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Posted on 11/29/2011 1:31:48 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
In August, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that health insurance plans, as of January 1, 2013, will be required to cover contraception, including FDA-approved emergency contraception. “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need,” she said. The Catholic Church has been pushing the White House to allow Catholic hospitals to opt out of providing contraception that it considers the termination of a life, and many in the abortion rights community are worried that the president will grant that exemption. Additionally, many Democrats invested in President Obama’s re-election are worried that if he grants that exemption, he will alienate liberal women voters they will need come November.
“There’s a high level of concern,” a prominent Democrat with ties to the White House told ABC News...
[snip]
"The real concern is that there’s even a discussion about this!”
Earlier this month, President Obama met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has been lobbying hard for an exemption, having called the requirement “an unprecedented attack on religious liberty.”
[snip]
A bulletin the Bishops sent out criticizes the religious exemption in the rule as “so extremely narrow…it protects almost no one. It covers only a ‘religious employer’ that has the ‘inculcation of religious values’ as its purpose, primarily employs and serves persons who share its religious tenets, and is a church organization under two narrow provisions of the tax code.” Catholic colleges, universities, hospitals, and charitable organizations will not qualify, the Bishops say.
Sister Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, told ABC News that her organization’s biggest concern is with the narrowing of the definition of “religious employer.”
[snip] -
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
That is to say, it's about contraception too, but the Obama Administration's tactic is to package them together to make the sale, and then count on non-Catholic Christian support for "contraception" to split and wreck any opposition. It's a truly ham-handed move for coast-to-coast coercion on abortion funding.
I'll repeat that: COAT TO COAST COERCION ON ABORTION FUNDING, starting with "emergency contraception" (a.k.a. post-coital contraception, a.k.a. abortion by drugs) and then moving right onto the roadkill-babies superhighway.
What do we do? I mean not hand-wringing and oh-woe-ing, but what do we :::DO:::?
Anybody?
Maybe they should just shut their hospitals.
Then again, that is the eventual goal of Obamacare.
Please ping this very widely.
25% of all hospital beds in America are in a building with the word “Saint” on the door. You want a healthcare crisis? We’ll give you one.
Its not enough to these liberal ghouls that secular facilities provide these services. People would simply go where the services are provided.
No, they have to try to force everyone, regardless of moral objection, to participate in their immorality.
This has nothing to do with service and everything to do with control. Liberals are anti-freedom.
Forgive me for asking a slightly off-topic — but related — question. Is it true that some medical schools force medical students to attend an abortion procedure in order to graduate, with no conscience exemption allowed?
Thanks to Justice Souter eminent domain laws can change that overnight with the stroke of a pen.
If some do, it’s certainly less than it used to be. I had this discussion with a medical student not long ago who objected to participation in an abortion on religious grounds. He was granted the exemption. I immediately told him that it would be justified on the basis of “respecting his diversity”. He broke out laughing and told me that was the first thing they told him.
If those hospitals all went on strike over this, they’d probably try to nationalize them.
I wouldn’t doubt it.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
What they hell do they have to make such a ruckus?
The have to FORCE them to do this?
What evil pieces of obama these people are.
Very good. Thank you. This question has been troubling me for some days now. I could think of no way to get an answer to it without asking here.
No religious exemptions? Bah, humbug.
Well, I guess if there aren’t enough hospitals after the Catholic hospitals close,
the government will just have to fill that void.
Not knocking your sentiment, but this is exactly what they plan to do with all facets of our lives until they achieve the communist goal of not allowing the people to get anything unless it comes from “the party”.
I can give you a couple of things to consider.
First, there are good orthodox organizations waging the battle against government intrusion into matters of conscience. Consider joining the Catholic Medical Association to help support that cause. There are different categories of membership including "Friends" which would entitle non-physicians to the quarterly journal on medical ethics entitled "The Linacre Quarterly". You would also be able to attend the annual national meeting at discounted rates and receive their monthly email updates. Go to cathmed.org for further details. Contact me if you need further info.
Also, there is an interesting movement afoot to establish genuinely Catholic health care systems including Catholic health insurances to function totally outside the Medicare/Medicaid government systems. If they are not receiving government dollars, they would not be subject to the government regulations that go along with that funding stream.
Just a couple of things to think about.
Its so easy to see that this is how it was in Nazi Germany. You impose a rule that everyone must participate in certain unconscionable acts, you coerce people to commit these acts, and then after a person gives in to the coercion once, he encourages others to join him because that suages his conscience (”everyone’s doing it”).
It’s peer pressure 101 - with a little help from the gestapo...
Obama probably figures that the archbishop is talking a good game now but will fold when push comes to shove. The bishops may disagree over the abortion issue but on so many other issues they find the Democratic Party more congenial--illegal aliens, capital punishment, "social justice" issues, etc. He can always threaten to sic the IRS on the church.
It’s ironic as the origins of hospitals are Christian-based.
BTTT
The more you do it, the easier it gets. Just as the habitual practice of the virtues facilitate doing good, so the repetitive practices of the vices are to evil.
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