlook.

With regard to women’s health, Planned Parenthood’s Web site states, “[FOCA] is a step in the right direction if we want to protect women’s health and safety.” With unrestricted abortion throughout the country, how would FOCA be beneficial to women’s health when it would allow 12-year-old girls, whose schools are not allowed to dispense Tylenol without parental permission, to secretly obtain abortions?

Women are indeed responsible for the choices they make, but what about the rights of the child they carry in their womb? With over 50 million babies killed since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973, isn’t this atrocity the greatest form of age discrimination and the most abject genocide in which our country has yet participated? The massive and continuous murder of millions of children is hardly irrelevant.

Jennifer Graehler

nursing sophomore