Catholic Bishops in the US call Obamacare regulation an “Unprecedented Attack on Religious Liberty”

In an ”urgent” call to action distributed as a bulletin insert at Catholic churches across the country on Sunday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that a new federal regulation proposed under President Barack Obama’s health-care law “poses an unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom.”

The proposed regulation would require all private health-care plans to cover sterilizations and “all FDA-approved contraceptives”–which include ”emergency” contraceptives such as ulipristal (or “Ella”) that can cause an abortion both before and after an embryo implants in the mother’s womb.

The bulletin insert asked Catholics to visit a page on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (U.S.C.C.B.) from which they could send an email message to the Department of Health and Human Services protesting the proposed regulation.

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/catholic-bishops-obamacare-reg-unprecedented-attack-religious-liberty-even-jesus

Organizations like Catholic Universities and individual private business owners will not be permitted to opt out of paying for insurance that covers these morally objectionably procedures.

Indeed this article notes that a “layperson” as defined by the regulation doesn’t qualify for the Exemption.  Jesus was an non-ordained itinerant preacher; he would not have qualified for the religious exemption.

You can see the NATIONWIDE BULLETIN INSERT here
Conscience Rights Violated by Sweeping HHS Contraceptive Mandate
http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/conscience-protection/upload/hhs-mandate-bulletin-insert.pdf

From this article of August 30, 2009, the President argued that the Administration’s Healthcare plan does not fund Abortion.  Cardinal Justin Regali said it would. President Obama is ‘Fabricating’—Not Cardinal Rigali and the Catholic Bishops—About Abortion Funding in Health Care Plan.  Turns out the Cardinal was right.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/president-obama-fabricating-not-cardinal-rigali-and-catholic-bishops-about-abortion

We’ve mentioned this previously here, here, here, here and here.

It’s too late to formally respond to the proposed HHS regulations.  I may write directly to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (herself a lapsed-Catholic.)  I have written congress via the Catholic Bishops’ site which is in turn a link to the NCHLA the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment.  http://www.nchla.org/actiondisplay.asp?ID=292

The entire article is at the Washington Post’s Guest Voices page.

Posted at 03:21 PM ET, 07/20/2011

Where’s the religious freedom in birth control mandate?

By Sr. Mary Ann Walsh

 I found this in my email this morning under the clearly Orwellian header of  “Health Care”

Report: Organs harvested from euthanized patients

Triangle Business Journal

Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 6:36am EDT

A morbid story which however is important for all of us to know. Doctors are harvesting lungs from patients in Belgium who have been euthanized because the organs are in much better condition than those from someone who has died in an accident, that’s according to FoxNews.com which cited a study in releasing the information. 

Read More at  MyFoxPhilly.com

Eulogy to Karl Marx

by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics

In his eulogy for Karl Marx deceased on March 14, 1883, his friend and fellow revolutionary Friederich Engels wishfully prophesized that Marx’s name “will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.”  Hardly could he have imagined that his friend’s social vision would suffuse common political dynamics in the United States a little over a century later; that the eminent Speaker of the House would play his handmaid and the powerful President his dupe.  The disaster that played out last weekend set the high water mark of Marx’s influence on our great country.  If we don’t see this we won’t understand recent events.  His name wasn’t mentioned and his rhetoric wasn’t explicit.  But his vision was alive: a reckless mendacity in the pursuit of goals; an almost savage disregard for democracy; a savioristic reliance on politics to transform the social order; and a forceful use of naked power as the principle of social change.

We witnessed the demonization of a class of people, the bourgeois in Marx’s scheme, the U.S. middle class, who from last summer have shouted a crescendoing “NO!” to a government health care revolution.  They were called Nazis, bigots, obstacles to progress; they were bullied by thugs, characterized as stupid, and censored by the liberal media.  Their reasons for opposing the revolution didn’t matter.  The mere fact of it placed them on the wrong side in the dialectic of history, so they needed to be opposed.  ‘What our fathers and our fathers’ fathers couldn’t do, we’ve accomplished against all odds.’  The ‘odds,’ of course, were the majority of honest Americans who naively still believed that their voices meant something in the political process.  They weren’t opposed to the end of securing decent health care for all.  They questioned the means that Liberal Democrats were proposing for achieving that end: an enormous extension of federal authority into a most delicate area of social concern, a massive surreptitious expansion of abortion liberties, fears of conscience violations, unjust rationing, the depersonalization of health care, offensive values from Washington D.C. filtering into Main Street America: “we’re just not sure we trust you, Government, with our health care; whatever you touch turns to gold—for you; but it complicates and disorders our lives.”  Over their heads the Democrats shouted: “the people deserve healthcare, and you’re trying to prevent it!”  In the Manifesto Marx writes: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, oppressor and oppressed, in constant opposition to one another.”  Marx’s simplistic ‘class struggle’ paradigm was the operative model for the healthcare debate.  The only reality is political; the only relevant question is who possesses and exercises power.  The proletariat, the marginalized, are the voiceless uninsured, oppressed by intolerant, religious, self-satisfied Americans.  Progressive change is necessary; neutrality in its regard is impossible.  This polarization was nowhere more clear than at the President’s so-called “health care summit” on February 25: ‘side with the Democrats and so with the poor, or with the Republicans against the poor.  Make your choice.  Get on board, or we’re leaving without you.’

No amount of deception was too great.  How many times in the past eight months did Speaker Pelosi, Senator Reid, Secretary Sebelius and President Obama look straight into the camera and proclaim: “The Hyde Amendment forbids federal funding for abortion.  That status won’t change under our bill”?  They knew the statement was false; how couldn’t they, after all, they were the bill’s authors?  But they counted on the credulity of their audience stemming from ignorance as to the bill’s actual content.  The sharpest screw was twisted last weekend with the fraudulent executive order meant to make people believe that Stupak’s pro-life demands had finally been conceded.  Again, smoke and mirrors, but no substance.  Kathleen Parker writes in today’s Washington Post: “The executive order … is utterly useless, and everybody knows it. First, the president can revoke it as quickly as he signs it.  Second, an order cannot confer jurisdiction in the courts or establish any grounds for suing anybody in court… The order is therefore judicially unenforceable.  Finally, an executive order cannot trump or change a federal statute.”  Don’t ever doubt the utility of the Nietzchian will to power operationalized in the Marxist schema.  It gets results.  But it also sows resentment.  Peace doesn’t follow.  People only get mad.  And people presently are very mad.

So what now?  As in the wake of Roe, we must begin a rear guard offensive.  After the President signed the bill into law on Tuesday, fourteen States attorneys general filed suit over the constitutionality of the legislation.  Find out if your State is one of them and support the effort.  Learn the provisions of the new law.  You will be forced to purchase insurance.  But at least one insurance carrier in each State exchange is required not to provide abortion coverage, which means the majority of carriers will.  Do your homework; find that carrier and support it.  Next, when your representatives come home for Spring break, tell them what’s on your mind.  Finally, polish your pointing finger for the November elections.

quoted in full from: http://culture-of-life.org//content/view/628/1/

If you’re not mad you’re not paying attention.

Text of Obama’s Planned Executive Order on Abortion

Here is the official text of the White House announcement and the planned executive order from President Barack Obama aimed at assuring antiabortion Democrats that federal money won’t be used to fund abortion under the health-care overhaul legislation.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

_____________________________________________________________________________

For Immediate Release                           March 21, 2010

STATEMENT FROM COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR DAN PFEIFFER

Today, the President announced that he will be issuing an executive order after the passage of the health insurance reform law that will reaffirm its consistency with longstanding restrictions on the use of federal funds for abortion.

While the legislation as written maintains current law, the executive order provides additional safeguards to ensure that the status quo is upheld and enforced, and that the health care legislation’s restrictions against the public funding of abortions cannot be circumvented.

The President has said from the start that this health insurance reform should not be the forum to upset longstanding precedent.  The health care legislation and this executive order are consistent with this principle.

The President is grateful for the tireless efforts of leaders on both sides of this issue to craft a consensus approach that allows the bill to move forward.

A text of the pending executive order follows:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/03/21/text-of-obamas-planned-executive-order-on-abortion/

Though some folks are certain the Executive Order will not help prevent Federal Dollars from paying for abortions:

William Saunders: Democrats’ EO offer shows Obamacare does fund abortion

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/William-Saunders-Democrats-EO-offer-shows-Obamacare-does-fund-abortion–88766547.html#ixzz0is3LZEUe

The Senate bill’s abortion language is not the House Speaker’s only problem.

By MICHAEL BARONE

Are there enough votes in the House to pass the Senate’s health-care bill? As of today, it’s clear there aren’t. House Democratic leaders have brushed aside White House calls to bring the bill forward by March 18, when President Barack Obama heads to Asia. Nevertheless, analysts close to the Democratic leadership tell me they’re confident the leadership will find some way to squeeze out the 216 votes needed for a majority.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indeed shown mastery at amassing majorities. But it’s hard to see how she’ll do so on this one. The arithmetic as I see it doesn’t add up.

Complete article is at:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703701004575113292688090292.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion

Dems keep pressure on Stupak over healthcare bill and abortion concerns

By Jordy Yager – 03/07/10 12:34 PM ET

Abortion continued to loom Sunday as the thorny issue that could paralyze the momentum of healthcare reform efforts in the home stretch.
Across the Sunday morning shows, lawmakers took sides over whether the final healthcare bill contains language that would allow people receiving government subsidized healthcare to obtain an abortion, and a White House official accused abortion opponent Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) of being “misinformed” about the Senate bill.

But I don’t see where the article clearly explains this “pressure.”

Please everyone here write your congressman – your Representative but also your Senators.
The FRC contact website is good. http://www.frc.org/contact-elected-officials. 
See this post for where we’ve said why http://deliberateengagement.wordpress.com/action-what-you-can-do/
and this post where we show you how http://deliberateengagement.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/write-your-representatives/

The entire The Hill story is at: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/85333-dems-keep-pressure-on-stupak-over-healthcare-bill-and-abortion

One of the comments to the posted story is a great read. I think it gets its own post. To read it before I get it posted see: http://www.nrlc.org/AHC/AbortionPolicyhCRBackgrounder.html

It’s now becoming clear that Barack Obama is willing to put everything on the table in order to be the president who passes health-care reform. Everything, that is, except a ban on federal funding for abortion.

Last September, the president promised that “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.” Yet the legislation most likely to move forward in Congress would be the single greatest expansion of abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

The White House knows how to turn Mr. Obama’s September commitment into legislative action. I met with senior White House officials and told them that only adding a so-called Hyde Amendment to the health-care reform bills would fulfill the president’s promise to protect Americans from subsidizing abortion.

The Hyde Amendment dates back to the 1970s, when congressional leaders discovered that Medicaid was paying for nearly 300,000 abortions a year. This had not been an intended outcome of the Medicaid program, which was created in 1965 with strong bipartisan support. So in 1976 Rep. Henry Hyde introduced an amendment to the Health and Human Services appropriations bill prohibiting taxpayer funds from paying for abortions.

Similar amendments have been added to health-care bills ever since. Without specific language prohibiting the practice, history has shown that the courts or administrative agencies end up directing government dollars to pay for abortions.

I especially like her conclusion:

The bottom line is that the president wants to deploy words that sound soothing like “balance” and “adjust.” Meanwhile, the courts are rendering precedent with stark words like “mandatory.”

When confronted by House Minority Leader John Boehner about abortion funding during the health-care summit last week, the president dropped his head and looked down at the table. How revealing.

See the entire Opinion piece in the March 4th Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575100091815276712.html

Health Care Action Alert

by E. Christian Brugger, Ph.D., Senior Fellow in Ethics

We have a pro-life statesman in Washington.

And he’s a Democrat.

Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak and eleven other pro-life Democrats are threatening (again) to bring down health care because of the abortion mandate embedded in the final bill. Without their votes, the legislation likely will not pass.

Negotiations stemming from last week’s “Health Care Summit” between President Obama and Republican congressional leaders led to no substantial changes in the debate.  Federal abortion funding remains embedded in the Senate bill, which is now the version that proponents intend to pass through the “reconciliation” process (aka “the nuclear option”).

The entire article is at:  http://culture-of-life.org//content/view/625/1/