Free Republic

The move by President Obama on Friday to alter his rule requiring birth-control coverage, shifting the mandate from some religious-based employers directly to insurance plans, hasn’t satisfied the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and some other critics. But Obama’s revised rule appears to have won over Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine. Both had called for changes to the original rule despite their support in the past for a bill with a similar objective.

Barack Obama may have just lost the election. He has foolishly gone to war in an election year with tens of millions of Catholics, Protestants and Jews – Democrat, Republican and independent alike. He has thrown down a radical feminist gauntlet and dared the Church to pick it up. They’ve picked it up. From running up trillions in debt and deficit, to the vast expansion of the size and scope of federal bureaucracy, Mr. Obama has done more in three years to supplant our 236 year-old Constitutional Republic with a Euro-style socialist autocracy – than a lesser Marxist could have...

Lew: Obama's latest stance on birth-control mandate final, puts issue to restBy Mike Lillis - 02/12/12 10:38 AM ET President Obama's new birth-control stance should put to rest the controversy over employer-sponsored contraception coverage, a top administration official said Sunday. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said Obama's new plan, unveiled Friday, effectively addresses "the core issue" of simultaneously ensuring religious freedom and women's access to healthcare. "It does not force an institution that has religious principle to offer or pay for benefits that they find objectionable, but it guarantees a women's right to access. We think that's the...

President Obama's top aide addressed the latest controversy over contraception coverage, saying on CBS News' "Face the Nation" Sunday that the latest iteration of the new rule, which was announced Friday, will go forward. "We're going to go ahead and implement it," White House Chief of Staff Jack Law said. After being pressed by host Bob Schieffer about the White House's latest change to its contraception coverage policy and the push-back the administration is receiving from the Catholic Church, Lew said the White House is comfortable with its decision. "We have broad consensus - not universal consensus - that this...

The squabble over whether Catholic social service institutions, universities and hospitals must offer insurance covering contraception under the new health plan contains a subplot with roots deep in history. It’s the relationship between women and organized religion — a relationship that, over the centuries, has been hostile to the aspirations of women for a larger role in the family, the world and religion itself. Organized religion, in short, has been a clerical stag party. It is against this historical background that the tussle between what religious conservatives see as a First Amendment right and many women see as a health...

Saturday morning’s Washington Post headline and first sub-headline, page one and above-the-fold, nicely captured the confusions that prevailed as of 6 p.m. Friday, in the matter of tweaks to the “contraceptive mandate” issued by the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services: “Obama shifts on birth control / Catholic leaders open to plan.” Well, no, and no. The administration “shifted” on nothing. It simply decreed that insurers, not employers, must provide “preventive services” (including sterilization and abortifacient drugs), a shell game that has been variously and accurately described as a “fraud” (Andrew McCarthy, in the Corner) and an “absurdity”...

This is likely to be the first of many commentaries on this matter, but I feel compelled to address specific points that have been made to support President Obama's unconstitutional mandate upon Catholic affiliated institutions. Firstly, supporters of the mandate defend the proposition because as they say most Catholics do not agree with the Church on the matter of artificial birth control. Jehmu Green, on Fox News no less cited polling that 98% of Catholics oppose the Church and have used contraception. Juan Williams, also on FOX, cited a FOX NEWS poll that showed 61% of all Americans agreed with...

Today the Obama Administration announced that the President would be issuing a new regulation fully respecting the religious liberty of Catholic organizations while maintaining access to contraceptive services for all employees. The new regulation will ensure that Catholic hospitals, universities and social service providers that are religiously opposed to contraception and sterilization do not have to provide or even refer for those services, while also requiring insurance companies provide contraceptive services free of charge to any enrollee who wishes to have the coverage. The objecting religious organizations would have no role in providing coverage or referring employees for services they...

Senior administration officials are pleased with the initial response to President Obama’s pending announcement on an “accommodation” for religious organizations regarding the rule requiring employers to provide health insurance that covers birth control. Though they’re on opposite sides of the birth control and abortion debate, both Sister Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, and Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, issued statements Friday morning applauding the compromise, which allows religious organizations to keep contraception out of its coverage while requiring the insurance companies to step in and offer contraceptive coverage to the...

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, February 8, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) — One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com "we will not comply" with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD. "We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write...

Paul Kengor, professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College, has written The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism and God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life. President Reagan would have been 101 this week, and to mark the occasion, Kengor talks about the Health and Human Services mandate forcing Catholics to offer and purchase health-insurance plans that violate their consciences and what the 40th president might have advised. KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Did Ronald Reagan ever face a backlash from some of his base like we’re seeing on...

From a self-described “left-leaning Catholic writer,” the Washington Post’s associate editor political writer Melinda Henneberger, this is what passes for a defense of faith against the HHS mandate. In an MSNBC interview, Ms. Henneberger told Chris Matthews: “Maybe the founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment, but that is what they did and I don’t think we have to choose here.”*Emphasis Mine*

If Catholics are forced to pay for abortions, will Muslims be forced to have and pay for porcine heart valve replacement surgery?

CSPAN2 onlineQ&A coming up

Thomas Jefferson said: "To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." The third president wasn't Catholic and, arguably, probably not Christian. But he understood that for the government to compel people to pay for something they find morally repugnant is "sinful and tyrannical." The 44th president clearly thinks otherwise...

I thank Vice President Joe Biden for visiting Ohio today. The Sisters of Charity Health System is a Cleveland-based Catholic health-care organization which, in collaboration with other Catholic health ministries, actively promoted the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are dedicated to increased health-care coverage and access and are supportive of the law’s efforts to improve quality of care and patient outcomes.(Emphasis Mine)

I thank Vice President Joe Biden for visiting Ohio today. The Sisters of Charity Health System is a Cleveland-based Catholic health-care organization which, in collaboration with other Catholic health ministries, actively promoted the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are dedicated to increased health-care coverage and access and are supportive of the law’s efforts to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. (Emphasis Mine)

If abortion rights advocates are feeling their oats this week, they have good reason. In just two-and-half a weeks, they've claimed two major victories, forcing the Susan G. Komen Foundation to back off its policy change denying grants to Planned Parenthood clinics and convincing the Obama administration to maintain only a very limited exemption for religious employers in the new contraceptive coverage mandate, which is set to go into effect on August 1. Part of Obama's health-care reform bill, the new mandate will for the first time require most employer-provided private health-care plans to cover birth control without a co-pay...

The federal government’s new mandate — requiring Catholic charities, schools, universities and hospitals to supply employees with health insurance that covers birth control, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs — has become maybe the most controversial issue of our day. I’ve been inspired by the unified reaction from our Catholic community. The bishops of almost every diocese in the country have spoken out. So have our largest Catholic institutions. Many individual Catholics — of every political opinion — have united in opposition.

One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD. “We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just...