Dear CV Friend,
What just happened?
The truth: the assault on religious liberty just got worse.
Moments ago President Obama introduced an accounting gimmick to appease voters over his recent Health and Human Services mandate. The so-called compromise will continue to force virtually all employers, including religious institutions, to pay into insurance policies that cover abortion drugs and other immoral medicines and procedures.
What's the catch?
To protect himself from the national backlash, the President announced a "compromise" that will allow religious institutions to withhold premiums paid to insurance companies for select medicines and procedures they believe are immoral.
But these immoral medicines and drugs will continue to be provided by the same insurance plans for free -- to everyone, including every employee of Catholic institutions!
So President Obama decided to use insurance companies to hide his assault on religious liberty.
Separating the premiums paid to insurance companies does not change what these policies will cover. The very same policies funded by religious institutions will continue to cover contraception, birth control, and abortion drugs for every employee of these organizations. To pretend, by an accounting gimmick, that the premiums paid by the employer will not subsidize these services is simply absurd.
Furthermore, self-funded insurance plans (like many of those used by Catholic institutions) will continue to be forced to provide these immoral medicines.
And owners of businesses who believe abortion drugs are immoral? Sorry. To hell with liberty. Pay up.
All Americans should shudder at what has just transpired.
Despite repeated promises during the healthcare debate in 2009, the President of the United States has created a sham conscience compromise, and ordered all insurance companies to pay for abortion drugs -- and all religious institutions will be forced to pay into these plans.
He thought he could get away with this assault on our freedom. We called him out and forced him to respond. Now we must call his bluff.
This isn't the end.
CV President Brian Burch has been on the phone all morning with members of Congress urging them to immediately introduce legislation that will protect the conscience rights of all Americans.
Catholics don't want an accounting gimmick.
We want freedom.
And we won't rest until we get it.
- Your Friends at CatholicVote.org
And I’ve got a couple of classmates from the Catholic men’s college we attended in the late 1960s who stick to the line, I’m paraphrasing: Its a woman’s health issue. the church’s positon on birth control is wrong. Obama’s change today (Friday) means that the church institutions will not be affected. fortunately a couple of others do get it.