A couple of years ago, Target learned that it could not require its Islamic grocery workers to handle fully-sealed packages of bacon. That seemed incomprehensible back then: if you don't want to handle pork, why apply for a job where it is sold?
Fast forward to 2012: President Obama signed a Health and Human Services ruling that, if not nullified, will require all Roman Catholic institutions to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures. This ruling requires every Roman Catholic institution to violate its most basic theology. So much for freedom of religion.
How can we reconcile the absurdly inconsistent notion that we need to protect an Islamic grocery clerk's religious scruples, but not those of devout Roman Catholics?
To their credit, Roman Catholic bishops have come out swinging against this extreme incursion of government into what should be the sacred territory of personal conscience and religious freedom: across America, priests from the pulpit urged their parishioners to write their Congressional representatives about this horrendous decision made by a power-hungry president. Everyone who values our Constitutional rights should support this protest.
If this ruling is not reversed, the Roman Catholic Church will be forced to bow to government ideology, pay exhorbitant fines in the millions of dollars, or shutter the doors to all the tens of thousands of medical, educational, and charitable institutions it runs for the overall benefit to humanity.
Which basic right will we lose next?
1 comments:
What right will we lose next? Simple, the right to consume sugar, (See Huffington Post story). This will lead to the loss of the right to host Super Bowl parties because of the harm we are doing to our systems from all of that junk food!
But seriously, the problem for medical practicioners and hospitals is that Big Brother is such a major payor, that Big Brother is now the Dictator when it comes to matters of "conscience."
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