Posted on 01/04/2014 9:33:46 AM PST by afraidfortherepublic
Their objections extended to medications derived from blood products, as well as to blood transfusions.
Obama vs. the Little Sisters
NRO January 7, 2014
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/367712/print
By the bizarre logic of the White House, the nuns are part of the “war on women.”
By Rich Lowry
It takes some doing to get embroiled in a court fight with nuns who provide hospice care for the indigent. Amazingly, the Obama administration has managed it.
Its legal battle with the Little Sisters of the Poor is the logical consequence of Obamacare’s conscience-trampling contraception mandate. The requirement went into effect January 1, but Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a New Year’s Eve injunction against enforcing it on the Little Sisters.
They are Catholic nuns who follow the doctrinal teachings of the church and therefore oppose contraceptive and abortive drugs and sterilization, all of which Obamacare mandates that employers cover in their insurance plans.
Given the ongoing delays, waivers, and exemptions associated with the law, it would seem natural simply to let the Little Sisters go about their business of pouring out their hearts for the sick and dying.
But this is a fight the administration won’t walk away from. For this White House, it is a matter of principle. And the principle is that the state trumps the convictions of people with deep-held religious beliefs.
When the contraception mandate first caused an uproar, the administration contrived a so-called accommodation for religiously oriented groups (actual churches have always been exempt). But whoever crafted it had a sick sense of humor. The very same document by which a group registers its moral objection to contraceptives and abortifacients also authorizes the insurer to cover them for the group’s employees. What the accommodation gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.
The Little Sisters refuse to sign such a document. They happen to be in an unusual situation because they get their insurance from another religiously affiliated organization opposed to contraceptives and abortifacients, so it may be that these drugs don’t get covered no matter what. But the Little Sisters can’t be sure of this — the regulations are complicated and subject to change.
Regardless, they don’t want to sign. They want no part in authorizing coverage of contraceptive or abortive drugs. Enthusiasts for the mandate scoff. What the nuns are objecting to, they insist, is just a piece of paper.
Just a piece of paper? So is a mortgage. So is a wedding certificate. So is a will. How would the board of directors of NARAL react if the government forced them to sign a “piece of paper” tacitly condemning contraception or abortion? Would they shrug it off as a mere formality?
The Little Sisters deserve deference. Their religious sensibility is different from — and, one hazards to say, more finely tuned than — that of the mandarins of President Barack Obama’s administrative state. In a dispute over what their conscience tells them to do or not to do, the Little Sisters are better positioned to know than anyone else.
Besides, who is harmed if the Little Sisters don’t provide contraception coverage? They are a voluntary organization. They aren’t imposing their views on anyone. Who, for that matter, is harmed if a secular organization run by people with moral objections to contraceptives and abortifacients refuses to cover them? Employees are still free to go out on their own and get contraceptives, which are widely available. If this sounds like an outlandish imposition, it is what people managed to do throughout American history all the way up to last week.
The contraception mandate has always had a strong ideological impetus. Opponents of the mandate “want to roll back the last 50 years in progress women have made in comprehensive health care in America,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius notoriously declared in 2011. “We’ve come a long way in women’s health over the last few decades, but we are in a war.” By this bizarre way of thinking, a small congregation of nuns that cares for the most vulnerable is somehow complicit in a war on women’s health.
Instead of respecting the moral views of the Little Sisters, the administration hopes to grind them under foot by force of law. For shame.
Excellent point-—this is O’s “war on women.”{
“I Am A Little Sister Of The Poor”
Burt Prelutsky . com ^ | 01/08/2014 | Burt Prelutsky
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3109613/posts
IN ONE OF THE FEW HOLLYWOOD EPICS that wasn’t entirely wretched, there was a stirring moment in “Spartacus” when the Roman general stands before the slaves huddled on the ground and demands that Spartacus, the leader of the revolt, stand and identify himself. As Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) begins to get up in order that his fellow prisoners not be tortured on his behalf, the others rise, each of them insisting “I am Spartacus.”
I think that when Obama and his thugs demand that an order of nuns or anyone else who holds sincere religious beliefs caves to the power of the state, it behooves us to stand and declare, whatever our religion or gender, that we are all Sisters of the Poor.
Judas betrayed Christ for 30 pieces of silver. This administration would have Christians betray their convictions for a handful of birth control pills and publically-funded abortions.
The world has never lacked for those who identified with Pontius Pilate, but it is a rare occurrence in America. In the past, even our worst presidents were only lousy in the way that politicians usually are. That is to say, they tended to yield to greed and lust more than they should have, but until Obama came along, they didn’t remind most people of those tinhorn rulers of banana republics.
Obama lies more than any person I’ve ever known, in or out of the White House. He divides people along racial, religious and economic, lines for solely partisan reasons. And while he constantly whines about income inequality, carrying on as if Karl Marx was his personal speechwriter, he spends millions of our tax dollars on family vacations and is never happier than when he’s addressing his supporters at $35,000-a-seat fundraisers.
Speaking of Obama, it galls me that when an ex-president dies, no matter how shabby his administration may have been, the flags fly at half-mast as if we’re all supposed to mourn his demise. But when a great composer, medical researcher or inventor passes, he or she is lucky to muster a couple of paragraphs on the obituary page.
The reason that I and many others believe that the president should come from the ranks of governors and not be a member of Congress is because the job calls for executive experience. The three branches of government, after all, are the executive, the judicial and the legislative. Being the president means being the chief executive of the 315,000,000 member corporation known as the United States of America.
But I wager there isn’t another boardroom in the nation that has so many incompetent nincompoops seated around the table. Obama, Biden, Kerry, Hagel, Holder and Sebelius, are people who have never worked a day anywhere but a law office, a college campus or Congress. Ivory towers don’t prepare anyone to do anything but go through life confusing theory with reality.
Here in California, the State Supreme Court recently granted an illegal alien the right to practice law. At first I was outraged. Are these people insane? Then it occurred to me that of course they’re insane, but if these nitwits are entitled to practice law, why the heck shouldn’t Sergio Garcia?
After all, we have justices sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court today who have announced that they wouldn’t advise emerging nations to adopt our Constitution as their own. For that matter, Barack Obama has gone on record saying that the major flaw in our Constitution is that it doesn’t deal with the redistribution of wealth. Is it any wonder then that in spite of swearing his allegiance to the sacred document, he ignores what it says with unseemly regularity – things like states’ rights and the separation of powers – any damn time he feels like it?
My only problem with the Constitution is that it prevents the foreign-born from aspiring to the presidency. When fewer and fewer Americans seem to appreciate the fact they were lucky enough to be born here, it’s far likelier that someone who came here from Cuba, China or one of the countries formerly under the Soviet boot, would more closely resemble the Gipper than the Gypper.
Finally, after watching TV weather reporters spend the last 60 years bundled up in the middle of storms and tsunamis, I have to ask: Why? If I had the job, I’d sit by a window, though not too close, sipping on a cup of cocoa, watching cows and trees flying by, and say, “Boy, I’m sure glad I’m not out there. That’s some stinky weather.”
I love Burt since I ran across him years ago and asked if I could post one of his essays on FR. For a Hollywood guy he is stand up and says how it is.
Nice post. I used to like sitting next to a window and sipping cocoa. Watching it snow. BUT I never wore a onesie and dreamed about health care while doing so. Heck I don’t even know what a onesie is.
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