Steve Pearce
President Obama and his cabinet have infringed upon a basic private right their newest sweeping federal mandate. This violation of the longstanding concept of conscience protection breaches the safeguards for personal religious and moral convictions that have been in place since our founding.
In a recent op-ed in USA Today, Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, wrote that this latest demand “cuts against the grain of what it means to be American.” I believe the archbishop hit the nail on the head.
Violation of the Constitution
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is aligning against the constitutional protection of one’s conscience and religious beliefs. We have the First Amendment to allow everyone to practice whatever faith in whatever manner without the government dictating the God that they worship. As the National Association of Evangelicals stated in response to this edict, “No government has the right to compel its citizens to violate their conscience.”
President Obama is dismissing our Constitution, and forcing religious organizations to violate their conscience by adopting the agenda of the administration’s favored special interests. This is an abhorrent assault on our fundamental liberties, including our right to live the way our faith prescribes.
The government is interfering where it has absolutely no place — in our personal, spiritual lives.
Assault on Catholics
The administration has already inserted federal bureaucrats between you and your doctor. Now, this new overreach pushed us to a truly dangerous tipping point where a federal agency is forcing people of faith to change their interpretations of the Bible and other religious canons. So offended are many religious organizations that the Archodiocesian Healthcare and Bioethics Committee of Milwaukee submitted a comment to HHS in September that these new requirements could be seen as “a deliberate strategy by the federal government to abolish the influence of the Catholic Church in civil society.”
Secretary Sebelius justifies this assault on our freedom of religion by stating that the requirement for religious organizations to cover all FDA approved contraceptives is the policy in a majority of states. While this is true of 28 states, she ignores the truth of protections in states like in New Mexico, where a religious entity is able to offer an insurance plan that does not include contraceptives.
New Mexico’s policy is a commonsense approach that protects religious groups from arbitrary rules that violate their teachings.
This move by the administration is dangerously interfering with people of all faiths and their God. An America characterized by freedom of religion should not fall by the wayside with such an extensive government edict. This new rule from HHS is a gross violation of our rights as a free people and as people of faith.
I call on President Obama to stop this latest mandate that unfairly targets people of certain faiths with whom he disagrees. People of all faiths and even people who practice no religion should be mortified at the federal government assuming it can discriminate against anyone for their beliefs.
‘…stripped of their God given rights’
The Constitution ensures the protections of the rule of law for the poor and the disadvantaged. The rich and well-connected always get their way. When the President ignores the Constitution, he infringes upon one of the greatest protections for the 99 percent of Americans.
Thomas J. Olmsted, the Bishop of Phoenix, said it best in a recent letter to his parishioners:
“Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights.”
Amen, Bishop.
Pearce, a Republican, represents New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House.