All Things Catholic by John L. Allen, Jr.
	Friday, November 14, 2008 - Vol. 8, No. 8

From the outside, it's tempting to conclude that a hard-line position on abortion prevailed among the U.S. bishops during their Nov. 10-13 fall meeting in Baltimore. That seems to be the impression people got from news reports; one prominent American Jewish leader called me on Wednesday, for example, to ask why the bishops were the first major group in the country to fire a "shot across the bow" of the incoming Obama administration.

To be sure, that reaction has a basis in reality. The bishops were remarkably compact in their determination that there will be no "truce," as Bishop Daniel Conlon of Steubenville, Ohio, put it, in their defense of unborn life. The bishops seem especially galvanized in opposition to the Freedom of Choice Act, or FOCA, which would bar restrictions on abortion at state and federal levels such as parental notification laws or limits on partial birth abortion, and which, according to worst-case readings, could eventually put Catholic hospitals in the position of either providing abortions or closing their doors.