Free Republic

Despite repeatedly losing its cases over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that it will continue to force religious organizations to distribute contraceptives – including the “week-after pill” – to their employees. As a news release at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty states, the Obama administration has been handed “multiple losses in contraceptive mandate cases at the Supreme Court,” including the Hobby Lobby decision, and cases involving the Little Sisters of the Poor and Wheaton College. Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Obama administration not to...

“It’s beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us. And those of us who believe must trust that his wisdom is greater than our own,” said Obama.... It was hard not to connect this pronouncement with the renewed abortion debates that followed Notre Dame’s decision to grant Obama an honorary doctor of laws degree. In the end, 80-plus bishops publicly criticized this action, arguing that it violated the 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops policy that stated: “Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in...

SOUTH BEND, Indiana (Reuters) - President Barack Obama urged both sides in the abortion debate on Sunday to pursue a "fair-minded" discussion as he sought to quell a firestorm over his invitation to speak at Notre Dame, a premier U.S. Catholic university. Notre Dame's decision to confer an honorary degree on Obama and invite him to be the keynote speaker for the commencement sparked petitions and several days of protests. Some students vowed to boycott the commencement. But the speech itself drew mostly cheers, applause, standing ovations. Critics who said Obama's support for abortion rights violated Catholic Church doctrine had...

SOUTH BEND, Ind.—President Barack Obama confronted the issue of abortion head on Sunday at Notre Dame, acknowledging that differences over the issue are largely irreconcilable but issuing a plea to those on both sides to tone down harsh rhetoric and search for “common ground” he believes is possible. “I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away,” Obama said. “No matter how much we may want to fudge it – indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory – the fact is that at some...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. – President Barack Obama strode head-on Sunday into the stormy abortion debate and told graduates at America's leading Roman Catholic university that both sides must stop demonizing one another. Obama acknowledged that "no matter how much we want to fudge it ... the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable." But he still implored the University of Notre Dame's graduating class and all in the U.S. to stop "reducing those with differing views to caricature. Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It's a way of life that always has been...