Free Republic

A Catholic politician sued the Obama administration, arguing that as a Catholic he has a right to be able to purchase health insurance that doesn't cover contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and abortifacients. Paul Wieland serves in the Missouri House. He is a member of the Knights of Columbus. He has three daughters, who, because of the actions of the Obama administration, will have access to free contraceptives. “As a parent, it is disturbing,” said Wieland in an older news report. “We value our faith and make a sacrifice to teach our children the faith, to send them to Catholic schools. We...

I see the liberal, secular feminist and the homosexual/transgender ideologies running smack into each other like bulls. The losers in this bloody clash? There will be many, but let’s talk about the most ironic losers: women. Neither ideology respects true femininity and the beauty of womanhood. Both want to empty it of its gift and uniqueness. Both have created a caricature of woman. Both exploit what they find useful about the female body and shun the rest. Both have reduced womanhood to only the parts that serve their agenda. Both the modern, perpetually-contracepting woman and the transgender “woman” are sterile....

An appeals court has ruled against a Catholic order of nuns in their lawsuit against the Obama administration's birth control mandate. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday against the Little Sisters of the Poor, concluding that having to fill out a form requesting that an another party provide insurance for contraceptives does not violate the order's religious liberty. "Although we recognize and respect the sincerity of Plaintiffs' beliefs and arguments, we conclude the accommodation scheme relieves Plaintiffs of their obligations under the Mandate and does not substantially burden their religious exercise under RFRA or infringe upon their First...

Guess which ObamaCare case will be headed to the Supreme Court next? At least, that’s the option open for the Little Sisters of the Poor and their defense team at The Becket Fund for the restoration of a temporary injunction against compliance with the HHS mandate. The 10th Circuit handed the nuns a defeat this morning, vacating the earlier temporary injunction ordered by a lower court: Moments ago, in a departure from the U.S. Supreme Court’s protection of the Little Sisters of the Poorlast year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruled that the Little Sisters...

The federal government today released a new rule to ensure that women will have birth control coverage in their health insurance, even if they work for closely held for-profit companies that have a religious objection to contraception. The rule follows the Supreme Court’s decision last year that Hobby Lobby and other closely held corporations could not be required to provide contraceptive coverage to their female employees, even though that coverage is guaranteed under the Affordable Care Act. “Today’s guidance is a positive development for women denied access to important healthcare in the troubling aftermath of the Hobby Lobby ruling,” said...

The victory was brief. Last year’s Supreme Court victory for Hobby Lobby has little meaning today, because the Obama Administration has just circumvented the law to extend contraceptive benefits to all.And who’s paying for it? Why, you and I, of course, through our tax dollars! By Bryancalabro (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsThe case involving the Green family’s Hobby Lobby stores went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court; and last June, the Court ruled that some private companies can be exempted, on religious grounds, from an Affordable Care Act requirement that employer-sponsored health insurance policies must...

AUCKLAND, NZ, July 3, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Every girl in New Zealand will be put on long-acting reversible contraceptive drugs, delivered through implants or patches, before they become sexually active, if a group of health researchers at New Zealand's Otago University gets its way. "I would imagine, off the top of my head, that it would happen a bit like vaccinations happen," Neil Pickering, a senior bioethics lecturer at the university, told Radio New Zealand report. “It would be a routine thing, and being done through schools would be an obvious way.”Helen Paterson, of the University of Otago's department of women's and...

It is interesting now to look back at the various reactions when the pope issued his encyclical on contraception. I dug up the following, and I think they pretty much speak for themselves. It is hardly necessary to add any comments at all except to say how little things have changed.A leader from an association of Protestant mainline denominations called it “the most important encyclical ever promulgated in the entire history of the papal succession.” He said, “I am glad that this pronouncement is so thoroughly clear-cut and uncompromising.” He was glad that everyone had to be either for...

May 28, 2015 (BreakPoint.org) -- For five years, Dr. Abigail Rine has been teaching a course on gender theory at George Fox University, an evangelical school in the Quaker tradition.At the beginning of the semester, she tells her students that “they are guaranteed to read something they will find disagreeable, probably even offensive.”Writing at FirstThings.com recently, she related how five years ago it was easy to find readings that challenged and even offended the evangelical college students “considering the secular bent of contemporary gender studies.”But today, things are different. “Students now,” she says, “arrive in my class thoroughly versed in the...

She died after 25 days on the pill. She was only 21. As in so many blood clot cases caused by birth control, she was misdiagnosed when she went to the hospital struggling to breathe and experiencing pain in her legs and ribs. She was sent home diagnosed with a bruised sternum. Four days later, she collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. On May 14, three days after arriving at the hospital, she was pronounced dead. According to an article in Cosmopolitan, tests revealed a large blood clot on her lung. Her name was Fallan Kurek, and she worked with...

Isn't it interesting that as the United States of America approaches the 50th anniversary of this nation's most popular recreational drug, the birth control pill, special interest media is ginning up the presses — or in this case, the web sites — with all sorts of ideas for the next 50 years. A sampling of what America's birth control worshippers are saying may give one pause to rethink. For example, on May 3, the Los Angeles Biomedical Research institute (LA BioMed) announced "that it has received $1.5 million in grant funding to study a contraceptive for men that uses a...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 10, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - About one out of four children aborted early in America are killed by the abortion pill rather than a surgical procedure, according to an Associated Press report.The report concerns a Planned Parenthood study published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine touting the improved safety of a drug used in abortions that is now dissolved orally instead of vaginally - the latter being a technique that is more prone to causing severe and sometimes fatal infections.The chemical abortion method consists of first distributing mifepristone, also known as RU-486, which kills the child...

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) is leading a new push to allow women to buy birth control without a prescription, hoping to deliver on one of the biggest promises of his freshman Senate campaign last year.A half-dozen Senate Republicans have signed onto Gardner’s bill, which would require drug companies that sell contraceptives to file an application to sell their products over the counter. “Most other drugs with such a long history of safe and routine use are available for purchase over the counter, and contraception should join them,” Gardner wrote in a statement. He said his bill would benefit women in...

As the calendar slips toward the lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer, there’s a storm cloud hanging over America that will release its thunder in late June. That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court is widely expected to declare a constitutional right to same-sex “marriage.” We are at a moral precipice. America’s Founders could scarcely have imagined a handful of people in black robes becoming so powerful and arrogant that they could defy natural law with the stroke of a pen. The question is: Will they do it? The drive to radically redefine marriage didn’t happen overnight. It’s the rotten fruit...

Carolyn Woo is the first woman to be president of Catholic Relief Services and the second lay person to do so. CRS has been in existence since 1943. During World War II, “the Roman Catholic bishops of the United States established CRS to help war-torn Europe and its refugees recover from this great conflict.” While the history of CRS goes on to say that “even today, 70 years later, our mission continues to focus on the poor overseas, using the gospel of Jesus Christ as our mandate,” something is not ringing quite true. RottenDuring a recent interview, Woo noted that,...

It was a rough week for Catholic groups arguing that the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act protects them from being forced to facilitate the provision of contraception to their employees in violation of the groups’ religious beliefs. As you might recall, religious liberty won big at the Supreme Court last year, when the court held that forcing religious businesses to provide contraception in their healthcare plans violated RFRA. But there was a second line of cases that I’ve been referring to as the “accommodation cases,” in which religious groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, Catholic universities like...

There are a few things that I do not like about being a woman. One of them is being lectured by people like Frank Bruni at The New York Times about how I am oppressed by my Catholic faith. Funny, I never realized it. Bruni’s article, “Catholicism Undervalues Women,” has many of the “standing up to the patriarchy” tropes anyone would expect, with some surprises and glaring factual errors along the way. He begins by wryly mentioning Pope Francis’ statement about equal pay for women wherein, Bruni says, the pope “fashioned himself a feminist.” Bruni laughs at this, assuring his...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Monday put health insurance companies on notice that they must cover all forms of female contraception, including the patch and intrauterine devices, without imposing co-payments or other charges. In the last month, the National Women’s Law Center and the Kaiser Family Foundation issued separate reports that found that insurers often flouted a federal requirement to provide free coverage of birth control for women under President Obama’s health care law.

A Hungarian cardinal set to play a key role in the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the family suggested Thursday that no change will result from the summit, either on Communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics or on broader matters such as contraception.Cardinal Péter Erdő said that talk of revisions on those fronts is the result of “a pressure with no foundation to change Church teaching.” Erdő was the relator — more or less the chairman — of last October’s synod, and will reprise his role this year. It’s an influential post, among other things giving him the chance...

In a must-read column for the Wall Street Journal, Rev. Donald Sensing, a Methodist minister from Tennessee, argues that acceptance of same-sex marriage “will not cause the degeneration of the institution of marriage; it is the result of it.” Understand that Rev. Sensing is not happy with the situation as he sees it. “I believe that this state of affairs is contrary to the will of God,” he writes. But he argues persuasively that the public understanding of marriage was doomed when society accepted the Pill, and thereby severed the link between marriage and procreation. Marriage, he observes, had traditionally...