Free Republic

Monday’s ruling in the case of Sebelius vs. Hobby Lobby is an important victory for religious liberty for people of all faiths, regardless of what secularists will argue in their criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision. Liberals have tried to obfuscate the real issue in the case by insisting that it was about the merits of employer-mandated healthcare, the propriety of contraception, or the right of a woman to have an abortion. In reality, Hobby Lobby already provided health care for its employees. Additionally, the company’s insurance covers 16 of the 20 contraceptives required under the HHS mandate.

In a victory for religious freedom, the Supreme Court ruled today 5-4 in favor of Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. in the case Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (formerly named Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby). The case was the strongest legal challenge to Obamacare since 2012. Justice Alito authored the majority opinion, and Justice Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion.

Held: As applied to closely held corporations, the HHS regulations imposing the contraceptive mandate violate RFRA. Pp. 16–49.

Remember Sandra Fluke? She’s the professional college student who became famous when a prominent radio host said something rude about her. Now she’s parlaying that “success” into highly effective political campaigns like this: Sandra Fluke @SandraFluke Any day now, #SupremeCourt decides whether corporations can deny women access to contraception. http://dccc.org/fluke 11:00 AM - 27 Jun 2014 44 Retweets 15 favorites Did you catch that? Corporations want to “deny women access to contraception.” By, um, expecting them to pay for it themselves. Here’s the text at the link: TELL THE SUPREME COURT: Protect women’s health care rights! Any day now, the...

The Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby on June 26, and the closer we get to that date the more frantic liberals become. Their fear of a decision in favor of the arts and crafts chain, whose owners have challenged the constitutionality of Obamacare’s contraception mandate on the grounds that it violates their religious liberty, has reached such a pitch that they are making claims that transcend the merely portentous. Their warnings concerning the consequences of a high court win for the Green family, the company’s owners, have now become downright apocalyptic....

Washington, D.C., June 5, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Members and supporters of nearly 60 pro-life groups will be taking to social media for three days beginning June 5 to inform women about the deadly dangers of the pill and similar hormonal contraceptives. The campaign, which asks pro-life users of Twitter and Facebook to post facts and statistics about the risks of chemical birth control alongside the hashtag #ThePillKills, was organized by American Life League (ALL). "The mountain of evidence that these drugs are killers cannot just be swept under the rug," said Judie Brown, president of ALL. "We need to...

A Gallup poll released May 30 showing large majorities of Americans now agree that homosexual relations, contraception, divorce, and fornication are "morally acceptable” highlights the need for strong preaching on moral issues, says the president of Human Life International. “The acceptability of these evils is a direct result of people not being engaged in public debate against those trying to force us to accept these issues,” Father Shenan Boquet told LifeSiteNews. “That’s why it’s so important for faith leaders to speak out and find new ways to help the public understand moral teachings on controversial issues.” Father Shenan Boquet, president...

Based on the findings of a recent Gallup poll released on May 30, Americans are becoming more accepting of a number of controversial issues. At the top of Gallup’s list of 19 issues was contraception, of which 90 percent of Americans approve, followed by divorce at 69 percent and premarital sex at 66 percent. Others making the top ten were embryonic stem cell research (65%), childbirth outside of marriage (58%), same-sex unions (58%), euthanasia (52%) and abortion (42%). These numbers shouldn’t surprise us; after all Americans have been steadily rejecting a Judeo-Christian morality in favor of secular relativism for decades....

A majority of Americans support having businesses be compelled to provide contraceptive services as part of a healthcare plan, argues the findings of a recently released poll. Conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, the poll found that of about 1,100 respondents, 61 percent, felt that "publicly-held corporations" should provide contraception as part of their free healthcare plans. 57 percent of respondents felt that "privately-owned corporations" should be compelled to do the same, while only a slight majority, 51 percent, believed small businesses should be required to do so. "With the exception of churches and other places of worship, most...

Because of these substances, Lance ArmstrongÂ’s cycling victories were taken from him and he was disqualified from further competition; Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire were stripped of their baseball records; numerous congressional hearings were held to assign blame regarding their use. We do our best to protect athletes from these dangerous substances while, at the same time, encouraging women to put them in their bodies.What are these substances? Steroids.Oral contraceptives (commonly known as birth control pills) are steroidal hormones. These drugs manipulate hormones to prevent conception, just as performance-enhancing steroids manipulate hormones to enhance physical size, strength, speed and...

In a recent interview with the Telegraph newspaper in the UK, Melinda Gates talked about why she decided to dissent from the teaching of the Catholic Church, but still seems to believe that she is a Catholic in good standing. She said: "I’ve traveled so much all over the world. India, Bangladesh; so many counties in Africa. And I would come home and the stories would ring in my head of the women I talked to on the ground in those counties. I go out to the rural areas. I go out to slums and townships, and I would be...

Law professors John Eastman of Chapman University and Martin Lederman of Georgetown debated the religious implications of ObamaCare’s contraception mandate during a panel discussion at a recent Federalist Society conference. With the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (or RFRA), Congress was “trying to restore a 200-year-old understanding of what the free exercise clause did” for religious conscience. He said, “The First Amendment was not there to protect religions that could only get their accommodations through the majoritarian process.” With religion, “You can challenge the sincerity of religious beliefs but cannot challenge the merits of it” and people “have...

Cardinal Carlo Caffarra of Bologna has long been a vocal supporter of Humanae Vitae’s teaching on the morally appropriate means of family planning. So it was noteworthy that Cardinal Caffarra recently conceded that, while Humanae Vitae’s conclusions were true, its presentation of those truths left something to be desired. As the cardinal put it, “No one today would dispute that, at the time it was published, Humanae Vitae rested on the foundations of a fragile anthropology, and that there was a certain ‘biologism’ in its argumentation.” Which put me in mind of a document I discovered in 1997 in a...

An email from a friend: >>Worry less about Francis on economics, but sweat the upcoming Synod on the Family instead. To paraphrase George Gilder, economic growth can get switched back on in an instant. All we need to do is set in place the right policies.<< >>But the family? Don’t mess with that. Damage to the family would be permanent. You couldn’t repair that with lower tax rates. The upcoming Synod on the Family looks to be Humanae Vitae all over again. The 1968 crowd is getting ready to make their final push before they expire.<< I wish he didn’t,...

Some common contraceptives can kill embryos, not just keep them from forming.This is not an article about the morality of contraception. This is an article about a very specific scientific question: What happens to embryos formed while the mother is using modern methods of contraception? This information is of importance to some women choosing contraception. And, unlike 20 years ago, today’s science has much to say about the conditions that embryos face when they are formed in women using contraception. All methods of contraception can fail to prevent a recognized pregnancy. Statistics on how often a method permits a recognized...

Some righties are laughing about this on Twitter (Democrats against … personhood?), and granted, it’s a transparently desperate shiny-object attempt to change the subject from O-Care and the economy. But strategically it’s not half-bad, a decent play from a weak hand. They already owe not one but two of their swing-state Senate seats, in Missouri and Indiana, to Republican gaffes involving conception and rape. Go figure that they’d turn to conception again to try to minimize what looks like heavy losses in the Senate. The issue isn’t being discussed at all by Washington prognosticators these days. But you can bet...

Moral Issues Making moral choices in our modern world can be confusing and difficult. With so many temptations and influences pulling us in all directions, and the pressures of life driving us toward the seemingly “easy” path, it is comforting to know that Jesus Christ, through His Church, has blessed us with clear moral framework to guide us toward a happy, fulfilling life.It makes perfect sense that our Creator, who made us and designed us to work in a certain way, would know what’s best for us. Fortunately, He gifted the Church with His advice on how to live...

In a free market, no one would ever purchase insurance coverage for contraceptives, any more than they would use health insurance to pay for seatbelts or airbags in automobiles. Because of their low cost almost everybody can afford contraceptives and if price is a deterrent they are available for free from local public health authorities or from such private organizations as Planned Parenthood. Further, how did anyone ever get the idea that people should give up their First Amendment rights when they incorporate? This issue goes far beyond the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases now before the Supreme Court....

ATLANTA, GA, March 28, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A federal judge has blocked the Obama administration from enforcing its controversial contraception mandate against Roman Catholic-affiliated organizations in the Archdiocese of Atlanta and the Diocese of Savannah. U.S. District Judge William Duffey ruled Wednesday that the federal government cannot force Catholic schools, hospitals or charities to cover sterilizations, contraceptives or abortion-causing drugs in their health plans, as Obamacare requires of all employers, because to do so would violate their religious freedoms. The Catholic Church teaches that artificial contraception of any kind is gravely sinful.

Margaret Sanger, a founder of Planned Parenthood, wrote in her autobiography that an abortion at any stage is the taking of a human life. “To each group we explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life," wrote Sanger. Planned Parenthood, which is now the leading abortion provider in America, will this week give House Minority Nancy Pelosi, its Margaret Sanger Award. Planned Parenthood says Pelosi has earned the honor through her “leadership, excellence, and outstanding contributions to the reproductive health and rights movement over the course of...