Tag Archives: Health and Human Services

News

Obama rejects conscience protections for military chaplains

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

President Obama issued a statement Wednesday rejecting several provisions of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including a conscience protection for military chaplains that he called “ill-advised”.

“Section 533 is an unnecessary and ill-advised provision, as the military already appropriately protects the freedom of conscience of chaplains and service members,” he said in his signing statement.

Obama made clear that his administration would remain unmoved by the NDAA’s conscience provision, stating that the Department of Defense would continue to implement the repeal of the military’s ban on homosexual service members.

“My Administration remains fully committed to continuing the successful implementation of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and to protecting the rights of gay and lesbian service members; Section 533 will not alter that.”

The president said that the Secretary of Defense would ensure that no “discriminatory” actions result from Section 533’s conscience protections.

This is not the first time that Obama has trampled on freedom of conscience and religious liberty.

Here’s an article from Life Site News from back in 2011.

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration has rescinded a federal regulation from 2008 that protected the conscience rights of health care providers opposed to providing abortifacient contraception, such as the Plan-B “morning-after” pill.

The Health and Human Services Department under Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, issued the new “final rule,” which leaves health-care workers of federally funded entities a narrower conscience exemption that only protects them from having to participate in abortions or sterilizations.

The new regulation replaces the earlier one enacted in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration, which broadened the interpretation of existing federal conscience statutes related to abortion to include health professionals opposed to emergency contraception, such as Ella or Plan-B, drugs which pro-life advocates say also act as abortifacients.

Sebelius alleged in the promulgation of the new final rule that the Bush-era conscience regulations “instead led to greater confusion”, citing comments received by HHS. She said her department was changing the rule because it was “unclear and potentially over-broad in scope.”

The HHS Secretary said in her statement that her department did share the concern of those in favor of rescinding the rule that it had the “potential to negatively impact patient access to contraception and certain other medical services” esp. for certain sub-populations, such as “low income patients, minorities, the uninsured, patients in rural areas, Medicaid beneficiaries, or other medically under-served populations.”

The ruling is a victory for Planned Parenthood and other “family planning” groups that have insisted that drugs like Plan-B (taken within 72 hours of sexual intercourse) and Ella (taken within five-days of intercourse) should be defined as “contraception.” Pro-life groups countered that pro-life health providers should be protected from discrimination under federal statutes, because these drugs could prevent a conceived human embryo from implanting in the mother’s womb, thereby aborting it.

[…]“Today’s erosion of conscience protections for medical professionals is a blow both to medicine and the right to practice one’s deeply-held convictions,” said Dr. J. Scott Ries, on behalf of the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA).

Ries said the new HHS final rule disregarded the findings of the previous HHS 2008 final rule which stated that allowing health professionals to practice according to their convictions would negatively impact patient services or create “new barriers.”

“Losing conscientious healthcare professionals and faith-based institutions to discrimination and job loss especially imperils the poor and patients in medically underserved areas,” said Ries. “We are already facing critical shortages of primary care physicians, and the Obama administration’s decision now threatens to make the situation far worse for patients across the country who depend on faith-based health care.”

If religious liberty is a concern, then you can’t be a liberal. They don’t support religious liberty.

News

Department of Justice threatens to seize business from Catholics

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CNS News editor-in-chief Terry Jeffrey writes about it on Townhall.

Excerpt:

The Newland family owns and operates Hercules Industries, a Colorado-based corporation that manufactures heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment. Through their hard work and dedication, and through their willingness to reinvest their own money in building their family business, they have managed to create jobs for 265 people while exerting a positive influence on the communities they serve.

[…]The Newlands sued to protect their free exercise of religion in this regard because Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a regulation, under the Obamacare law, that requires virtually all health care plans to cover — without cost-sharing — sterilizations, artificial contraception and abortifacients.

Under Obamacare, businesses that employ more than 50 people must provide their employees with insurance or pay a penalty, and the required insurance must include the mandated cost-sharing-free coverage for sterilizations, artificial contraception and abortifacients.

At Hercules Industries, the Newlands provide a generous self-insured health-care plan to their employees. It does not cover sterilization, artificial contraception or abortifacients.

[…]In response to the Newlands’ complaint that ordering them to violate the teachings of the Catholic Church in the way they run their business is a violation of their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion, the Obama administration told the federal court that a private business has no protection under the First Amendment’s free exercise clause — especially if the business is incorporated.

[…]This is just as if the Justice Department were to tell a family owned newspaper that it must publish editorials calling for a confiscatory estate tax, basing its coercion of the newspaper on the supposition (which lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom argue DOJ is by analogy making) that as a for-profit secular and incorporated employer, the paper has no First Amendment right to freedom of speech.

I’m a Protestant, and even I could not comply with any regulation that forces me to subsidize behavior that I consider immoral – namely, dispensing drugs that cause unborn human children to die. I would like to go through my life without murdering any innocent people, thank you very much, and it’s not the government’s place to force me to murder people. And that’s one good reason right there to oppose Obamacare, although there are others.

News

Will Obama force Catholics to buy insurance that covers abortions?

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Which religions supported Obama most in 2008?
Which religions supported Obama most in 2008?

From CNS News.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama has not yet decided whether to go forward with a proposed regulation under the health care law he signed last year that would force Catholic individuals and instutions to act against the teachings of the Catholic church.

In August, Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius proposed a regulation–that would take affect next fall–that would require all health care plans to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including abortifacients. The proposed regulation includes a very narrow religious exemption that does not cover individual Catholics, or Catholic universities, hospitals or charitable institutions.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have called the regulation an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty” and have called on American Catholics to contact HHS and demand that the regulation be rescinded.

[…]Because of Obamacare’s mandate that all individuals must buy health insurance, the “preventive services” regulation would mean individual American Catholics would be forced to buy health insurance that pays for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortions–all of which violate Catholic moral teachings.

Many major Catholic institutions and Catholic business owners would be forced to choose between dropping health insurance coverage for their employees and students or violating their religious beliefs.

“Indeed, such nationwide government coercion of religious people and groups to sell, broker, or purchase ‘services’ to which they have a moral or religious objection represents an unprecedented attack on religious liberty,” the bishops said in commentary on the proposed regulation they submitted to HHS.

As an evangelical Protestant, I get so confused when I see many people who label themselves as “Catholic” voting to equate abortion with health care.

Insurance is about sharing costs. Why should people who choose not to have sex outside of marriage (like me) be compelled to pay the bills of people who freely choose to engage in risky, recreational sex? When you subsidize something, you get more of it. So why should pro-lifers be forced subsidize something that we don’t want more of? Why should pro-lifers want to make it less costly for people to engage in behaviors that result in the killing of an innocent child?