First, they came for the Catholics
President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next?
This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans -- even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches.
NARAL, NOW, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation all cheered the administration's abuse of the Obamacare law to ram abortion down pro-life medical professionals' throats. Femme dinosaur Eleanor Smeal gloated over the news that the administration had rejected church officials' pleas for compromises: "At last," she exulted, the left's goal of "no-cost birth control" for all had been achieved.
As always, tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. "Choice" is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.
Like the rising number of states who have revolted against the individual health care mandate at the ballot box and in the courts, targeted Catholics have risen up against the Obamacare regime. Arlington (Va.) Bishop Paul Loverde didn't mince words, calling the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services order "a direct attack against religious liberty. This ill-considered policy comprises a truly radical break with the liberties that have underpinned our nation since its founding." Several bishops vowed publicly to fight the mandate.
Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Mich., asserted plainly: "We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law."
It's not just rabid right-wing politicos defying the Obama machine. Pro-life Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania denounced the "wrong decision." Left-leaning Bishop Robert Lynch threatened "civil disobedience" in St. Petersburg, Fla., over the power grab. Lefty Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that Obama "botched" the controversy and "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus" by refusing to "balance the competing liberty interests here."
White House press secretary Jay Carney blithely denied on Tuesday that "there are any constitutional rights issues" involved in the brewing battle. Yet, the Shut Up and Hand Out Abortion Pills order undermines a unanimous Supreme Court ruling issued just last week upholding a religious employer's right to determine whom to hire and fire. And two private colleges have filed federal suits against the government to overturn the unconstitutional abortion coverage decree.
Hannah Smith, senior counsel at the nonprofit law firm The Becket Fund, which is representing the schools, boiled it down for Bloomberg News: "This is not really about access to contraception. The mandate is about forcing these religious groups to pay for it against their beliefs."
How did we get here? The first salvo came in December 2010, when the American Civil Liberties Union pushed HHS and its Planned Parenthood-championing secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn.
The ACLU called for a litigious fishing expedition against Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide "emergency" contraception and abortions to women. In their sights: Devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church's ethical and religious directives for health care.
The ACLU and the feminists have joined with Obama to threaten and sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities. The agenda is not increased "access" to health care services. The ultimate goal is to shut down health care providers -- Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers -- whose religious views cannot be tolerated by secular zealots and radical social engineers.
Is it any surprise their counterparts in the "Occupy" movement have moved from protesting "Wall Street" to harassing pro-life marchers in Washington, D.C., and hurling condoms at Catholic school girls in Rhode Island? Birds of a lawless, bigoted feather bully together.
3 comments:
A chilling fact is that if (likely when) the HHS order goes to the Supreme Court, there's no certainty that the court will strike it down. People point to the recent Hosanna-Tabor case as reassurance that it will, but Hosanna-Tabor is a substantially different issue. There it was a question of whether a church was free to choose its ministers free of general government employment regulations. In the current case it's a question of whether the Church, as an employer, must do what practically everybody else is being forced to do in the insurance department, especially when the people it insures are laity and even non-Catholic in jobs not directly related to doctrinal matters.
The Church may see the jobs of this laity as part of its mission in the world, but to everybody else, it looks indistinguishable from the services provided by similar secular agencies. A hospital is a hospital is a hospital, for instance, and if the Church chooses of its own free will to run a hospital, it must play by the same rules as other hospitals. What if the Church declared, for example, declared that government-ordered desegregation violated the ancient doctrines of the faith and asserted a First Amendment right to run a white-only hospital or school?
On its face, this is a neutral policy that is squarely within the narrow religious exceptions of the Obamacare statute, so in that regard the Catholic Church isn't being singled out.
For those who want to look more deeply into the issue, the following three cases are among the most important:
United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252 (1982): An Amish employer who objects on religious grounds both to paying Social Security taxes and receiving Social Security benefits has no First Amendment right to an exemption from paying Social Security taxes. (This is the one closest to the current issue, and the scariest.)
Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990): "Sacramental" use of hallucinogenic peyote in a Native American religious ritual prohibited because it violates drug laws: "the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a "valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes)."
Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418 (2006): "Sacramental" use of hallucinogenic hoasca in a Native American religious ritual is permitted because the government hasn't shown a compelling interest in banning its use in that context.
In light of these cases, I am not particularly hopeful that the Court will strike down the order.
Malkin is on the money here. In borrowing from Rev. Niemoller's famous verse, he is coming first for the Catholics. Credit this, he does think big. But we are only his first target, as we stand, through Church teaching, against so much of what he wants to do. If he is able to override and subdue us, he will make his way through the rest in relatively short order.
The Church condemns socialism, and O is a socialist. The Church condemns abortion, and O is pro-abortion. The Church teaches the sanctity of all human life, and O prescribes death panels.
As I said in a note on facebook this morning, if he gets away with the HHS scandal, it is a very short walk to declaring a maximum life span of 75 years, and the requirement for "termination".
Thank you, but my lifespan is in God's hands.
Anonymous, I read a portion of an article yesterday arguing that the bishops are actually letting an equally problematic situation go by not pointing out the Catholicism is against governments acting in the way our government is acting toward employers other than Catholic employers. I cannot remember where I read it, but it was an interesting take on this situation. I'm going to keep looking for it...
Marc
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