 "Photo: N/A")
The First Amendment is under attack in the United States.
More than 200 years ago, Congress passed the Bill of Rights, with this line at the very top: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." While much of the world continues to languish under the oppressive rule of theocratic governments, the United States has strived to be a beacon of religious tolerance. This was a place where men and women were free to worship their god or gods, or to worship no god at all.
Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers have laid down their lives in defense of this sacred right.
But on Jan. 20, President Obama gave it all away.
As a corollary to the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (known as "Obamacare"), Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has issued a mandate to America's healthcare providers. This mandate requires health insurance plans in the United States to cover contraception, sterilization and abortifacients — the so-called "morning-after pill."
Because the mandate is all-encompassing, Roman Catholic hospitals and schools are also subject to the directive. As you might imagine, this is very problematic for the Catholic Church, which teaches that life begins at conception and that termination of life after conception is murder.
But this debate isn't about abortion or birth control. It doesn't even matter whether you agree with the Catholic Church's position on those issues. As long as you recognize that Catholics hold those beliefs, it becomes crystal clear that this HHS mandate is grossly unconstitutional. To a Catholic healthcare worker in the United States, the requirement that the worker participate in something he or she views as murder is more than just uncomfortable – it's morally abhorrent.
It goes against everything he or she believes about life and death, and it makes him or her a collaborator in infanticide.
Before this mandate, the 625 Catholic hospitals and 7,498 Catholic schools in the United States could at least choose not to take part in an action they viewed as morally reprehensible. Now, they are legally obligated to participate.
The mandate does include exception for "religious employers." But the criteria are so narrowly defined that the Catholic Church's schools, universities and charitable organizations don't qualify because they serve non-Catholics. Under the administration's guidelines, even Jesus Christ – who healed many afflicted persons who didn't share his religious beliefs – wouldn't count as a "religious employer."
Imagine, if you will, that the Obama administration ordered all U.S. restaurants to serve cheeseburgers. They concluded that, because cheeseburgers are awesome, America would be a better place if citizens could walk into any restaurant and buy a cheeseburger.
Perhaps this sounds like utopia to you – and, as a lover of cheeseburgers myself, I can certainly sympathize. But for a devout Hindu restaurant owner who believes cows are sacred and not to be killed, this cheeseburger society would be no paradise. Rather, he would be forced to abandon his religious beliefs or sacrifice a career he's spent his life building in order to comply with the law. The legal exemption would be useless, because he serves non-Hindus in his restaurant. He is faced with an unthinkable choice – should he give up his religion, or his livelihood? What kind of country forces its citizens to make this choice?
Maybe you think Catholics are silly for opposing abortion and contraceptives. Maybe you also think Jehovah's Witnesses are silly for refusing blood transfusions, or that the Amish are silly for resisting technology, or that Jews are silly for not eating bacon. Guess what? That's OK. This is America, and you're entitled to your opinion. But you're not entitled to stuff a Baconator down an Orthodox Jew's throat – and neither is the federal government.
Thankfully, American Catholics aren't taking this affront to liberty sitting down. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is brewing for an extended legal battle over the mandate, and they intend to pull no punches. Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., issued a letter to local parishes, stating "We cannot and will not comply with this unjust decree. Like the martyrs of old, we must be prepared to accept suffering which could include heavy fines and imprisonment. Our American religious liberty is in grave jeopardy."
Don't think that this fight is just about Catholics and abortion. It's about all of us Americans, whether we are Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists or otherwise. It's about not setting a legal precedent that will erode the most hallowed rights protected by our Constitution and its amendments.
In short, it is a fight that our nation of liberty cannot afford to lose.
Benjamin Kantack is a senior political science and Spanish major. Follow him at @BenjaminKantack and reach him at BenjaminKantack@dailynebraskan.com.
The Affordable Care Act itself is ambiguous about what counts as a religious organization that deserves conscience protection. Like so much else in the rushed bill, this was left to administrative discretion. What the law does cement is the principle that the government will decide for everyone what "health care" must mean. The entire thrust of ObamaCare is to standardize benefits and how they must be paid for and provided, regardless of individual choices or ethical convictions.To take a small example: The HHS rule prohibits out-of-pocket costs for birth control, simply because Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's regulators believe no woman should have to pay anything for it. To take a larger example: The Obama Administration's legal defense of the mandate to buy insurance or else pay a penalty is that the mere fact of being alive gives the government the right to regulate all Americans at every point in their lives.Practicing this kind of compulsion is routine and noncontroversial within Ms. Sebelius's ministry. That may explain why her staff didn't notice that the birth-control rule abridges the First Amendment's protections for religious freedom. Then again, maybe HHS thought the public had become inured to such edicts, which have arrived every few weeks since the Affordable Care Act passed.Bad call. The decision has roused the Catholic bishops from their health-care naivete, but they've been joined by people of all faiths and even no faith, as it becomes clear that their own deepest moral beliefs may be thrown over eventually. Contraception is the single most prescribed medicine for women between 18 and 44 years old, and nine of 10 insurers and employers already cover it. Yet HHS still decided to rub it in the face of religious hospitals.
Our founders descended from thinkers of the Enlightenment like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke who believed that human beings exist best when they are free "to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit" and that the main role of government is to see that "no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, and or property." That's why Constitution describes "rights" (including religious rights) as restrictions on the government. These "rights" are intended to let people to choose their own life for themselves.
President Obama has called this the "fatal flaw" of the Constitution. He has called these types of rights "constraints" in the U.S. Constitution from which we need to "break free." Unlike our founders, Obama descends from a line of thinking expressed in Plato's "Republic" and Thomas Moore's "Utopia" in which the ultimate "right" is the "right" to have a ruling elite manage your life (for the good of society of course!). This is most often advertised as your "right" to have the government forcefully procure goods and services for you at the expense of someone else.
These sort of "rights" are sometimes called "positive rights" (because it's something the government is doing for you) or "economic rights" or "collective rights." Whatever you call them they are in direct conflict to the individual liberties of the U.S. Constitution. That's because individuals, each living their own lives for their own ends, will always interfere with the well laid plans of central planners. Central planners (like Obama) must therefore grind away at individual rights any way they can.
Case in point: As challenges to Obamacare have made their way through the courts, several judges have asked the Obama administration's lawyers if they think the Constitution offers any limitations whatsoever (even in theory) on government power - if there are any aspects of human life beyond the reach of government intrusion.
They've said no.
So it's easy to understand why the Catholic Church's right to live by its own morals took a back seat to the administration's decision to make free contraception a new "right." It's also easy to understand arguments that have been used to defend the decision.
First, there's the argument put forth by the ACLU and others that forcing the Catholic Church to pay for contraception is protecting the "religious freedoms" of non-Catholics who work for Catholic employers. In other words, "religious freedom" means the "freedom" to force somebody else to part with their own money and violate their own conscience. This so-called "right" is based forcing others to do things against their will. This is not the "religious freedom" of our Constitution.
Then there are those who say that once religious institutions accept federal funding they have given up their rights to stand in the way of social progress. In other words, the Bill of Rights ends once you take money from the government. By that logic, a scientist with an NIH grant could be prohibited from speaking out against the president. Or the driver on a federal highway could be prohibited from sporting anti-government bumper stickers. Where does that end? (And why is it that the people who are trying to get the government to pay for more things are the ones making this argument?)
Others state that the Church's objection to birth control is old-fashioned and therefore shouldn't be a right. So now we live in a world where only popular viewpoints get civil protection. In other words, there is no civil protection for any views.
And once freedom of religion goes, what's next? Free speech?
As a matter of fact, yes. When the US Catholic bishops distributed a letter calling the Obama administration ruling unjust, it was read in every diocese across the United States. Except one. An Obama administration blocked the US Army chaplains from reading the Bishops' letter at mass. Then they edited it. Only then did they allow it to be read.
So after this compromise, maybe this particular issue will be resolved. But the debate over whether or not we really are entitled to the individual freedoms of the Constitution will continue
Opposing the dictatorial mandates of Barack Obama.
I won't get into the nitty gritty of how the morning after pill isn't actually abortion - I suppose it is if you believe that life starts at conception, and I won't argue with that. But equating the denial of medical care to eating cheeseburgers is asinine from EITHER side. For prolife individuals, you are equating a cheeseburger to a human life. For prochoice people, you are equating a woman's bodily autonomy to a cheeseburger. Way to completely not understand the importance of the situation for anyone. This isn't tantamount to "shoving a bacanator down an orthodox jew's throat". This is like an orthodox jewish doctor refusing to administer the Heimlich maneuver to a woman on her period. Freedom of religion means that others don't have to be forced to follow YOUR religious practices. Jews, Christians, Muslims, ARE all Americans, so why should our right to a legal medical treatment be limited because of one specific religion? Let the Catholics have their right to refuse, but they have no authority to impede MY right to accept.
"No one is forcing any Catholic health-care workers to participate in something he or she views as murder" Sounds like they have to if they want to be health-care workers.
"Everyone in America has the right of freedom do to whatever they want to their body" Not with ObamacareWhat college admitted you? Was it the Fuddi-Duddy Institute or the Largo Clown College? Was it the Clown School on the Road or the Academy of Performing Arts in Clowning? I'd say you'd better quite cutting class cause while you certainly are silly you aren't very funny. One expects more humor coming from one's clown and less pathos.
Column: "As a corollary to the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (known as "Obamacare"), Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has issued a mandate to America's healthcare providers. This mandate requires health insurance plans in the United States to cover contraception, sterilization and abortifacients - the so-called "morning-after pill."
"Because the mandate is all-encompassing, Roman Catholic hospitals and schools are also subject to the directive." You know like they have to provide health insurance complete with contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients.
See what happens when you read something before you write something stupid. You don't end up looking like a silly ass. Something you might try doing in the future.
By the way Kantack wasn't talking about religion. He was talking about our freedom. Our Constitution predates pledges of allegiance and slogans on money. And do read the Declaration of Independence. It has references to a Judeo-Christian God.
1 to defeat (oneself) by seeking to do or gain too much;
2 to get the better of especially in dealing and bargaining and typically by unscrupulous or crafty methods The second definition seems to describe Obama exceptionally well, I just hope the first one applies in November.