Latest HHS Mandate “fix” is largely an Obama/Sebelius accounting gimmick
First, here is what the new proposed rules did NOT change:
- Conscience-minded business owners with more than 50 employees will continue to be forced to pay for coverage for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization procedures. This includes Michigan businessman John Kennedy and Missouri businessman Frank O’Brien, both of whom are represented and defended by our CatholicVote.org Legal Defense Fund.
- Pro-life organizations, schools or charities which are not explicitly religious will still be forced to pay for abortion inducing drugs if they have more than 50 employees.
- The new rules provide NO options for private individuals who seek insurance coverage that respects their conscience.
So what changed?
Some religious nonprofits (schools, hospitals, and charities) are being told they can now “opt out” of the exemption – but in name only. The proposal will allow some of our Catholic colleges, hospitals, and charities to provide coverage that exempts these immoral medicines – BUT – the same insurance company will step in and provide the objectionable services to their employees for free.
By raising a religious objection, some faith-based institutions can now avoid directly paying the insurance company for objectionable medicines and procedures – yet the premiums they pay will go straight to an insurance company that will create a separate policy that will cover the very things these religious employers believe are wrong.
Likewise, self-insured plans like those used by many dioceses and large faith-based groups will be forced to cover their eyes while their plan “Administrator” does the same thing.
Gov. Jindal’s over the counter solution to the onerous HHS Mandate
“As a conservative Republican, I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control,” Jindal wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
Keeping birth control as prescription medicine, he said, only drives up health care costs with unnecessary doctors’ visits and lines the pockets of pharmaceutical companies. He cites a recent recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that oral contraceptions should be sold over the counter.
At the same time, the pro-life Republican argued against the Obama administration mandate that most employer-based insurance cover contraception, writing that “anyone who has a religious objection to contraception should not be forced by government health-care edicts to purchase it for others.”
Editor’s note: Catholics would be free to practice their faith without government coercion.
Quiz: What do Catholic Relief Services and Melinda Gates have in common?
Catholic Relief Services (CRS), “the official overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops” has recently given millions to an organization that doles out contraceptives, including abortifacient ‘emergency contraception.’
The most recent CRS annual returns (2010) indicate that the largest CRS grant — $5.3 million — went to CARE, an international “relief and development organization,” that actively promotes and provides contraceptives for women in developing countries, and supports pro-abortion groups and legislation.
According to the 2010 990s, CRS gave $5,380,466 to CARE, which is noted on page 86 of the filing.
Whatever happened to the “all natural approach”? Women are “popping” morning after contraceptives several times each month.
‘What is certain is it contains very high doses of hormones and I would hate to know what it does to hormone levels if taken regularly,’ says Dr Gerada.
‘Every time a woman takes it she’d be risking all the listed side-effects such as heavy bleeding, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Her cycle will also be confused for a while, so she might be pregnant without realising it.’
And while users think they are getting peace of mind, what they don’t realise is that the morning-after pill is a far less reliable form of contraception than most other methods.
If taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex, Levonelle is said to have a 95 per cent success rate, falling to just 58 per cent after 72 hours.
Why we’re standing up for religious freedom
…the federal government is still telling religious institutions to provide products and services they find objectionable, and this affront to religious liberty is unconstitutional.
According to this compromise, religious institutions still have to pay for something against their conscience — the health insurance that covers free contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization.
Adding one more step between the dealer and the goods doesn’t change the ultimate transaction that’s going on here.
This sleight-of-hand maneuver didn’t fool all of us. And for the many rallying around the nation today, it offends us.
Contraception is socially damaging and sexist. Comprehensive article explains precisely why.
With this essay, using the language and tools of modern social science, I will articulate the position that contraception is socially damaging. I will also demonstrate that contraception is in fact a sexist practice. Using straightforward microeconomic reasoning, I will unpack the behaviors engendered by artificial contraception. I will show that the contraceptive revolution has resulted in a massive redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.
In doing so, I will reveal that despite the ethical inferiority of artificial contraception, the practice of contraception will, unfortunately, predominate as the social “equilibrium” unless legal restrictions or social mores “tax” men and “subsidize” women and children. More technically, artificial contraception sets up what economists call a “prisoner’s-dilemma” game, in which each woman is induced to make decisions rationally that ultimately make her, and all women, worse off. This result is particularly striking and has broad implications for how we think about the sexual revolution and its aftermath.
The Catholic Church vs. Barack Obama the ABORTION President … which one holds an irrational position?
Barack Obama, the ABORTION President, recently stated that there could be no common ground between the Catholic Church and his administration on the issues of abortion and embryonic stem cell research; unless and/or until the Catholic Church recognizes that the majority of today’s Catholics … along with the Obama administration … are really on the correct side of things … and that the “institutional” Church is wrong.
The only way to correctly analyze the President’s statement is to do it step by step … “by the numbers”:
Irrational?
The Catholic Church explains that all life comes from God, that due to Christ’s humanity and Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, all human life is sacred, and subsequently, no one (especially government, which is supposed to be a servant and protector of the people, for the common good) has any right to take an innocent life.
This is nothing new, since the Catholic Church has been constantly preaching and teaching the identical message for some 2000 years … a message which … up until the last generation (40 years or so) … has been almost universally accepted … and has served the world extremely well … with the inalienable right to life as a foundational principle of modern Western civilization (not to mention the founding fathers of the United States of America, who thought it right and good to include the mundane term in the Declaration of Independence).
Any violation of this inalienable right to life by anyone, especially against a particular class of persons, is nothing less than blatant discrimination, and a denial of fundamental civil rights, but in the case of abortion … it is unparalleled, government assisted genocide on a scale so massive that is boggles the mind (with over 50 million “surgical” abortions, plus 4 or 5 times as many “silent” abortions due to the use of various artificial contraceptive devices and pills, over a 40 year period.
The “silent” abortions include (among other things) the use of IUD’s which serve to destroy human embryos as they enter the uterus, and the abortifacient action of the birth control pill, which often permits a human embryo to be conceived, only to have it subsequently “starve” to death in a uterus whose lining has been virtually destroyed by the hormones that were used in formulating the contraceptive.
So … many of today’s couples often unknowingly sacrifice the lives of their children for the sake of convenience, while others, when the contraceptives fail, accomplish much the same thing, but at substantially greater personal and financial expense, at local, marginal, (often government subsidized) abortion facilities.
It should also be noted that oral/patch/similar types of contraceptives as well as induced abortions pose serious health risks to women; blood clots (leading to a quick death) and hemorrhages, (a bit slower, but often just as deadly) respectively.
Furthermore, some 35 years of experience demonstrates that the level of care provided at abortion facilities varies widely, tending to favor the very lowest end of the quality scale, that abortion providers often play “fast and loose” with both medical ethics and the law, and that critical care for the victims of botched abortions is often far away, minimally available, and often too little and too late, since reputable hospitals usually refuse to perform abortions on their premises.
Based on all of this, as well as the basic fact that killing defenseless babies while still inside their own mothers, is a ghastly, monstrous, and wholly inhuman act … with few other parallels in human history … the Catholic Church proclaims that abortion is intrinsically evil in every case, and that absolutely no right to abortion exists … nor can any government legally grant such a right … since the government would then be committing a crime against humanity, acting contrary to at least 1500 yeas of settled (international) law, and acting directly against the common good (as well as the natural law).
Barack Obama, the Supreme Court, and Abortion Advocates look at things somewhat differently.
In spite of the definitive medical science, which clearly documents that human life begins at conception (the moment the egg cell and the sperm cell unite) abortion advocates insist that it is possible to ignore the realities and redefine the facts, purely for political expediency.
They claim that which is the product of human procreation, which has its’ own unique human DNA, heart beat, brain waves, blood type, and body parts … and which is often able to survive and even thrive outside the womb … and which in every single case, since the beginning of time … has always emerged as human … is not a human being at all … but merely an “undifferentiated blob of cells”.
Barack Obama … the ABORTION President … is on record as claiming that defining issues of this type are “above his pay grade”.
The U.S. Supreme Court also finds itself completely unable to deal with the question of when life begins, and whether the “fetus” (a Latin term meaning “little child”) is actually human.
One might think that after some 35 years, at least 5 of the 9 justices might have been able to get together and satisfactorily work this out, especially since any supposed “right to abortion” stems solely from the Supreme Court’s inability or unwillingness to define this most essential issue. To make things worse, Congress also seems to be incapable of agreement on the matter.
Most regular folks don’t seem to have that problem.
You probably know that for some time now, we’ve had little robotic machines scouring the planet Mars for signs of life.
I submit that if any evidence resembling a human embryo was discovered on the red planet, that newspaper headlines all around this planet would proclaim nothing less than “Human Life Discovered on Mars”.
It’s about time that our politicians and judges recognized and acknowledged the simple fact that babies in the womb are human, have always been human, and always will be human, and that basic human justice and charity obligates us to protect that innocent human life from all harm, to the best of our ability … NOT kill it.
Neither should we permit women to be routinely abused and traumatized at the hands of abortionists … or anyone else.
Now I ask you: Which position is irrational … that of the Catholic Church … or that of President Barack Obama and the Abortion Advocates?
Protestants show interest in ‘wisdom’ of Natural Family Planning
Protestants show interest in ‘wisdom’ of Natural Family Planning
.- Citing a desire to let their faith in God guide their sex lives and to trust Him in every aspect of their existence, some Protestants have become practitioners of Natural Family Planning (NFP). Eschewing contraceptives, some are now joining Catholics in fertility classes and returning to traditional Christian teaching.
The Austin American-Statesman reports that the number of NFP practitioners who are Protestants is difficult to quantify. However, Rev. Amy Laura Hall, a Methodist minister and associate professor at Duke Divinity School, says there appears to be growing interest.
Doug Lawrence's Catholic Weblog 