From: St. Louis Today
Give Barack Obama credit: The man has chutzpah. How else do you describe a president who uses his executive authority to unilaterally manufacture a government mandate for contraception coverage — a mandate with no conscience protection for the vast majority of religious institutions to which it applies — and then, when confronted with bipartisan backlash, proposes a "religious accommodation" that amounts to little more than a cheap accounting trick?
Like the Great Stupak Sellout of 2010 — the president's toothless executive order that purported to close abortion-funding loopholes in Obamacare but actually did no such thing — Obama's much-touted compromise on the contraceptive mandate is a joke. Announced Friday in a hasty and cynical attempt to bury the story in the weekend news cycle, this tweak of the administration's original rule still forces Catholic institutions to provide insurance that covers medications and services the Catholic Church considers immoral — including sterilization procedures and the "morning-after pill," a drug that can destroy embryos by preventing their implantation in the uterine lining. The only difference between the rule's current incarnation and its former one: Obama says that insurance companies, not religious employers, will be the ones to foot the bill for the objectionable coverage.
The economics of the compromise are laughable. Does the president actually believe — or expect Americans to believe — that insurance companies will provide free birth control to women without stealthily passing the cost to religious employers or spreading it across all policyholders? The "free" benefit Obama purports to offer women is not free at all. It is a hidden tax on those policyholders who — because of age, life circumstances or ethical objections — do not use contraception. As University of Chicago finance professor John Cochrane noted recently in The Wall Street Journal, "There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free," but "every increase in coverage means an increase in premiums."
The president's new plan also fails to address the religious liberty questions at the heart of this debate. Although embraced by such reliable Obama cheerleaders as Catholic Health Association president Sr. Carol Keehan, as well as the leaders of Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, the alleged compromise does nothing to ease the conscience concerns of those Catholic education, health care and charitable leaders who regard institutional fidelity to Catholic doctrine as a paramount concern. Nor does it offer any relief to religious organizations that self-insure or to individual employers — Catholic or otherwise — who object to these services and wish to operate their private businesses in harmony with their religious convictions.
For its part, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has pledged to use the legislative process and the courts to seek full revocation of the mandate, which the bishops rightly see as "the only complete solution to this religious liberty problem." They are joined in their efforts by a growing coalition of religious leaders that regard this attack on Catholic conscience rights as but one battle in a larger war against religious liberty being waged by the Obama administration.
The administration's pattern of disregarding religious liberty concerns is well documented. In the past year, Obama's Justice Department has argued in court that defenders of traditional marriage — the most visible segment of which are observant Catholics and bishops — should be regarded in law as the equivalent of racists. His National Labor Relations Board has issued rulings against two Catholic colleges, saying that they are not sufficiently Catholic to warrant religious exemptions from federal labor law — a breach of the longstanding precedent in which religious bodies, not government officials, decide who qualifies as a member of a particular church. And his Justice Department recently argued before the Supreme Court for the effective gutting of the "ministerial exception" that allows religious bodies to hire and fire employees without government interference. In a unanimous rebuke last month, all nine Supreme Court justices rejected the administration's position as a violation of the First Amendment.
Yet Obama remains undaunted, pressing forward with his controversial contraception mandate despite the mounting election-year backlash. His refusal to offer a meaningful compromise on this issue should give Catholic swing voters serious pause when considering a second Obama term. If this is how the president addresses their religious liberty concerns in an election year, just imagine how he will treat them when he no longer needs the Catholic vote.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Every Catholic Bishop Opposes Obama Mandate, Lutherans Too
From: LifeNews.com
Every one of the 181 Catholic bishops in the United States have now issued individual comments, statements or opinion columns condemning the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs.
Thomas Peters, who runs the American Papist blog, has been compiling the statements from each bishop since Obama first put the mandate in place last month.
“From Portland, Maine to San Diego, California; From Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington,” Peters writes.
“Every single Roman Catholic bishop in the United States has condemned in public the Obamacare HHS mandate — all 181 bishops who lead dioceses in the U.S. have spoken.”
“This is a simply incredible, unified, universal Catholic witness on this critical issue of religious freedom,” peters adds. “I am no longer able to find a single Roman Catholic bishop who has NOT spoken out against the mandate publicly. It is also my presumption that this conclusion applies to all Eastern Rite and Sui Iuris bishops in the U.S. It’s a complimentary sign of Catholic solidarity that so many Catholics across the country proudly helped me add their bishop’s name to this list.”
Peters has also compiled a listing of Catholic institutions that have spoken out against the mandate and that number is now at 30 and continues to grow.
But Catholics are not the only pro-life Americans upset by Obama’s attack on religious freedom by having them violate their conscience on pro-life issues.
Reverend Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, told members of Congress at a hearing on the mandate yesterday that Baptists are strongly opposed.
“We deem this recent government mandate as an infringement upon the beliefs and practices of various religious communities. Therefore, we voice our public objections in solidarity with those who cherish their religious liberties,” he said. “The decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to require virtually all health plans to comply with this mandate will have the effect of forcing many religious organizations to choose between following the letter of the law or operating within the framework of their religious tenets.”
He continued, “We add our voice to the long list of those who have championed their God-given right to freely exercise their religious beliefs according to the dictates of their faith, and to provide compassionate care and clear Christian witness to society’s most vulnerable, without government encroachment.
“I loathe the partisan nature of this discussion….I’m here for one reason, I am here because there is a narrow but very significant provision in HHS [regulations] that is I believe is very dangerous to religious people with our kind of convictions and I believe it’s also dangerous to any religious people who have unique convictions, so that’s why I am here,” Harrisons said.
John Yeats, executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention, which includes about 400,000 members, called the mandate “a frontal attack on our religious liberty” and will be teaming up with Archbishop Robert J. Carlson and others next month for a Rally for Religious Liberty at the Missouri State Capitol.
Yeats noted that Missouri Baptist universities will be forced to deal with a ruling that “seeks to secularize the institutions of faith we have built for purposes of faith.”
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik,Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, said many people of the Jewish faith are also opposed.
“In refusing to extend religious liberty beyond the parameters of what the administration chooses to deem religious conduct, the administration denies people of faith the ability to define their religious activity.
Therefore, not only does the new regulation threaten religious liberty in the narrow sense, in requiring Catholic communities to violate their religious tenets, but also the administration impedes religious liberty by unilaterally redefining what it means to be religious,” he said.
“The President’s spokesman recently when speaking about this subject said that what their concern is that they don’t want religious employers or organization restricting access to specific prescriptions etc. but of course those who have a religious objection are not seeking in America to restrict their access to it, what they are seeking is the freedom in their own right not to facilitate something that violates the tenants of their own faith,” Soloveichik said.
Laura Champion, M.D., Medical Director, Calvin College Health Services, said mainline Protestants also oppose the mandate.
She told the hearing: “Even when Americans hold vastly different views on the sanctity of life, this mandate raises a point that should be examined by all: do we value religious freedom in our country or not? Further, the mandate elevates contraception and abortive drugs to the level of preventative health care. They are not. Plan B and Ella should not be considered equivalent to cancer screening or vaccinations. Pregnancy is not a disease. This is a premise that I reject both religiously and medically.”
Champion added, “This is not about politics, this is not about contraception, and this is not about depriving women of health care. Rather, this is personal. This is about my daily life as a physician, a Christian, and a Medical Services Director. Whether I will be able as a physician to practice medicine within my belief system.
Whether Calvin College will be able to continue its historic tradition of living out the faith it teaches. A government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people, should not force the people to violate their consciences.”
The panel that put together the mandate has been condemned for only having pro-abortion members even though polling shows Americans are opposed to the mandate.
More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.
H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.
Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.
Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.
The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”
The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.
The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.
The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.
Every one of the 181 Catholic bishops in the United States have now issued individual comments, statements or opinion columns condemning the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs.
Thomas Peters, who runs the American Papist blog, has been compiling the statements from each bishop since Obama first put the mandate in place last month.
“From Portland, Maine to San Diego, California; From Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington,” Peters writes.
“Every single Roman Catholic bishop in the United States has condemned in public the Obamacare HHS mandate — all 181 bishops who lead dioceses in the U.S. have spoken.”
“This is a simply incredible, unified, universal Catholic witness on this critical issue of religious freedom,” peters adds. “I am no longer able to find a single Roman Catholic bishop who has NOT spoken out against the mandate publicly. It is also my presumption that this conclusion applies to all Eastern Rite and Sui Iuris bishops in the U.S. It’s a complimentary sign of Catholic solidarity that so many Catholics across the country proudly helped me add their bishop’s name to this list.”
Peters has also compiled a listing of Catholic institutions that have spoken out against the mandate and that number is now at 30 and continues to grow.
But Catholics are not the only pro-life Americans upset by Obama’s attack on religious freedom by having them violate their conscience on pro-life issues.
Reverend Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, President of The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, told members of Congress at a hearing on the mandate yesterday that Baptists are strongly opposed.
“We deem this recent government mandate as an infringement upon the beliefs and practices of various religious communities. Therefore, we voice our public objections in solidarity with those who cherish their religious liberties,” he said. “The decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to require virtually all health plans to comply with this mandate will have the effect of forcing many religious organizations to choose between following the letter of the law or operating within the framework of their religious tenets.”
He continued, “We add our voice to the long list of those who have championed their God-given right to freely exercise their religious beliefs according to the dictates of their faith, and to provide compassionate care and clear Christian witness to society’s most vulnerable, without government encroachment.
“I loathe the partisan nature of this discussion….I’m here for one reason, I am here because there is a narrow but very significant provision in HHS [regulations] that is I believe is very dangerous to religious people with our kind of convictions and I believe it’s also dangerous to any religious people who have unique convictions, so that’s why I am here,” Harrisons said.
John Yeats, executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention, which includes about 400,000 members, called the mandate “a frontal attack on our religious liberty” and will be teaming up with Archbishop Robert J. Carlson and others next month for a Rally for Religious Liberty at the Missouri State Capitol.
Yeats noted that Missouri Baptist universities will be forced to deal with a ruling that “seeks to secularize the institutions of faith we have built for purposes of faith.”
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik,Director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, said many people of the Jewish faith are also opposed.
“In refusing to extend religious liberty beyond the parameters of what the administration chooses to deem religious conduct, the administration denies people of faith the ability to define their religious activity.
Therefore, not only does the new regulation threaten religious liberty in the narrow sense, in requiring Catholic communities to violate their religious tenets, but also the administration impedes religious liberty by unilaterally redefining what it means to be religious,” he said.
“The President’s spokesman recently when speaking about this subject said that what their concern is that they don’t want religious employers or organization restricting access to specific prescriptions etc. but of course those who have a religious objection are not seeking in America to restrict their access to it, what they are seeking is the freedom in their own right not to facilitate something that violates the tenants of their own faith,” Soloveichik said.
Laura Champion, M.D., Medical Director, Calvin College Health Services, said mainline Protestants also oppose the mandate.
She told the hearing: “Even when Americans hold vastly different views on the sanctity of life, this mandate raises a point that should be examined by all: do we value religious freedom in our country or not? Further, the mandate elevates contraception and abortive drugs to the level of preventative health care. They are not. Plan B and Ella should not be considered equivalent to cancer screening or vaccinations. Pregnancy is not a disease. This is a premise that I reject both religiously and medically.”
Champion added, “This is not about politics, this is not about contraception, and this is not about depriving women of health care. Rather, this is personal. This is about my daily life as a physician, a Christian, and a Medical Services Director. Whether I will be able as a physician to practice medicine within my belief system.
Whether Calvin College will be able to continue its historic tradition of living out the faith it teaches. A government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people, should not force the people to violate their consciences.”
The panel that put together the mandate has been condemned for only having pro-abortion members even though polling shows Americans are opposed to the mandate.
More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.
H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.
Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.
Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.
The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”
The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.
The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.
The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.
Health mandate vs. religion By Senator Scott Brown
From: The Boston Herald
Republicans and Democrats don’t come together nearly enough these days, and when we do it’s usually because of something we all recognize as clearly out of line. It takes a really bad idea to reveal our shared convictions on issues bigger than politics. That is the case with the new mandate from the Obama administration requiring religious organizations to offer insurance coverage for practices that go against the teachings of their church, violate the tenets of their faith and step on their constitutional protections.
Basically the government is saying, “Just do what you’re told, and leave the moral questions to us.” This runs against religious liberty, the Constitution, the consciences of millions of Americans and the independent spirit of Massachusetts. We don’t take well to imperious commands from Washington, and if we meekly submit to this mandate, you can be sure that a lot more will follow.
It was right here in Plymouth, after all, that pilgrims from Europe established a colony because of religious persecution. That tradition runs so deep that my predecessor, Sen. Ted Kennedy, believed just as I do: Religious liberty requires a conscience exemption in health care for Catholics and people of other faiths.
As a husband and father of two daughters, I believe that insurance companies should have to cover the services that women want and rely on, and that is the way I have voted. But I also recognize that there are some people who, based on their deepest moral and religious convictions, don’t agree with me regarding some of those services. My position is that we need to respect their rights too.
This latest mandate under government-controlled health care is one reason why I campaigned and voted against Obamacare in the first place. It operates by broad dictation from Washington, showing no respect for the judgment, needs or rights of individual Americans and the states. And it opens the door to endless abuses of power such as this latest mandate.
This is why I strongly support a bipartisan bill in the Senate that provides a conscience exemption from the Obamacare mandate. In effect, the bill would simply restore the relevant laws on conscience protection that existed before Obamacare removed them.
Critics would have you believe America would be turning back to the Dark Ages where evil employers would deny coverage for any illness at their personal whim. In fact, we would be returning to the way things were in 2010. There was no epidemic of employers objecting to routine insurance services then, and there will not be in the future.
The legislation I support borrows language directly from a bill sponsored by the late Sen. Kennedy in 1995, which provided an exemption for health care workers so they would not be required to provide “an item or service” they found objectionable based on “religious belief or moral conviction.”
I believe it’s possible to provide women with access to the health care they want, while at the same time protecting the rights of Americans to follow their religious beliefs, just as we did before Obamacare. The conscience exemption is a matter of fundamental fairness — and a right to be protected for all Americans, of every party and every faith.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
HHS Prohibited Panel Developing Contraception Mandate from Considering ‘Cost Effectiveness’
From: CNSNews.com
There would be no consideration of cost effectiveness.
That was the explicit condition that the Department of Health and Human Services imposed on the panel of scientists it commissioned to develop the “preventive services” mandate that will require virtually all health-insurance plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and contraceptives—including those that cause abortions.
The fact that HHS prohibited the panel from considering the cost effectiveness of the mandate it developed sharply contrasts with President Obama’s declaration at the White House last Friday that his administration had adopted the panel’s recommendations precisely because they will “make the overall cost of health care lower”
One scientist who served on the panel, meanwhile, suggested in a dissenting opinion that the panel’s recommendations in fact might not be cost effective and that the panel’s process for arriving at its recommendations “tended to result in a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through a lens of advocacy.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) that Obama signed in 2010 included a provision that all new health care plans would be required to cover “preventive services” without charging any fees or co-pay to the insured. The law allowed the secretary of health and human services to determine which “preventive services” would be mandated for women.
HHS commissioned and funded a committee of scientists, operating under the auspices of the Institute of Medicine (a part of the National Academies of Sciences), to recommend which “preventive services” for women should be included, cost free, in all insurance plans.
The panel—The Committee on Preventive Services for Women--had only 6 months to do its work and met only 5 times. On July 19, 2011, it issued a report with its recommendations. These included the following: "The committee recommends for consideration as a preventive service for women: the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for women with reproductive capacity."
Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 1 of last year, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued the panel's contraception-sterilization recommendation as a new federal regulation—set to take effect on Aug. 1 of this year.
In its report, the committee had noted the short time in which it had to work and repeatedly reiterated HHS's order that it could not consider cost effectiveness in determining its recommendations.
“The committee met five times within six months,” the report said.
“The cost-effectiveness of screening or services could not be a factor for the committee to consider in its analysis leading to its recommendations,” the report said.
“However, it should be noted that the committee did not have adequate time or resources to conduct its own meta-analyses or comprehensive systematic review of each preventive service,” the committee warned.
“Finally,” the committee said, “cost-effectiveness was explicitly excluded as a factor that the committee could use in developing recommendations, and so the committee process could not evaluate preventive services on that basis.”
“Furthermore,” the committee said, “for consistency in approach with the other three guidelines used by the ACA and given the time limitations for this study, the committee was restricted from considering cost-effectiveness in its process for identifying gaps in current recommendations.”
One of the 16 scientists on the panel—Prof. Anthony Lo Sasso a senior research scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health--issued a dissenting report. He criticized the panel’s process for lack a rigorous analytical method and for filtering things "through a lens of advocacy.” He also suggested there was good reason to believe the panel's recommendations might not be cost effective.
“Readers of the Report should be clear on the facts that the recommendations were made without high quality, systematic evidence of the preventive nature of the services considered,” Lo Sasso wrote. “Put differently, evidence that use of the services in question leads to lower rates of disability or disease and increased rates of well-being is generally absent.
“The view of this dissent,” wrote Lo Sasso, “is that the committee process for evaluation of the evidence lacked transparency and was largely subject to the preferences of the committee’s composition. Troublingly, the process tended to result in a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through the lends of advocacy. An abiding principle in the evaluation of the evidence and the recommendations put forth as a consequence should be transparency and strict objectivity, but the committee failed to demonstrate these principles in the Report.”
Lo Sasso also raised a question about the potential cost effectiveness of offering some preventive services for free because it would create a “benign moral hazard”—leading more people to utilize the free service.
“Whether coverage of preventive service leads to a reduction in healthcare expenditure depends on the fraction of enrollees using the service before the service becomes covered and the magnitude of the response among enrollees who experience the reduction in out-of-pocket price,” wrote Lo Sasso. “Knowing how elastic patient demand is to preventive services is a critical element to a coverage decision even if one already has good estimates of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. This is self-evidently a useful parameter to know for any preventive service because it highlights the impact that first-dollar coverage of the service will have, perhaps in relation to other forms of outreach.”
Because the committee was not given the time to do a serious analysis of the real impact of the recommended “preventive services,” Lo Sasso recommended that Secretary Sebelius not mandate the services “until such time as the evidence can be objectively and systematically evaluated.”
Despite the fact that this scientifically panel charged with coming up with the recommended preventive services had been expressly forbidden from looking at their cost effectiveness, President Obama declared that his administration had moved forward with the recommendations precisely because of their cost effectiveness.
“As part of the health care reform law that I signed last year, all insurance plans are required to cover preventive care at no cost,” Obama said last Friday at the White House. “That means free check-ups, free mammograms, immunizations and other basic services. We fought for this because it saves lives and it saves money--for families, for businesses, for government, for everybody. That’s because it’s a lot cheaper to prevent an illness than to treat one.
“We also accepted a recommendation from the experts at the Institute of Medicine that when it comes to women, preventive care should include coverage of contraceptive services such as birth control,” said Obama. “In addition to family planning, doctors often prescribe contraception as a way to reduce the risks of ovarian and other cancers, and treat a variety of different ailments. And we know that the overall cost of health care is lower when women have access to contraceptive services."
There would be no consideration of cost effectiveness.
That was the explicit condition that the Department of Health and Human Services imposed on the panel of scientists it commissioned to develop the “preventive services” mandate that will require virtually all health-insurance plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and contraceptives—including those that cause abortions.
The fact that HHS prohibited the panel from considering the cost effectiveness of the mandate it developed sharply contrasts with President Obama’s declaration at the White House last Friday that his administration had adopted the panel’s recommendations precisely because they will “make the overall cost of health care lower”
One scientist who served on the panel, meanwhile, suggested in a dissenting opinion that the panel’s recommendations in fact might not be cost effective and that the panel’s process for arriving at its recommendations “tended to result in a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through a lens of advocacy.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) that Obama signed in 2010 included a provision that all new health care plans would be required to cover “preventive services” without charging any fees or co-pay to the insured. The law allowed the secretary of health and human services to determine which “preventive services” would be mandated for women.
HHS commissioned and funded a committee of scientists, operating under the auspices of the Institute of Medicine (a part of the National Academies of Sciences), to recommend which “preventive services” for women should be included, cost free, in all insurance plans.
The panel—The Committee on Preventive Services for Women--had only 6 months to do its work and met only 5 times. On July 19, 2011, it issued a report with its recommendations. These included the following: "The committee recommends for consideration as a preventive service for women: the full range of Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for women with reproductive capacity."
Less than two weeks later, on Aug. 1 of last year, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued the panel's contraception-sterilization recommendation as a new federal regulation—set to take effect on Aug. 1 of this year.
In its report, the committee had noted the short time in which it had to work and repeatedly reiterated HHS's order that it could not consider cost effectiveness in determining its recommendations.
“The committee met five times within six months,” the report said.
“The cost-effectiveness of screening or services could not be a factor for the committee to consider in its analysis leading to its recommendations,” the report said.
“However, it should be noted that the committee did not have adequate time or resources to conduct its own meta-analyses or comprehensive systematic review of each preventive service,” the committee warned.
“Finally,” the committee said, “cost-effectiveness was explicitly excluded as a factor that the committee could use in developing recommendations, and so the committee process could not evaluate preventive services on that basis.”
“Furthermore,” the committee said, “for consistency in approach with the other three guidelines used by the ACA and given the time limitations for this study, the committee was restricted from considering cost-effectiveness in its process for identifying gaps in current recommendations.”
One of the 16 scientists on the panel—Prof. Anthony Lo Sasso a senior research scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Public Health--issued a dissenting report. He criticized the panel’s process for lack a rigorous analytical method and for filtering things "through a lens of advocacy.” He also suggested there was good reason to believe the panel's recommendations might not be cost effective.
“Readers of the Report should be clear on the facts that the recommendations were made without high quality, systematic evidence of the preventive nature of the services considered,” Lo Sasso wrote. “Put differently, evidence that use of the services in question leads to lower rates of disability or disease and increased rates of well-being is generally absent.
“The view of this dissent,” wrote Lo Sasso, “is that the committee process for evaluation of the evidence lacked transparency and was largely subject to the preferences of the committee’s composition. Troublingly, the process tended to result in a mix of objective and subjective determinations filtered through the lends of advocacy. An abiding principle in the evaluation of the evidence and the recommendations put forth as a consequence should be transparency and strict objectivity, but the committee failed to demonstrate these principles in the Report.”
Lo Sasso also raised a question about the potential cost effectiveness of offering some preventive services for free because it would create a “benign moral hazard”—leading more people to utilize the free service.
“Whether coverage of preventive service leads to a reduction in healthcare expenditure depends on the fraction of enrollees using the service before the service becomes covered and the magnitude of the response among enrollees who experience the reduction in out-of-pocket price,” wrote Lo Sasso. “Knowing how elastic patient demand is to preventive services is a critical element to a coverage decision even if one already has good estimates of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. This is self-evidently a useful parameter to know for any preventive service because it highlights the impact that first-dollar coverage of the service will have, perhaps in relation to other forms of outreach.”
Because the committee was not given the time to do a serious analysis of the real impact of the recommended “preventive services,” Lo Sasso recommended that Secretary Sebelius not mandate the services “until such time as the evidence can be objectively and systematically evaluated.”
Despite the fact that this scientifically panel charged with coming up with the recommended preventive services had been expressly forbidden from looking at their cost effectiveness, President Obama declared that his administration had moved forward with the recommendations precisely because of their cost effectiveness.
“As part of the health care reform law that I signed last year, all insurance plans are required to cover preventive care at no cost,” Obama said last Friday at the White House. “That means free check-ups, free mammograms, immunizations and other basic services. We fought for this because it saves lives and it saves money--for families, for businesses, for government, for everybody. That’s because it’s a lot cheaper to prevent an illness than to treat one.
“We also accepted a recommendation from the experts at the Institute of Medicine that when it comes to women, preventive care should include coverage of contraceptive services such as birth control,” said Obama. “In addition to family planning, doctors often prescribe contraception as a way to reduce the risks of ovarian and other cancers, and treat a variety of different ailments. And we know that the overall cost of health care is lower when women have access to contraceptive services."
Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Jewish Leaders Swear Disobedience to HHS Contraception Mandate
From: CNSNews.com
Would you go to jail -- or even close down your hospitals and schools -- rather than violate your religious faith, a Republican lawmaker asked religious leaders at a House hearing on Thursday. The answer, given under oath, was unanimous: They will disobey.
"We're not going to violate our consciences," William E. Lori, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., told Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) in response to Gowdy's question about the Obama administration's contraception mandate.
The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church's Missouri Synod, said "Yes, I would, clearly" rather go to jail.
"I'd like to be in his cell," said Dr. Ben Mitchell, a philosophy professor at Union University. ("We'll try to work that out," Rep. Gowdy said, prompting laughter.)
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee that freedom of conscience and of religion "is first and most sacred to our country."
And finally, Dr. Craig Mitchell, an ethics professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Rep. Gowdy, "This is not the kind of thing that we can afford to play with. This is essential to our country."
Gowdy suggested that maybe the Obama administration really wants to close down religiously affiliated hospitals and schools:
"Well, just so everybody understand what is going to happen -- These guys are either going to go to jail because they won't violate their religious beliefs, or the hospitals and the schools are going to close, which means governemnt is going to get bigger, because they're going to have to fill the void that is left when you guys quit doing it. And maybe that's what they wanted all along."
Thursday's hearing, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), was about the "basic question of religious freedom, and whether or not protection will be afforded to religious institutions who wish to follow their conscience in refusing to pay for products they find morally objectionable."
The Obama administration, as part of its health care overhaul, has ordered most health care plans to provide contraception -- including sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs -- as part of free, preventive care coverage.
The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is morally wrong and impermissible, and while churches themselves will not have to provide such coverage, it must be available at no cost to women working at Catholic hospitals and universities, for example.
"A government policy that encroaches on the conscientious objections of religious groups concerns all Americans who value the protections of the First Amendment," Issa said.
Transcript follows:
Gowdy: Bishop, would you rather close down your hospitals and your schools than to comply with a governmental edict that violates your faith?
Bishop William E. Lori: We are not going to violate our consciences.
Gowdy: Reverend Harrison, you've already spoken with respect to civil disobedience. I believe you said you'd sooner go to jail than violate your conscience?
Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison: "Yes, I would, clearly."
Gowdy: Dr. Mitchell?
Dr. Ben Mitchell: I'd like to be in his cell.
Gowdy: We'll try and work that out. (laughter) Rabbi?
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Freedom of conscience and of religion, congressman, is first and most sacred to Americans.
Gowdy: Dr. Mitchell?
Dr. Craig Mitchell: This is not the kind of thing that we can afford to play with. This is essential our country.
Rep. Gowdy: "Well, just so everybody understand what is going to happen: These guys are either going to go to jail because they won't violate their religious beliefs, or the hospitals and the schools are going to close, which means government is going to get bigger, because they're going to have to fill the void that is left when you guys quit doing it. And maybe that's what they wanted all along."
Would you go to jail -- or even close down your hospitals and schools -- rather than violate your religious faith, a Republican lawmaker asked religious leaders at a House hearing on Thursday. The answer, given under oath, was unanimous: They will disobey.
"We're not going to violate our consciences," William E. Lori, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., told Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) in response to Gowdy's question about the Obama administration's contraception mandate.
The Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of the Lutheran Church's Missouri Synod, said "Yes, I would, clearly" rather go to jail.
"I'd like to be in his cell," said Dr. Ben Mitchell, a philosophy professor at Union University. ("We'll try to work that out," Rep. Gowdy said, prompting laughter.)
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik of Yeshiva University told the House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee that freedom of conscience and of religion "is first and most sacred to our country."
And finally, Dr. Craig Mitchell, an ethics professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Rep. Gowdy, "This is not the kind of thing that we can afford to play with. This is essential to our country."
Gowdy suggested that maybe the Obama administration really wants to close down religiously affiliated hospitals and schools:
"Well, just so everybody understand what is going to happen -- These guys are either going to go to jail because they won't violate their religious beliefs, or the hospitals and the schools are going to close, which means governemnt is going to get bigger, because they're going to have to fill the void that is left when you guys quit doing it. And maybe that's what they wanted all along."
Thursday's hearing, chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), was about the "basic question of religious freedom, and whether or not protection will be afforded to religious institutions who wish to follow their conscience in refusing to pay for products they find morally objectionable."
The Obama administration, as part of its health care overhaul, has ordered most health care plans to provide contraception -- including sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs -- as part of free, preventive care coverage.
The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is morally wrong and impermissible, and while churches themselves will not have to provide such coverage, it must be available at no cost to women working at Catholic hospitals and universities, for example.
"A government policy that encroaches on the conscientious objections of religious groups concerns all Americans who value the protections of the First Amendment," Issa said.
Transcript follows:
Gowdy: Bishop, would you rather close down your hospitals and your schools than to comply with a governmental edict that violates your faith?
Bishop William E. Lori: We are not going to violate our consciences.
Gowdy: Reverend Harrison, you've already spoken with respect to civil disobedience. I believe you said you'd sooner go to jail than violate your conscience?
Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison: "Yes, I would, clearly."
Gowdy: Dr. Mitchell?
Dr. Ben Mitchell: I'd like to be in his cell.
Gowdy: We'll try and work that out. (laughter) Rabbi?
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: Freedom of conscience and of religion, congressman, is first and most sacred to Americans.
Gowdy: Dr. Mitchell?
Dr. Craig Mitchell: This is not the kind of thing that we can afford to play with. This is essential our country.
Rep. Gowdy: "Well, just so everybody understand what is going to happen: These guys are either going to go to jail because they won't violate their religious beliefs, or the hospitals and the schools are going to close, which means government is going to get bigger, because they're going to have to fill the void that is left when you guys quit doing it. And maybe that's what they wanted all along."
Panel Behind Obama Mandate Dominated by Pro-Abortion Orgs
From: LifeNews.com
A pro-life organization has access public records about the committee that made the recommendation to the Obama administration to adopt its new controversial health care mandate and found the panel was dominated by pro-abortion groups.
The Obama administration is coming under fire for producing a new Obamacare mandate regarding preventative services that forces religious employers to pay for abortion-causing drugs and birth control for their employees. Last week, Obama said his administration would advise the mandate to force insurance companies to provide the abortion-inducing drugs at no cost.
Now, HLI America indicates the mandate came about because of a collection of pro-abortion organizations and activists.
HLIA notes: “Through a search of public records, HLI America has been able to substantiate the claim that members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee who wrote Recommendation 5.5 have ideological commitments that raise serious questions about the supposed objectivity with which they considered the scientific evidence that led to their recommendation that the HHS mandate contraception and sterilization coverage as “preventive care.”
“The IOM members below have strong relationships with both Planned Parenthood and NARAL, and have actively supported pro-abortion candidates for public office,” the pro-life group adds. “This is by no means an exhaustive list of the involvement of the IOM committee members in pro-choice advocacy groups and pro-choice political campaigns. But these eleven members—out of a total of fifteen—demonstrate a more than casual commitment to the furthering of the abortion lobby.”
HLA determined that “not a single member of the committee has financially supported a pro-life candidate.”
According to HLA, the members of the panel leading to the Obama mandate included:
Claire Brindis is a member of the Board of Directors of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, as well as a member of NARAL’s Pro-Choice California “1969 Society,” which has been called by NARAL “a group of our most steadfast and generous donors.”
Angela Diaz is a former board member of “Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health,” an advocacy group that “work[s] to improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion.” Until just a few weeks ago she served as the senior vice president of the International Women’s Health Coalition and was on the board of directors from 2007-2010. Her biography on the IWHC’s website (which was recently removed) stated that she “has a deep and long commitment to IWHC’s mission and to the organization.” The IWHC is a pro-choice advocacy group that declares that “access to safe abortion is a human right” and that abortion and contraception are “universal and inalienable” rights.
Francisco Garcia has donated between $11,750 and $13,000 to candidates that support abortion since 2004. These pro-choice candidates include Raul Grijava and Barack Obama.
Kimberly Gregory, as indicated by public records, has donated $35,200 to the California Victory 2010 of the Democratic National Committee in support of Barbara Boxer.
Paula A. Johnson is the Chairwoman of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and is affiliated with the pro-abortion National Organization of Women (NOW). This year she will be the winner of NARAL’s 2011 “Champion for Choice” award. Public records indicate that since 2003 she has given between $9,550 and $11,000 each to the political campaigns of Pro-Choice candidates including Martha Coakley, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. She also has made contributions to Emily’s List, an organization dedicated to “electing pro-choice Democratic women.”
Roberta Ness has donated at least $2,500 to pro-abortion candidate John Kerry and to the Democratic National Committee.
Magda G. Peck is associated with a host of organizations that advocate for abortion and free access to contraception, and was on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs and served as both vice chair and chair of the board.
E. Albert Reece donated $1000 in 2010 to the campaign of pro-abortion politician Barbara Mikulski, the sponsor of the amendment that paved the way for recommendation 5.5.
Linda Rosenstock, committee chairwoman, has since October 2004 donated over $40,000 to pro-choice political candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and the Democratic National Committee.
Alina Salganicoff is the Vice President and Director of Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a major proponent of abortion and contraception on demand. She donated $950 to the Barack Obama and Judy Feder campaigns in 2008.
Carol Weisman has made $4,500 in political donations to pro-abortion candidates including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry and Judy Feder since 2000.
More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference today with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.
H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.
Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.
Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.
Bishops across the country have spoken out against the original mandate and are considering a lawsuit against it — with bishops in more than 164 locations across the United States issuing public statements against it or having letters opposing it printed in diocesan newspaper or read from the pulpit.
“We cannot — we will not comply with this unjust law,” said the letter from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”
The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”
The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.
The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.
The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.
A pro-life organization has access public records about the committee that made the recommendation to the Obama administration to adopt its new controversial health care mandate and found the panel was dominated by pro-abortion groups.
The Obama administration is coming under fire for producing a new Obamacare mandate regarding preventative services that forces religious employers to pay for abortion-causing drugs and birth control for their employees. Last week, Obama said his administration would advise the mandate to force insurance companies to provide the abortion-inducing drugs at no cost.
Now, HLI America indicates the mandate came about because of a collection of pro-abortion organizations and activists.
HLIA notes: “Through a search of public records, HLI America has been able to substantiate the claim that members of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee who wrote Recommendation 5.5 have ideological commitments that raise serious questions about the supposed objectivity with which they considered the scientific evidence that led to their recommendation that the HHS mandate contraception and sterilization coverage as “preventive care.”
“The IOM members below have strong relationships with both Planned Parenthood and NARAL, and have actively supported pro-abortion candidates for public office,” the pro-life group adds. “This is by no means an exhaustive list of the involvement of the IOM committee members in pro-choice advocacy groups and pro-choice political campaigns. But these eleven members—out of a total of fifteen—demonstrate a more than casual commitment to the furthering of the abortion lobby.”
HLA determined that “not a single member of the committee has financially supported a pro-life candidate.”
According to HLA, the members of the panel leading to the Obama mandate included:
Claire Brindis is a member of the Board of Directors of the NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation, as well as a member of NARAL’s Pro-Choice California “1969 Society,” which has been called by NARAL “a group of our most steadfast and generous donors.”
Angela Diaz is a former board member of “Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health,” an advocacy group that “work[s] to improve access to comprehensive reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion.” Until just a few weeks ago she served as the senior vice president of the International Women’s Health Coalition and was on the board of directors from 2007-2010. Her biography on the IWHC’s website (which was recently removed) stated that she “has a deep and long commitment to IWHC’s mission and to the organization.” The IWHC is a pro-choice advocacy group that declares that “access to safe abortion is a human right” and that abortion and contraception are “universal and inalienable” rights.
Francisco Garcia has donated between $11,750 and $13,000 to candidates that support abortion since 2004. These pro-choice candidates include Raul Grijava and Barack Obama.
Kimberly Gregory, as indicated by public records, has donated $35,200 to the California Victory 2010 of the Democratic National Committee in support of Barbara Boxer.
Paula A. Johnson is the Chairwoman of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and is affiliated with the pro-abortion National Organization of Women (NOW). This year she will be the winner of NARAL’s 2011 “Champion for Choice” award. Public records indicate that since 2003 she has given between $9,550 and $11,000 each to the political campaigns of Pro-Choice candidates including Martha Coakley, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. She also has made contributions to Emily’s List, an organization dedicated to “electing pro-choice Democratic women.”
Roberta Ness has donated at least $2,500 to pro-abortion candidate John Kerry and to the Democratic National Committee.
Magda G. Peck is associated with a host of organizations that advocate for abortion and free access to contraception, and was on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Nebraska and Council Bluffs and served as both vice chair and chair of the board.
E. Albert Reece donated $1000 in 2010 to the campaign of pro-abortion politician Barbara Mikulski, the sponsor of the amendment that paved the way for recommendation 5.5.
Linda Rosenstock, committee chairwoman, has since October 2004 donated over $40,000 to pro-choice political candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, and the Democratic National Committee.
Alina Salganicoff is the Vice President and Director of Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a major proponent of abortion and contraception on demand. She donated $950 to the Barack Obama and Judy Feder campaigns in 2008.
Carol Weisman has made $4,500 in political donations to pro-abortion candidates including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry and Judy Feder since 2000.
More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference today with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.
H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.
Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.
Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.
Bishops across the country have spoken out against the original mandate and are considering a lawsuit against it — with bishops in more than 164 locations across the United States issuing public statements against it or having letters opposing it printed in diocesan newspaper or read from the pulpit.
“We cannot — we will not comply with this unjust law,” said the letter from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”
The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”
The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.
The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.
The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.
Are the Elites Going after the Catholic Church?
EconomicPolicyJournal.com: Are the Elites Going after the Catholic Church?: First, we had President Obama order that all Catholic employer-sponsored health insurance cover contraception. He's changing the spin, after...
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Will the Bishops Go to the Mattresses?
From: Crisis Magazine
When some 40 bishops of the administrative committee of the national bishops’ conference gather March 14-15 at conference headquarters, they’ll be looking at the Obama administration’s January mandate to Catholic institutions to violate Catholic teaching as well as the problematical “accommodation” of religious concerns unveiled by the president February 10.
A series of ugly events sets the stage for the bishops’ deliberations.
Flash back to early November. Obama and Archbishop (now cardinal-designate) Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, met to discuss topics including tensions in the religious liberty area. “I left the meeting somewhat at peace,” Archbishop Dolan later said.
That meant he believed Obama was likely to give church-sponsored institutions a comprehensive exemption from a Department of Health and Human Services rule requiring virtually all private health care plans to cover sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception under the new national health plan known as Obamacare.
It was not to be. On January 20 HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, acting for the administration, released the rule’s presumably final version. Its only concession to the Church was a year to comply—“a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” Archbishop Dolan said angrily.
Many people saw in the administration’s move a payoff to Obama’s supporters in the birth control-abortion industry. Administration sensitivity to potential criticism was visible in the release of Sebelius’ announcement late in the day on a Friday, a familiar Washington tactic for minimizing news coverage. In the same vein, the one-year delay in compliance (“more time and flexibility to adapt,” Sebelius said) appeared aimed at keeping the issue out of the presidential campaign.
Furious reactions from bishops and other Church sources greeted the move. The administration’s message to Catholics, one bishop said, was, “To hell with you.” Even the liberal Washington Post editorialized against, while columnist E.J. Dionne, an Obama apologist, said Obama “botched” the issue and “threw his progressive Catholic allies”—like Mr. Dionne—“under the bus.”
Hence the February 10 accommodation—if it really is that. Among other things, the difficulty it raises from the point of view of the Church is that, like a key that opens a lock, it makes the health plan a Catholic institution provides to its employees the key needed for them to unlock coverage for contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization directly from the insurance carrier. There also are reasonable grounds for fearing that, no matter how the accountants structure it, costs of this coverage would be passed on to the Church.
If the bishops reject this deal, they don’t have a lot of options. Closing down thousands of Catholic institutions and programs isn’t likely. Remedial legislation pending in Congress has little chance of becoming law with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House. As for simply refusing to obey the HHS rule, it’s a last resort.
That leaves litigation. Three religiously sponsored lawsuits against the new mandate, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, Colorado Christian University, and the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) are underway. The bishops could decide to back these challenges or others.
Religion in America scored a smashing 9-0 victory over the Obama. administration in the Supreme Court a few weeks ago when the justices unanimously upheld the constitutional right of churches to decide ministerial personnel matters without government interference. Now the HHS mandate could also be headed for the court.
A quiet, closed-door meeting in Washington next month will be of crucial importance in shaping the Church’s response to the nation’s biggest church-state crisis in decades.
A series of ugly events sets the stage for the bishops’ deliberations.
Flash back to early November. Obama and Archbishop (now cardinal-designate) Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, met to discuss topics including tensions in the religious liberty area. “I left the meeting somewhat at peace,” Archbishop Dolan later said.
That meant he believed Obama was likely to give church-sponsored institutions a comprehensive exemption from a Department of Health and Human Services rule requiring virtually all private health care plans to cover sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception under the new national health plan known as Obamacare.
It was not to be. On January 20 HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, acting for the administration, released the rule’s presumably final version. Its only concession to the Church was a year to comply—“a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” Archbishop Dolan said angrily.
Many people saw in the administration’s move a payoff to Obama’s supporters in the birth control-abortion industry. Administration sensitivity to potential criticism was visible in the release of Sebelius’ announcement late in the day on a Friday, a familiar Washington tactic for minimizing news coverage. In the same vein, the one-year delay in compliance (“more time and flexibility to adapt,” Sebelius said) appeared aimed at keeping the issue out of the presidential campaign.
Furious reactions from bishops and other Church sources greeted the move. The administration’s message to Catholics, one bishop said, was, “To hell with you.” Even the liberal Washington Post editorialized against, while columnist E.J. Dionne, an Obama apologist, said Obama “botched” the issue and “threw his progressive Catholic allies”—like Mr. Dionne—“under the bus.”
Hence the February 10 accommodation—if it really is that. Among other things, the difficulty it raises from the point of view of the Church is that, like a key that opens a lock, it makes the health plan a Catholic institution provides to its employees the key needed for them to unlock coverage for contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization directly from the insurance carrier. There also are reasonable grounds for fearing that, no matter how the accountants structure it, costs of this coverage would be passed on to the Church.
If the bishops reject this deal, they don’t have a lot of options. Closing down thousands of Catholic institutions and programs isn’t likely. Remedial legislation pending in Congress has little chance of becoming law with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House. As for simply refusing to obey the HHS rule, it’s a last resort.
That leaves litigation. Three religiously sponsored lawsuits against the new mandate, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, Colorado Christian University, and the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) are underway. The bishops could decide to back these challenges or others.
Religion in America scored a smashing 9-0 victory over the Obama. administration in the Supreme Court a few weeks ago when the justices unanimously upheld the constitutional right of churches to decide ministerial personnel matters without government interference. Now the HHS mandate could also be headed for the court.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Abortion Groups Employ Sexist, Anti-Catholic Mandate Defense
From: LifeNews.com
On February 10, President Obama announced a revision to the HHS life-ending drug mandate. National Public Radio characterized the President’s action as addressing “concerns of the Catholic Church.” In doing so, wittingly or not, NPR read from the pro-abortion script.
In this most recent replay of this old script, abortion proponents dismiss opposition to the HHS mandate as a move by the “all-male hierarchy” of the Catholic Church to deny women’s rights. “The Bishops’ War on Women” is a rant intended to mischaracterize the issue as the one of equal healthcare rights for women. The strategy includes making the hierarchy of the Catholic Church the enemy of women because the bishops uphold Catholic teaching against the use of birth control. Hence, the constant reference by pro-abortionists to “the birth control mandate.”
The claims that the pro-life movement is limited to the Catholic hierarchy and that they are trying to control the U.S. government were used long ago by Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger. The aim then, and now, is to create a boogey-man that can be dismissed as marginal and extreme.
In 1926, Sanger unsuccessfully sought Congressional support for repeal of the Comstock Act. She wrote in the American Birth Control League’s newsletter that the predecessor group of what is now the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had created “a special legislative committee organized to block and defeat our legislation. They frankly state that they intend to legislate for non-Catholics according to the dictates of the church.”
No such committee existed, but Sanger tried to influence public opinion by suggesting that the Catholic Church hierarchy was her only opposition. Later, the pro-abortion lobby used Sanger’s tactic in the lead-up to Roe. Former abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a founder of NARAL, admitted that maligning the Catholic Church and claiming the hierarchy was the sole opponent to the abortion cause was a “key tactic” for the legalization of abortion.
Using Sanger’s strategy today, one pro-abortion writer characterizes the Catholic Church hierarchy as a “group of men with no real background in law or medicine, but blessed with a strong personal interest in women’s bodies” which has “quietly influenced all of the major anti-abortion legislation over the past several years.”
The president of NOW, Terry O’Neill, goes further, denying the right of the Church to hold and express its moral teaching, charging, “[F]or a bunch of men [Catholic bishops] who, forgive me, don’t get pregnant and who refuse to allow women into their own ranks of leadership, to presume to say that they can make a thing that has a conscience that trumps the conscience of an individual woman is simply laughable, but in a sad way.”
However, the truth is quite different. Opposition to the HHS mandate extends well beyond the “hierarchy,” and the reasons are not limited to shared opposition to contraception. A number of groups that do not oppose artificial contraception or sterilization, such as Americans United for Life, object to the mandate because it forces employers, against their conscientious moral beliefs, to offer plans that include FDA-approved “contraceptives” with abortifacient mechanisms of action.
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, insists that the HHS mandate “is not only a Catholic issue” about birth control, but affects evangelical seminaries and colleges which oppose abortion, [who] “will also be covered by this mandate and thus violate our own consciences” (because of the mandate’s inclusion of abortion-inducing drugs). Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose membership numbers 15 million, points out that the new HHS revision does not protect the numerous religious organizations that self-insure, such as the Southern Baptists do for over 200,000 missionaries, social workers, pastors, and others.
The HHS mandate violates conscience rights and religious liberty protected by the Constitution. Numerous non-Catholic religious organizations and leaders object to the mandate’s affront to religious liberty. These include a range of Protestant pastors and organizations (including the National Association of Evangelicals), representatives of Jewish groups (including the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America), and the Orthodox Church.
Members of Congress who are not Catholic, but recognize the risk to constitutional guarantees of religion freedom, are speaking out. Among them is U.S. Senator Orin Hatch, who stated in response to the announcement of the HHS revision, “This is about religious freedom, and anything short of a full exemption is no compromise.” And U.S. Representative Jim Jordan said, “Under these rules, a small business owner with religious objections to abortion-inducing drugs and contraception must either violate his religious beliefs or violate the law….This ObamaCare rule still tramples on Americans’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion.”
The abortion lobby will continue to frame the debate as one about the Catholic hierarchy and women’s rights. And though NARAL’s president characterizes the HHS mandate as “mainstream policy…in line with our country’s values and priorities,” it is already evident that millions of Americans do not agree. The ever-growing broad base of pro-life supporters and countless others who care about constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of conscience for all will work ceaselessly to defeat the abortion lobby’s lies.
Mother Dolores, nun who co-starred with Elvis, returns to the Oscars
From: USATODAY.com
If you spot a nun roaming the red carpet during the Oscar telecast Feb. 26, don't adjust your set.
Mother Dolores is not flying or singing, but the real deal — and the focus of God Is the Bigger Elvis, which is nominated in the best documentary short category and premieres April 5 on HBO
"It will be so nice to be back at the Oscars," says Mother Dolores, 73, the Benedictine nun who stars in the 37-minute visit to the Abbey of Regina Laudis, appropriately located in Bethlehem, Conn. "It's such a fun night."
If you spot a nun roaming the red carpet during the Oscar telecast Feb. 26, don't adjust your set.
Mother Dolores is not flying or singing, but the real deal — and the focus of God Is the Bigger Elvis, which is nominated in the best documentary short category and premieres April 5 on HBO
"It will be so nice to be back at the Oscars," says Mother Dolores, 73, the Benedictine nun who stars in the 37-minute visit to the Abbey of Regina Laudis, appropriately located in Bethlehem, Conn. "It's such a fun night."
Did she say back to the Oscars?
"The last time I was there was in 1959, when I was a presenter," says Mother Dolores, who is spiritual counselor to 38 other cloistered sisters. "This will be different".
Different defines the life of a young woman named Dolores Hart. Rewind to 1963. Hart is a wholesome 25-year-old starlet whose leading men have included Elvis Presley (Loving You, 1957), Montgomery Clift (Lonelyhearts, 1958) and George Hamilton (Where the Boys Are, 1960). She is about to sign a seven-figure contract with producer Hal Wallis. She is happily engaged to Los Angeles businessman Don Robinson.
And she walks away from it all to head behind the walls of Regina Laudis.
Crazy? No, just quietly confident.
"I adored Hollywood. I didn't leave because it was a place of sin," she says in a measured but upbeat tone that animates God Is the Bigger Elvis (a title taken from her simple explanation for her defection from the high life).
"I left Hollywood at the urging of a mysterious thing called vocation. It's a call that comes from another place that we call God because we don't have any other way to say it. It's a call of love. Why do you climb a mountain?"
What makes the documentary unique is that Regina Laudis is a profoundly private place. Visitors must remain outside the compound. Daily life is laced with prayer, song and a lot of hard work tending to gardens, livestock and crumbling infrastructure for which the sisters are trying to raise money through the New Horizons Renovation Project (abbeyofreginalaudis.com).
Mother Dolores says she allowed access to cameras not to help with fundraising but rather to assist with soul searching.
"We wanted to invite the world into another order of life that might give some hope," she says.
God director Rebecca Cammisa felt an instant connection to the topic when project partner Julie Anderson raised the idea. Cammisa's mother was a nun for 10 years before changing course.
"The question I had was, what makes someone with Dolores Hart's level of success choose this way of life?" says Cammisa, a 2010 Oscar nominee for her documentary about Mexican migrant children, Which Way Home.
"It's a countercultural choice, but this film will show people that these are highly educated, attractive women who had boyfriends and lovers but were living in a world that didn't have enough for them," she says.
Cammisa makes that point through interviews with Sister John Mary, 44, who in her pre-Regina Laudis life as Laura Adshead was a striking, Oxford-educated advertising executive whose New York lifestyle proved empty. Her addictions led her to Alcoholics Anonymous, and eventually the abbey.
"It was a hard decision to discuss A.A. in the film, but beyond the support of the community here, I also felt that maybe if I told my story, someone could identify with it and draw courage from it," she says.
Sister John Mary adds that "everyone has a story before we came here. Our lives carry on. I'm sure Mother Prioress (Mother Dolores' title at the abbey) took Hollywood with her in her heart."
She took more than that. Robinson, Hart's fiancé, was crushed by her decision to join the abbey. He never married, and he visited Mother Dolores every year until his death in December. One of the film's most touching moments shows the former couple saying goodbye after a visit last May. It would be the last time they would see each other.
"Oh, Don, he was such a champ…" The nun's voice trails off momentarily. Then it brightens. "He's with God now. So he'd better do something good for our filmmakers."
Actually, Mother Dolores has a measure of influence on this year's nominees: As a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, she receives DVDs of nominated movies and sometimes entertains at the abbey.
She vows silence on which films will get her votes, but she says she and her sisters enjoyed The Help a great deal; ditto Meryl Streep's performance in The Iron Lady and Brad Pitt's in Moneyball.
"I find the trends funny, though, because now we're back to silent films," she says, referring to Oscar nominee The Artist. "Maybe movies from the '60s will be hip again, who knows?"
Does she ever screen her romps with Elvis, Montgomery and George?
"Not much anymore. That thrill is gone," she says. "I know what I have here is the best thing I will ever have."
Figure That 98% of Catholic Women Use Birth Control Debunked
From: LifeNews.com
Abortion advocates and the White House are using a misleading figure to defend the new mandate the Obama administration put in place that requires insurance companies to offer birth control drugs that may cause abortions at no cost.
Both Obama administration officials and pro-abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood and NARAL are telling their members that 98% of Catholic women use contraception, a myth based on a misreading of a study published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood affiliate.
Lydia McGrew has published a lengthy refutation of the figure that is drawing praise for its insight and accuracy.
“The survey was limited to women between 15-44. Ah, well, that explains how we weren’t including the elderly, but it also means that the silly “percent of all Catholic women” thing should be chucked out right from the beginning,” she notes.
McGrew indicates the Guttmacher study also “excluded any women who were a) not sexually active, where that is defined as having had sexual intercourse in the past three months (there go all the nuns), b) postpartum, c) pregnant, or d) trying to get pregnant. In other words, the study was specifically designed (as the prose discussion on p. 8 makes explicit, in bold print) to include only women for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are “at risk” of becoming pregnant.”
She continues: “Whether or not it included women who considered themselves neither trying nor not trying to get pregnant (there are some such women in the world) is unclear. It’s also unclear whether it included women who have had their reproductive organs removed because of some medical problem. Presumably the study was intended to exclude women in both of these categories, as neither would count as a woman “at risk of an unintended pregnancy.”
McGrew writes: “Now, consider what all of this means as far as the representativeness of the sample for Catholic women. Surely there are a fair number of Catholic women between 15-44 who are not “at risk of an unintended pregnancy” for various reasons. It is plausible that this number is higher among Catholics than among non-Catholics. For one thing, a faithful Catholic woman in this age category who is not married is supposed to be remaining celibate. Hence she won’t fall into the “at-risk” category, and by the same token she won’t have any use for the “services” that the Obama administration is mandating be provided. Similarly, married Catholic women are probably more likely not to be attempting to avoid pregnancy, even using Natural Family Planning, than non-Catholic women. One would think they are also more likely to be pregnant or postpartum. And so on and so forth. In short, the deliberate design of the study to cover only women who, at the time of the study, were having sexual intercourse while regarding a pregnancy as unintended would be likely to make it unrepresentative of Catholics and particularly unrepresentative of devout Catholics. Yet the study is now being cited to show the percentage of Catholic women generally who are not following the teaching of the Catholic Church in this area! What is wrong with this picture?”
Tom Hoopes of CatholicVote reviewed both McGrew’s numbers and the initial study Guttmacher conducted.
“The results are even more skewed if you ask people at the top of a survey what religion they are. People who have never darkened the door of a Catholic Church will happily mark “Catholic” on such a survey. The behavior they report will count for or against Catholics the same regardless of their actual contact with Catholicism,” he writes. “This particular survey even admits that less than a third of its “Catholic” respondents even go to Mass once a week.”
“So, what do we know from the start: We aren’t dealing with practicing Catholics. In fact, a two-thirds majority of the Catholics in the survey are not eligible to receive communion, according to the U.S. bishops (see page 9), since they skip their Sunday obligation,” Hoopes continues.
“The most shocking news, though, is that the White House is spreading false information about Catholicism in order to provide cover as it removes religious liberties for Catholic organizations,” he concludes. “White House: Retract this statement and correct the record. Stop misinforming the public about my religion for your purposes.”
Abortion advocates and the White House are using a misleading figure to defend the new mandate the Obama administration put in place that requires insurance companies to offer birth control drugs that may cause abortions at no cost.
Both Obama administration officials and pro-abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood and NARAL are telling their members that 98% of Catholic women use contraception, a myth based on a misreading of a study published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood affiliate.
Lydia McGrew has published a lengthy refutation of the figure that is drawing praise for its insight and accuracy.
“The survey was limited to women between 15-44. Ah, well, that explains how we weren’t including the elderly, but it also means that the silly “percent of all Catholic women” thing should be chucked out right from the beginning,” she notes.
McGrew indicates the Guttmacher study also “excluded any women who were a) not sexually active, where that is defined as having had sexual intercourse in the past three months (there go all the nuns), b) postpartum, c) pregnant, or d) trying to get pregnant. In other words, the study was specifically designed (as the prose discussion on p. 8 makes explicit, in bold print) to include only women for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are “at risk” of becoming pregnant.”
She continues: “Whether or not it included women who considered themselves neither trying nor not trying to get pregnant (there are some such women in the world) is unclear. It’s also unclear whether it included women who have had their reproductive organs removed because of some medical problem. Presumably the study was intended to exclude women in both of these categories, as neither would count as a woman “at risk of an unintended pregnancy.”
McGrew writes: “Now, consider what all of this means as far as the representativeness of the sample for Catholic women. Surely there are a fair number of Catholic women between 15-44 who are not “at risk of an unintended pregnancy” for various reasons. It is plausible that this number is higher among Catholics than among non-Catholics. For one thing, a faithful Catholic woman in this age category who is not married is supposed to be remaining celibate. Hence she won’t fall into the “at-risk” category, and by the same token she won’t have any use for the “services” that the Obama administration is mandating be provided. Similarly, married Catholic women are probably more likely not to be attempting to avoid pregnancy, even using Natural Family Planning, than non-Catholic women. One would think they are also more likely to be pregnant or postpartum. And so on and so forth. In short, the deliberate design of the study to cover only women who, at the time of the study, were having sexual intercourse while regarding a pregnancy as unintended would be likely to make it unrepresentative of Catholics and particularly unrepresentative of devout Catholics. Yet the study is now being cited to show the percentage of Catholic women generally who are not following the teaching of the Catholic Church in this area! What is wrong with this picture?”
Tom Hoopes of CatholicVote reviewed both McGrew’s numbers and the initial study Guttmacher conducted.
“The results are even more skewed if you ask people at the top of a survey what religion they are. People who have never darkened the door of a Catholic Church will happily mark “Catholic” on such a survey. The behavior they report will count for or against Catholics the same regardless of their actual contact with Catholicism,” he writes. “This particular survey even admits that less than a third of its “Catholic” respondents even go to Mass once a week.”
“So, what do we know from the start: We aren’t dealing with practicing Catholics. In fact, a two-thirds majority of the Catholics in the survey are not eligible to receive communion, according to the U.S. bishops (see page 9), since they skip their Sunday obligation,” Hoopes continues.
“The most shocking news, though, is that the White House is spreading false information about Catholicism in order to provide cover as it removes religious liberties for Catholic organizations,” he concludes. “White House: Retract this statement and correct the record. Stop misinforming the public about my religion for your purposes.”
DC Archbishop Wuerl Letter on Obamacare Mandate
Dear Friends,
Last Friday President Obama attempted to respond to the strong objections that have been raised by the Catholic Church and other faith communities to the Department of Health and Human Services’ unprecedented mandate that would force religious institutions, in violation of their religious beliefs, to provide and pay for abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization. Unfortunately, the “accommodation” that the President announced still presents grave moral concerns and continues to violate our constitutionally protected religious liberty.
As for the insurance-related provisions themselves, the federal mandate remains essentially unchanged.The only “fix” offered by the President was to propose that insurance companies, instead of religious institutions directly, be required to cover procedures and products they find objectionable at no cost in their insurance policies. Regardless of how it is characterized, shifting the cost of these drugs and procedures to insurance companies does not make their requirement any less objectionable or lessen the infringement on our religious liberty and rights of conscience.The administration’s proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, particularly in the definition of who is and who is not a religious employer. Despite last month’s unanimous Supreme Court decision upholding the right of religious institutions to choose whom they appoint to teach their faith and carry out their mission, the administration remains unwavering in its attempt to assert control in matters of religion. Our Catholic schools, social service organizations, hospitals and universities are no less Catholic than our churches, but apparently, these institutions are not considered to be Catholic enough to meet the definition required by the HHS mandate for a religious exemption.
For example, President Obama’s announcement does not provide any accommodation for the Archdiocese of Washington. Like many large organizations, both for-profit and non-profit, this archdiocese does not purchase group health insurance from insurance companies. In order to provide insurance consistent with our religious beliefs, our health benefit plan is a self-insured plan that extends coverage to 3,600 employees. This means that the archdiocese is the insurer and the archdiocese covers all claim costs. There is no insurance company involved. Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the HHS mandate, self-insured organizations like ours are treated the same as regular insurance providers. This means that like Aetna or Blue Cross, the archdiocese and other self-insured religious organizations would be required to both provide and pay for drugs and procedures we consider morally wrong in our employee health plans.
Even for religious institutions who are employers and who purchase group health insurance from insurance companies, the problem created by the mandate remains unresolved.Those institutions will still be compelled to purchase insurance policies that provide free abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization.Since these additional drugs and procedures will be automatically provided by the insurer by virtue of the insurance policy (even though not expressly listed in the policy), it is no response to our moral concerns to say that religious employers will not have to pay for them because their insurance companies will. Catholic institutions will be forced to pay for and maintain policies that enable their employees to receive insurance coverage of products and procedures that violate our religious convictions.
At this point, it appears that nothing has really changed. Religious employers are still being compelled to provide insurance plans that offer free abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations and contraceptives in violation of their religious freedom.
What is at stake here is a question of human freedom. The authors of the Bill of Rights enshrined freedom of religion as our nation’s first and founding principle. We should not be reduced to petitioning the government for rights that the Constitution already guarantees. The only complete solution to the problem that this mandate poses for religious liberty is for Congress to pass legislation to protect our freedom. The Respect for Rights of Conscience Act is one of several bills that have been introduced for this very purpose.
We cannot become complacent or allow ourselves to be distracted by incomplete proposals presented as definitive solutions. The Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty is working on a formal response and action steps. In the weeks and months ahead, please continue to pray and share this information with others so that we may reverse the effects of this misguided regulation.
In the hope that this information is helpful and with every good wish, I am
Faithfully in Christ,Donald Cardinal WuerlArchbishop of Washington
Monday, February 13, 2012
Archbishop Chaput: Obama HHS Mandate "Insulting, Dangerous"
From: LifeNews.com
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia is one of the most highly regarded Catholic bishops because of his ability to passionately defend the pro-life position. A new statement he released about President Barack Obama’s pro-abortion, anti-conscience mandate is drawing rave reviews.
Chaput’s statement follows in its entirety:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused on Jan. 20 to broaden the exception to its mandate that nearly all Catholic employers must cover contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization in their health-care plans.
An “accommodation” offered Friday by the White House did not solve the problem. Instead, it triggered withering criticism from legal scholars such as Notre Dame’s Carter Snead, Harvard’s Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton’s Robert George, and Catholic University of America president John Garvey, along with non-Catholic scholars including Yuval Levin, the religious liberty law firm the Becket Fund, and numerous Catholic and other organizations.
Many Catholics are confused and angry. They should be.
Quite a few Catholics supported President Obama in the last election, so the ironies here are bitter. Many feel betrayed. They’re baffled that the Obama administration would seek to coerce Catholic employers, private and corporate, to violate their religious convictions.
But it’s clear that such actions are developing into a pattern. Whether it was the administration’s early shift toward the anemic language of “freedom of worship” instead of the more historically grounded and robust concept of “freedom of religion” in key diplomatic discussions; or its troubling effort to regulate religious ministers recently rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court in the Hosanna Tabor case; or the revocation of the U.S. bishops’ conference human-trafficking grant for refusing to refer rape victims to abortion clinics, it seems obvious that this administration is – to put it generously – tone deaf to people of faith.
Philadelphians may wish to reflect on the following facts: The Archdiocesan Secretariat for Catholic Human Services spends $278 million annually on services to the community. About 4,000 employees make up our secretariat’s workforce. Catholic Social Services is the largest social-service agency in Pennsylvania and the largest residential care/social-service subcontractor with the Department of Human Services of the City of Philadelphia.
There’s more. Archdiocesan Catholic Health Care Services is the largest faith-based provider of long-term-care services to the poor and elderly in the five-county area, and the seventh-largest nationally.
And our Nutritional Development Services ministry serves more than eight million meals a year to schoolchildren, summer programs, and child-care centers. It also provides 2 million pounds of nonperishable food to needy families and the elderly through its Community Food Program.
Much of the money used by these ministries comes from public funding. But of course, the reason these ministries are trusted with public funding is that they do an excellent job. The service relationship works well without compromising the integrity of either the government or the Church. In fact, in a practical sense, government often benefits more than the Church.
It’s also important to note that many millions of the dollars disbursed are resources directly donated by faithful Catholics to carry out their Gospel mission to serve the needy. For the Church, this makes perfect sense: As a believing community, we share our resources freely and gladly. We’ll cooperate with anyone in service to the common good, so long as we are not forced to compromise our religious beliefs.
But the HHS mandate, including its latest variant, is belligerent, unnecessary, and deeply offensive to the content of Catholic belief. Any such mandate would make it morally compromising for us to provide health-care benefits to the staffs of our public-service ministries. Moreover, we cannot afford to be fooled – yet again – – by evasive and misleading allusions to the administration’s alleged “flexibility” on such issues. The HHS mandate needs to be rescinded.
Many critics are focusing on the details of this or that particular version of the HHS regulation – the narrowness of the religious exemption, the breadth of the mandate, the hollowness of the grace period. As useful as this approach may be, it risks wandering into the weeds. The White House response on these points is ambiguous and weak. The true magnitude of the issue is getting lost as just another debate about details.
In reality, no similarly aggressive attack on religious freedom in our country has occurred in recent memory.
The current administration prides itself on being measured and deliberate. The current HHS mandate needs to be understood as exactly that. Commentators are using words like “gaffe,” “ill conceived,” and “mistake” to describe the mandate. They’re wrong. It’s impossible to see this regulation as some happenstance policy. It has been too long in the making.
Despite all of its public apprehension about “culture warriors” on the political right in the past, the current administration has created an HHS mandate that is the embodiment of culture war. At its heart is a seemingly deep distrust of the formative role religious faith has on personal and social conduct, and a deep distaste for religion’s moral influence on public affairs. To say that this view is contrary to the Founders’ thinking and the record of American history would be an understatement.
Critics may characterize my words here as partisan or political. These are my personal views, and of course people are free to disagree. But it is this administration – not Catholic ministries, or institutions, or bishops – that chose the timing and nature of the fight. The onus is entirely on the White House, which also has the power to remove the issue from public conflict. Catholics should not be misled into accepting feeble compromises on issues of principle. The HHS mandate is bad law; and not merely bad, but dangerous and insulting. It needs to be withdrawn – now.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia is one of the most highly regarded Catholic bishops because of his ability to passionately defend the pro-life position. A new statement he released about President Barack Obama’s pro-abortion, anti-conscience mandate is drawing rave reviews.
Chaput’s statement follows in its entirety:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused on Jan. 20 to broaden the exception to its mandate that nearly all Catholic employers must cover contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization in their health-care plans.
An “accommodation” offered Friday by the White House did not solve the problem. Instead, it triggered withering criticism from legal scholars such as Notre Dame’s Carter Snead, Harvard’s Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton’s Robert George, and Catholic University of America president John Garvey, along with non-Catholic scholars including Yuval Levin, the religious liberty law firm the Becket Fund, and numerous Catholic and other organizations.
Many Catholics are confused and angry. They should be.
Quite a few Catholics supported President Obama in the last election, so the ironies here are bitter. Many feel betrayed. They’re baffled that the Obama administration would seek to coerce Catholic employers, private and corporate, to violate their religious convictions.
But it’s clear that such actions are developing into a pattern. Whether it was the administration’s early shift toward the anemic language of “freedom of worship” instead of the more historically grounded and robust concept of “freedom of religion” in key diplomatic discussions; or its troubling effort to regulate religious ministers recently rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court in the Hosanna Tabor case; or the revocation of the U.S. bishops’ conference human-trafficking grant for refusing to refer rape victims to abortion clinics, it seems obvious that this administration is – to put it generously – tone deaf to people of faith.
Philadelphians may wish to reflect on the following facts: The Archdiocesan Secretariat for Catholic Human Services spends $278 million annually on services to the community. About 4,000 employees make up our secretariat’s workforce. Catholic Social Services is the largest social-service agency in Pennsylvania and the largest residential care/social-service subcontractor with the Department of Human Services of the City of Philadelphia.
There’s more. Archdiocesan Catholic Health Care Services is the largest faith-based provider of long-term-care services to the poor and elderly in the five-county area, and the seventh-largest nationally.
And our Nutritional Development Services ministry serves more than eight million meals a year to schoolchildren, summer programs, and child-care centers. It also provides 2 million pounds of nonperishable food to needy families and the elderly through its Community Food Program.
Much of the money used by these ministries comes from public funding. But of course, the reason these ministries are trusted with public funding is that they do an excellent job. The service relationship works well without compromising the integrity of either the government or the Church. In fact, in a practical sense, government often benefits more than the Church.
It’s also important to note that many millions of the dollars disbursed are resources directly donated by faithful Catholics to carry out their Gospel mission to serve the needy. For the Church, this makes perfect sense: As a believing community, we share our resources freely and gladly. We’ll cooperate with anyone in service to the common good, so long as we are not forced to compromise our religious beliefs.
But the HHS mandate, including its latest variant, is belligerent, unnecessary, and deeply offensive to the content of Catholic belief. Any such mandate would make it morally compromising for us to provide health-care benefits to the staffs of our public-service ministries. Moreover, we cannot afford to be fooled – yet again – – by evasive and misleading allusions to the administration’s alleged “flexibility” on such issues. The HHS mandate needs to be rescinded.
Many critics are focusing on the details of this or that particular version of the HHS regulation – the narrowness of the religious exemption, the breadth of the mandate, the hollowness of the grace period. As useful as this approach may be, it risks wandering into the weeds. The White House response on these points is ambiguous and weak. The true magnitude of the issue is getting lost as just another debate about details.
In reality, no similarly aggressive attack on religious freedom in our country has occurred in recent memory.
The current administration prides itself on being measured and deliberate. The current HHS mandate needs to be understood as exactly that. Commentators are using words like “gaffe,” “ill conceived,” and “mistake” to describe the mandate. They’re wrong. It’s impossible to see this regulation as some happenstance policy. It has been too long in the making.
Despite all of its public apprehension about “culture warriors” on the political right in the past, the current administration has created an HHS mandate that is the embodiment of culture war. At its heart is a seemingly deep distrust of the formative role religious faith has on personal and social conduct, and a deep distaste for religion’s moral influence on public affairs. To say that this view is contrary to the Founders’ thinking and the record of American history would be an understatement.
Critics may characterize my words here as partisan or political. These are my personal views, and of course people are free to disagree. But it is this administration – not Catholic ministries, or institutions, or bishops – that chose the timing and nature of the fight. The onus is entirely on the White House, which also has the power to remove the issue from public conflict. Catholics should not be misled into accepting feeble compromises on issues of principle. The HHS mandate is bad law; and not merely bad, but dangerous and insulting. It needs to be withdrawn – now.
Obama's 'Compromise' Is Utterly Untenable, Requires Us To Become Complicit In Evil
From: CNSnews.com
Human Life International Pres. Father Shenan J. Boquet made the following statement in response to the Obama administration’s proposed “compromise” on the contraception/sterilization/abortifacient mandate:
“We at Human Life International stand with the Catholic bishops and a diverse group of organizations and individuals in rejecting the false compromise offered by the Obama administration in an apparent attempt to gain wider acceptance of the mandate that requires free coverage of contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drugs.
“Having closely examined all available information on the compromise, we are appalled at the cynicism displayed by both its content and the means by which it was announced. The original unjust mandate required that conscientious objectors to this policy would be forced to pay for insurance that will cover morally abhorrent ‘care.’ With the so-called compromise we are still forced to pay for insurance that covers procedures and drugs that directly contradict our religious beliefs. The compromise is a distinction without a difference and merely an accounting trick that does nothing to change the fact that we will have to pay for chemical abortions, sterilizations and contraception for any employee.
“The Obama administration's verbal engineering is an egregious and blatant attempt to divide certain Catholic organizations from others and from the bishops, all in an effort to secure even the thinnest possible façade of Catholic approval. Sadly, the administration has found prominent organizations to be complicit in this calculated move. It should be noted that though the bishops were not consulted on this compromise, it appears that Catholic Health Association (CHA) and Catholic Charities USA were consulted and their agreement secured before the bishops even had an opportunity to examine the proposal. The Obama administration’s proposal was clearly not an attempt at good faith dialogue and genuine compromise.
The apparent agreement between the Obama administration, CHA, Catholic Charities and Planned Parenthood is utterly untenable from a Catholic point of view, requiring that we become complicit in evil.
“It appears that the stalwart unified voice of bishops, laity, Catholics and all citizens of good will compelled the administration to offer this weak, symbolic compromise because of questions about what the mandate meant for President Obama’s reelection campaign. We have seen clearly the ideological goals this administration is pushing with this unjust mandate. We can only imagine what will be inflicted on Catholics and on all Americans should the president win reelection and not have to worry about currying favor with Catholics.
“Under the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’), the HHS has entirely too much unchecked power over health care in the United States, and given their history of disregard for both religious liberty and human life, we have no confidence that the federal government can be trusted to administer health care that respects the dignity of every human person from conception to natural death. Not only do we support legislation currently being considered in Congress to ensure clear and strong protection for freedom of religion and conscience, but we also call upon our political leaders to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety so that it may be replaced by a system in which human life and dignity, and the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, are secured.
“This compromise offered by President Obama demands that we compromise our religious beliefs and our commitment to the health and life of women and children while they compromise nothing. We at Human Life International stand with our Bishops and call upon the administration to honor the freedom endowed by God and honored by our nation’s Bill of Rights. We will render unto Caesar only that which belongs to him and not what belongs to God.”
Mark Steyn: Obama goes Henry VIII on the church
From: Mark Steyn, The Orange County Register
Announcing his support for Commissar Sebelius' edicts on contraception, sterilization, and pharmacological abortion, that noted theologian the Most Reverend Al Sharpton explained: "If we are going to have a separation of church and state, we're going to have a separation of church and state."
Thanks for clarifying that. The church model the young American state wished to separate from was that of the British monarch, who remains to this day Supreme Governor of the Church of England. This convenient arrangement dates from the 1534 Act of Supremacy. The title of the law gives you the general upshot, but, just in case you're a bit slow on the uptake, the text proclaims "the King's Majesty justly and rightfully is and ought to be the supreme head of the Church of England." That's to say, the sovereign is "the only supreme head on earth of the Church" and he shall enjoy "all honors, dignities, pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities, immunities, profits and commodities to the said dignity," not to mention His Majesty "shall have full power and authority from time to time to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts and enormities, whatsoever they be."
The president of the United States has decided to go Henry VIII on the Church's medieval ass. Whatever religious institutions might profess to believe in the matter of "women's health," their pre-eminences, jurisdictions, privileges, authorities and immunities are now subordinate to a one-and-only supreme head on earth determined to repress, redress, restrain and amend their heresies. One wouldn't wish to overextend the analogy: For one thing, the Catholic Church in America has been pathetically accommodating of Beltway bigwigs' ravenous appetite for marital annulments in a way that Pope Clement VII was disinclined to be vis-a-vis the English king and Catherine of Aragon. But where'd all the pandering get them? In essence, President Obama has embarked on the same usurpation of church authority as Henry VIII: as his Friday morning faux-compromise confirms, the continued existence of a "faith-based institution" depends on submission to the doctrinal supremacy of the state.
"We will soon learn," wrote Dr. Albert Mohler of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, "just how much faith is left in faith-based institutions." Kathleen Sebelius, Obama's vicar on earth, has sportingly offered to maintain religious liberty for those institutions engaged in explicit religious instruction to a largely believing clientele. So we're not talking about mandatory condom dispensers next to the pulpit at St. Pat's – not yet. But that is not what it means to be a Christian: The mission of a Catholic hospital is to minister to the sick. When a guy shows up in Emergency, bleeding all over the floor, the nurse does not first establish whether he is Episcopalian or Muslim; when an indigent is in line at the soup kitchen the volunteer does not pause the ladle until she has determined whether he is a card-carrying Papist. The government has redefined religion as equivalent to your Sunday best: You can take it out for an hour to go to church, but you gotta mothball it in the closet the rest of the week. So Catholic institutions cannot comply with Commissar Sebelius and still be in any meaningful sense Catholic.
If you're an atheist or one of America's ever more lapsed Catholics, you're probably shrugging: what's the big deal? But the new Act of Supremacy doesn't stop with religious institutions. As Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it: "If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I'd be covered by this mandate." And so would any of his burrito boys who object to being forced to make "health care" arrangements at odds with their conscience.
None of this should come as a surprise. As Philip Klein pointed out in the American Spectator two years ago, the Obamacare bill contained 700 references to the Secretary "shall," another 200 to the Secretary "may," and 139 to the Secretary "determines." So the Secretary may and shall determine pretty much anything she wants, as the Obamaphile rubes among the Catholic hierarchy are belatedly discovering. His Majesty King Barack "shall have full power and authority to visit, repress, redress, record, order, correct, restrain and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, offenses, contempts and enormities whatsoever they be." In my latest book, I cite my personal favorite among the epic sweep of Commissar Sebelius' jurisdictional authority:
"The Secretary shall develop oral healthcare components that shall include tooth-level surveillance."
Before Obama's Act of Supremacy did the English language ever have need for such a phrase? "Tooth-level surveillance": From the Declaration of Independence to dentured servitude in a mere quarter-millennium.
Henry VIII lacked the technological wherewithal to conduct tooth-level surveillance. In my friskier days, I dated a girl from an eminent English Catholic family whose ancestral home, like many of the period, had a priest's hiding hole built into the wall behind an upstairs fireplace. These were a last desperate refuge for clerics who declined to subordinate their conscience to state authority. In my time, we liked to go in there and make out. Bit of a squeeze, but it all adds to the fun – as long as you don't have to spend weeks, months and years back there. In an age of tooth-level surveillance, tyranny is subtler, incremental but eminently enforceable: regulatory penalties, denial of licenses, frozen bank accounts. Will the Church muster the will to resist? Or (as Archbishop Dolan's pitifully naïve remarks suggest) will this merely be one more faint bleat lost in what Matthew Arnold called the "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar" of the Sea of Faith?
In England, those who dissented from the strictures of the state church came to be known as Nonconformists. That's a good way of looking at it: The English Parliament passed various "Acts of Uniformity." Why? Because they could. Obamacare, which governmentalizes one-sixth of the U.S. economy and microregulates both body and conscience, is the ultimate Act of Uniformity. Is there anyone who needs contraception who can't get it? Taxpayers give half-a-billion dollars to Planned Parenthood, which shovels out IUDs like aspirin. Colleges hand out free condoms, and the Washington Post quotes middle-aged student "T Squalls, 30" approving his university's decision to upgrade to the Trojan "super-size Magnum."
But there's still one or two Nonconformists out there, and they have to be forced into ideological compliance. "Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment," Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post offered to Chris Matthews on MSNBC. At the National Press Club, young Catholics argued that the overwhelming majority of their co-religionists disregard the Church's teachings on contraception, so let's bring the vox Dei into alignment with the vox populi. Get with the program, get with the Act of Uniformity.
The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius and many others believe in one-size-fits all national government – uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment – and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.
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