The CMA sent out a couple of press releases by email, today on the attempts by members of Congress and the Senate, including some Democrats, to overturn the ObamaCare mandate that everyone who offers health insurance to their employees must offer plans that pay for contraception. The mandate would require Catholic health systems and schools to provide coverage that is against long held Church teachings. (Disclosure, I’m Baptist, think true contraception is ok, and I’m the Chair of the Family Medicine Section of the CMA which is the same as the much longer, Christian Medical and Dental Association, the CMDA.)
Christian Medical Association: Contraception mandate fits pattern of assaults on conscience and religious liberty
Washington, DC–February 9, 2012: The 16,000-member Christian Medical Association today issued a statement asserting that the government’s mandate of contraception coverage nationwide fits a growing pattern of assaulting and restricting First Amendment freedoms of conscience and faith.
CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens noted, “The government contraception mandate violates the First Amendment rights and sensibilities of any individual or organization morally committed to life-honoring faith principles. The coercion likewise tramples the conscience rights of health care professionals ethically committed to the historic Hippocratic oath. And it fits a deplorable pattern of disregard for First Amendment freedoms.
“In the past three years, people of faith and conscience have witnessed the gutting of the only federal regulation protecting the exercise of conscience in health care; the denial of federal grant funds for aiding human trafficking victims because a faith-based organization refused to participate in abortion; the administration’s lobbying of the Supreme Court to restrict faith-based organizations’ hiring rights; and a coercive contraceptive mandate that imposes the government’s ideology on the faith-based and pro-life communities.
“The contraception mandate’s affront to religious freedom actually extends well beyond the Catholic Church, since many physicians and patients outside the Catholic tradition hold that it is morally or ethically wrong to risk ending the life of a developing human being by using pills such as ella and the morning-after pill. These pills are falsely promoted as ordinary contraceptives despite clear FDA label warnings that ‘ella may also work by preventing attachment (implantation) to the uterus’ and that the morning-after pill (Plan B) “may inhibit implantation by altering the endometrium.'”
“To force every American to subsidize an ideological agenda that many find morally or ethically abhorrent is the antithesis of American First Amendment freedoms of religion and conscience.
“The First Amendment issue of religious and conscience liberty impacts Americans of all political stripes. Conscience freedoms protect Americans left, right and center, on issues ranging from abortion to the death penalty, from participation in war to the right to protest political actions such as we are witnessing now.
“Every American, regardless of political persuasion, should be protesting these assaults on our freedoms and contacting legislators to enact conscience-protecting legislation such as the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, introduced in the House by Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb. 1st) and in the Senate by Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
“As Dr. Martin Luther King reminds us, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'”
To remedy the assault on religious liberty and conscience freedoms, the Christian Medical Association supports the following legislation:
S. 1467 – Respect for Rights of Conscience Act
S. 2043 – Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2012
S. 906 – No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act
S. 877 – Protect Life Act
S. 165 – Abortion Non-Discrimination Act
H.R. 1179 – Respect for Rights of Conscience Act
H.R. 361 – Abortion Non-Discrimination Act
H.R. 358 – Protect Life Act
H.R. 3 – No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act
Senate Democrats Block Debate on Religious Freedom Amendment
‘Our founders believed so strongly that the government should neither establish a religion, nor prevent its free exercise that they listed it as the very first item in the Bill of Rights. And Republicans are trying today to reaffirm that basic right. But Democrats won’t allow it.’
Washington, D.C.– U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following statement on the Senate floor Thursday regarding the Democrats’ refusal to allow consideration of an amendment on the Obama administration’s mandate in the health care law that violates the First Amendment rights of religious institutions:
“Our country is unique in the world because it was established on the basis of an idea: that we are all endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights — in other words, rights that are conferred not by a king or a president or a Congress, but by the Creator himself. The state protects these rights, but it doesn’t grant them.
“And what the state doesn’t grant, the state can’t take away. That’s what this week’s debate on a particularly odious outcome from the President’s health care law has been about: Our founders believed so strongly that the government should neither establish a religion, nor prevent its free exercise that they listed it as the very first item in the Bill of Rights.
“And Republicans are trying today to reaffirm that basic right. But Democrats won’t allow it. They won’t allow those of us who were sworn to uphold the U.S. Constitution to even offer an amendment that says we believe in our First Amendment right to religious freedom. I never thought I’d see the day. I’ve spent a lot of time in my life defending the First Amendment. But I never thought I’d see the day when the elected representatives of the people of this country would be blocked by a majority party in Congress to even express their support for it.”
Jonathan Imbody
Vice President for Government Relations
Christian Medical Association – est. 1931, now 16,000 members
CMA Washington office: P.O. Box 16351 • Washington, DC 20041
703.723.8688 • http://www.cmawashington.org
Director, Freedom2Care – 50 groups and 29,000 individuals advancing conscience rights
http://www.Freedom2Care.org Twitter: @Freedom2Care
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