Free Republic

Former taoiseach John Bruton has said doctors opposed to abortion should not be forced to refer women seeking terminations to other physicians. Mr. Bruton, in a speech to the Pro Life Education dinner in the Clayton Hotel, Dublin, on Saturday night, said he feared anti-abortion doctors would be “targeted” by those who wanted to “catch them out”. The Bill proposed by Minister for Health Simon Harris to introduce and regulate abortions requires a doctor who has a conscientious objection to carrying out the procedure to “make arrangements to transfer the care” of the woman to another doctor. “This is aiding...

Last Thursday, the Trump administration came to the rescue of pro-life nurses and doctors who accuse hospital employers of pressuring them to perform abortions against their religion. A new Conscience and Religious Freedom office within the Department of Health and Human Services will hear complaints from anti-abortion medical personnel who claim they're getting fired or retaliated against for their beliefs. Abortion rights groups are protesting that this Trump administration initiative amounts to a frontal assault on a woman's right to choose. Abortion rights advocates say doctors and nurses who don't want to perform abortions should go into another line of...

Millions of Americans have a profound concern over abortion – they understand it as the killing of an innocent unborn child – which is a very serious matter. Federal laws have protected conscientious objections to such taking of innocent life over many years, ever since Roe v. Wade. Americans fundamentally understand that since Roe v. Wade, abortion is legal, but they also understand that some people have a right not to be involved in abortions— and that their conscience rights are what need further protection. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “[n]o provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than...

Andrew Cash, a former student at Missouri State University, is suing the institution over his dismissal from a graduate program in counseling. Cash has retained counsel from the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm, and has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Governors of Missouri State University. Cash and his lawyers contend that he was dismissed from the university’s Master’s program in counseling because he expressed concern over counseling same-sex couples due to his religious convictions. In an exclusive interview, Spero News interviewed attorney Tom Olp of the Thomas More Society, which is representing Cash....

This column was co-authored by Congressman J. Randy Forbes.Avid Chipotle customers seeking carnitas burritos for dinner may be disappointed over the coming weeks. The restaurant giant is reportedly no longer serving pork at about a third of its locations after it dropped a pork supplier that failed to live up to the corporation’s standards of humane animal care. Despite the possibility that Chipotle’s decision to pull pork from almost a third of its restaurants will come at a cost, the corporation’s commitment to serving “food with integrity” has outweighed its quest for financial gain. “We would rather not serve pork...

(AP) Judge: US can't make Monaghan offer contraceptives DETROIT A judge has blocked the federal government from requiring the founder of Domino's Pizza to provide mandatory contraception coverage to his employees under the health care law. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff on Thursday granted a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the contraception provision of the law against Tom Monaghan and Domino's Farms Corp. near Ann Arbor, Mich.

In a little under an hour, three members of the House Republican caucus will announce a new legislative effort to undo the HHS contraception mandate’s infringement on freedom of religious practice, and prevent the next incursion as well. The Catholic Association sent out a press release hailing the introduction of the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (HCCRA), which should face little opposition … at least in the House (via Frank Weathers): House Representatives Diane Black (R-TN), Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE), and John Fleming, M.D. (R-LA) will hold a press conference tomorrow, Tuesday, March 5th at 10am EST in Rayburn House Office...

While the White House and the Catholic Church continue to slug it out over whether private, for-profit companies like Hobby Lobby should have to provide their employees with federally mandated birth control, two Democratic lawmakers are hoping to ease one roadblock to women’s access to contraception: Pharmacists. In an effort to standardize pharmacies’ procedures for filling prescriptions for birth control, Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) have reintroduced the “Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act.” It’s the same bill the politicians tried to get through previous legislative sessions, but these two are clearly Charlie-Brown-and-the-football types, and...

Archbishop-elect Alexander Sample speaks with John-Henry Westen, LifeSiteNews' editor-in-chief WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 29, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As the Obama administration and the U.S. Bishops remain locked in battle over the HHS mandate, the question on the minds of many observers is: what lengths are the bishops willing to go to to oppose the mandate? The prelates LifeSiteNews spoke to after the Vigil Mass for Life in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 24th indicated that they intend to do everything they can to oppose the mandate, including risking imprisonment if necessary. "I would be willing to go to jail in defense of religious...

(Reuters) - A divided federal appeals court has temporarily barred the U.S. government from requiring an Illinois company to obtain insurance coverage for contraceptives, as mandated under the 2010 healthcare overhaul, after the owners objected on religious grounds. More than 40 lawsuits are challenging a requirement in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that requires most for-profit companies to offer workers insurance coverage for contraceptive drugs and devices and other birth control methods. Friday's 2-1 order by a panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago in favor of Cyril and Jane Korte was the second...

...JoanWalsh at Salon writes that she was raised Catholic, but has since turned into "a secularfeministliberaldemocrat." Last Friday evening, when Obama's supporters were still clinging to their belief that his announcement of a compromise would steal all the wind out of the bishops' sails, she asked this: Why did we spend 10 days listening to prominent Catholics, including even some liberals and Democrats, insist that the White House had overreached and trampled on "religious freedom" - in this case, the "freedom" of the Catholic hierarchy to impose rules that even most Catholics don't live by? ("Catholic tribalism and the contraceptive...

.....First they came for Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs. And the Catholic bishops did not speak out. Now they are coming for the Catholic bishops. Who will speak out now? Not, alas, the United Church of Christ. Let's go back into recent history -- 2009 to be exact. It was a story that involved the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in a blatant, full-on attack on the right of free speech and a free press -- the First Amendment. As I wrote here, here, here, here, here, and here three years ago, the Catholic bishops had managed to get their...

Journalism: When the abortion giant's funding was in jeopardy, the media provided 24/7 coverage with a decidedly liberal slant. When the feds assaulted First Amendment religious freedom, you could hear the crickets chirp. Secular progressive bias in the media was never more evident than in the past few weeks with the difference in coverage of two major news stories — the temporary cutoff of funds from the Susan G. Komen Foundation to Planned Parenthood and the ultimatum from the Obama administration that the Catholic Church and its institutions had a year to find a way to violate their consciences and...

1st Amendment: Catholic bishops on Sunday issued a response to ObamaCare's mandates on providing contraception in violation of conscience and religious freedom. The message was simple: We will not comply. It was hardly a profile in courage when the Obama administration, hoping to kick the issue down the road past the November election, announced last Friday that Catholic hospitals and other religious institutions will have an extra year to comply with a new requirement that most health plans provide contraceptive benefits at no cost to their members. On Sunday, America's Catholic bishops in an open letter to their parishioners and...

EWTN Sues U.S. Government To Stop Contraception Mandate Network Asks Court to Stop Order to Pay for Immoral Services Irondale, AL (EWTN) – EWTN Global Catholic Network filed a lawsuit February 9 in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Alabama against the Department of Health & Human Services, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and other government agencies seeking to stop the imposition of the contraception mandate as well as asking the court for a declaratory judgment that the mandate is unconstitutional. EWTN is the first Catholic organization to file suit since the final HHS rules were published by the Obama administration on...

It is a rare moment indeed when faith denominations of all stripes unite together in common cause, and it is rarer still when that cause is a political one, with a sole piece of legislation as its principal target. But when that law eviscerates the very foundation of religious liberty in America as protected under the First Amendment, it should not be surprising that Catholics and Jews, evangelical Christians, and mainline Lutherans alike find common cause in defense of their liberties.Such is the case with the firestorm of opposition to Obamacare and the Obama Administration’s attack on religious liberty. Under...

Catholic leaders upped the ante Monday, threatening to challenge the Obama administration over a provision of the new health care law that would require all employers, including religious institutions, to pay for birth control. As CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer reports, it could affect the presidential elections. Catholic leaders are furious and determined to harness the voting power of the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters to stop a provision of President Barack Obama’s new heath car reform bill that will force Catholic schools, hospitals and charities to buy birth control pills, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization coverage for their employees. “Never before,...

President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next? This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans -- even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches. NARAL, NOW, Ms. Magazine and the...

Over the weekend, the Catholic Church’s letter went beyond simply issuing oppositional rhetoric to media. Instead, priests read an open note to congregations across the country, dubbing the administration‘s take on women’s health and religious violations as an attack on their faith. In the letter, Bishops highlighted what they called “an alarming and serious matter,“ as their words contended that the federal government has ”dealt a heavy blow” to the Catholic population.

Obama lost my vote yesterday when he declined to expand the exceedingly narrow conscience exemptions proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services. The issue of conscience protections is so foundational, I do not see how I ever could, in good conscience, vote for this man again. I do not come at this issue as a Catholic special pleader, who wants only to protect my own, although it was a little bracing to realize that the president’s decision yesterday essentially told us, as Catholics, that there is no room in this great country of ours for the institutions our...