Belmont Abbey Sues Federal Government Over Obamacare Contraception Mandate

Due to medical bills from all my health issues and my finances taking a huge hit due my inability to work my husband and I had to change internet service providers to meet our needs so until Friday when my internet access is hooked up I will have limited access to blogging.  Friday I will visit all your great blogs. 

I don't usually copy and paste entire articles but since I'm under time constraint here is a good article.

McDonald's & teachers' unions get exemptions but Catholic and all religious colleges do not



"A monk at Belmont Abbey may preach on Sunday that pre-marital sex, contraception, and abortions are immoral, but on Monday, the government would force the same monk to pay for students to receive the very drugs and procedures he denounces," said Hannah Smith, Senior Legal Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. "This is much worse than an un-funded mandate; it is a monk-funded mandate."


WASHINGTON,DC (Becket Fund for Religious Liberty) - On November 10, 2011, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of Belmont Abbey College over the "Affordable Care Act" (aka "Obamacare"), that forces the College to violate its deeply-held religious beliefs or pay a severe fine.


The heart of the lawsuit involves the recently issued Health and Human Services' mandate that requires thousands of religious organizations to provide, against their conscience, contraceptives they consider to be abortifacients-namely Plan B and Ella-and sterilization.


Although the government has already provided thousands of waivers for a variety of special interest groups including McDonald's and teachers' unions, often for reasons of commercial convenience, it refused to accommodate religious organizations. Instead, the government permitted a religious exemption so narrowly defined that it prompted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to note that even Jesus' ministry would not qualify.


"A monk at Belmont Abbey may preach on Sunday that pre-marital sex, contraception, and abortions are immoral, but on Monday, the government would force the same monk to pay for students to receive the very drugs and procedures he denounces," said Hannah Smith, Senior Legal Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. "This is much worse than an un-funded mandate; it is a monk-funded mandate."


The current exemption from the mandate excludes only certain religious employers whose purpose is to instill religious values and that employ and serve only individuals of their same faith. Accordingly, many religious colleges and universities will not qualify for the exemption.


Belmont Abbey, as a small Catholic liberal arts college, teaches that contraception, sterilization, and abortion are all against God's law. The government mandate forces Belmont Abbey and others to make the Hobson's choice of either violating their deeply-held religious beliefs or paying a heavy fine and terminating their health insurance plans for employees and students.


"The mandate is nothing other than a deliberate attack by the government on the religious beliefs of millions of Americans," added Hannah Smith. "In the end, the government is forcing religious orders and believers to pay for services they find immoral or pay a stiff fine."
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is a non-profit, public-interest law firm dedicated to protecting the free expression of all religious traditions. The Becket Fund has a 17-year history of defending religious liberty for people of all faiths. Its attorneys are recognized as experts in the field of church-state law.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is a non-profit, public-interest legal and educational institute that protects the free expression of all faiths.

From Ken Blackwell: Will Obama Destroy Franciscan University of Steubenville?

I graduated from this traditional Catholic university in 2003, so this article by Ken Blackwell on huffingtonpost.com really hit me hard.  FUS should sue the Obama administration.  This is a clear violation of the First Amendment.

Daniel Webster was the most famous lawyer of his day. In 1819, the "Godlike Daniel" stood before the U.S. Supreme Court and argued passionately for the right of Dartmouth College to govern itself, and not to be brought under the rule of the New Hampshire legislature. Webster appealed to the Constitution, arguing that New Hampshire's actions would violate that provision that forbade states to "impair the obligations of contract." But the emotional power of his argument caught the attention of Chief Justice John Marshall, Justice Joseph Story, and in truth, captured the hearts of the country.

Richard N. Current gives us a gripping description of Daniel Webster's defense of Dartmouth College in a 1963 American Heritagearticle.

Sir, you may destroy this little institution. It is weak. It is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of the country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your work. You must extinguish, one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land. It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college, and yet, there are those who love it...

The Dartmouth College case became one of the pillars of American jurisprudence. And Webster's powerful appeal propelled him to a brilliant career in the U.S. Senate.

The Supreme Court that year ruled in favor of Dartmouth College. It recognized not only the supremacy of the Constitution, but it showed that it valued the signal role played by colleges and universities in American life.

The Obama administration is showing it values that role not at all. It is attempting to crush The Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. Mr. Obama's HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, is trying to force Steubenville to dispense abortion-producing drugs and pay for sterilizations. This is a Roman Catholic institution. Such things are strictly prohibited by the Catholic faith.

Sec. Sebelius may be aware that Catholic institutions are required by faith and fidelity to their mission to uphold these principles. It is an indispensable part of their mission and their reason for being. To force a Catholic institution to violate the consciences of its faculty, students and alumni in this fashion is like forcing a Yeshiva to serve pork to Orthodox Jewish students.

This attempt to crush The Franciscan University of Steubenville is, tragically, not an isolated example. From the first days of the Obama administration, there has been a kulturkampf (culture clash) against Catholic institutions not seen since the days of the Iron Chancellor of Germany, Otto von Bismarck. It was Bismarck who attempted to put all churches and universities in Prussia under his hobnailed boot.

Writer Charlotte Allen wrote of the "Persecution of Belmont Abbey" by the Obama administration in 2009. There, too, liberal zealots were demanding that the Catholic school, founded in 1876, provide contraception, abortifacients, and sterilizations or face federal sanctions. This, according to the institution's president, could lead to closing down the historic little college.

Chai Feldblum is a tenured professor at Georgetown University Law School. This is the oldest Catholic university in the country. Ironically, Feldblum, is also a homosexual legal activist. She was Barack Obama's choice for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She told a panel at Family Research Council that if it came to a clash between what she calls gay rights and religious liberty, religious liberty must give way. In other words: "Be Amish, or be quiet."

We have already seen this as the most anti-Israel administration in U.S. history. Never before has an American president and secretary of state stooped to counting Jews in Jerusalem.

The Obama administration is also the most anti-Catholic administration in American history. Never before have tens of millions of Catholic Americans been forced to subsidize the killing of unborn children with their taxes -- as they are under ObamaCare. But now they are also forcing Catholic institutions to take part in the destruction of innocent human lives and the maiming of others by paying for abortifacients and sterilizations. As Americans, we must defend our religious liberties -- while we still have them. Steubenville is a little college, but there are those who love it!

Obamacare's Sterilization and Contraceptive Insurance Mandate May Force Catholic Charities Free Clinic To Close Doors

A few years back Catholic Charities in Pittsburgh opened a free medical clinic which serves the uninsured in the area. Unfortunately due to Obamacare the clinic may be forced to close. The HHS has issued a mandate which requires all new insurance plans to cover contraceptives and sterilization, which runs counter to Church teachings. The Church will not compromise it's beliefs just to meet some federal mandate which violates both the separation of Church and State and the Church's beliefs. This is so sad because if this mandate goes into effect and forces Catholic Charities medical clinic to close this will not only affect Catholics but will hurt the whole Pittsburgh community. Unfortunately I doubt that this will be the only clinic to close because of this mandate.




Sr. Mary Ann Walsh has responded to this insurance mandate with this:


Health and Human Services must think Catholics and other religious groups are fools.


That’s all you can think when you read HHS’s recent announcement that it may exempt the church from having to pay for contraceptive services, counseling to use them and sterilizations under the new health reform in certain circumstances. As planned now, HHS would limit the right of the church not to pay for such services in limited instances, such as when the employees involved are teaching religion and in cases where the people served are primarily Catholic.


HHS’s reg conveniently ignores the underlying principle of Catholic charitable actions: we help people because we are Catholic, not because our clients are. There’s no need to show your baptismal certificate in the hospital emergency room, the parish food pantry, or the diocesan drug rehab program. Or any place else the church offers help, either.


With its new regulation, HHS seeks to force church institutions to buy contraceptives, including drugs that can disrupt an existing pregnancy, through insurance they offer their own employees. This is part of HHS’s anticipated list of preventive services for women that private insurance programs must provide under the new health reform law.


The exemption is limited, to say the least. The pastor in the Catholic parish doesn’t have to buy the Pill for his employees, but the religious order that runs a Catholic hospital has to foot the bill for surgical sterilizations. And diocesan Catholic Charities agencies have to use money that would be better spent on feeding the poor to underwrite services that violate church teachings.
Whatever you think of artificial birth control, HHS’s command that everyone, including churches, must pay for it exalts ideology over conscience and common sense.


Perhaps HHS is unduly influenced by lobbyists. No surprise there. Certainly a major lobbyist is Planned Parenthood, the nation’s chief proponent of contraceptive services. Contraceptive services make a lot of money for Planned Parenthood clinics, which (again no surprise) provide the “services” HHS has mandated.


HHS and Planned Parenthood are narrow in focus. Respect for religious rights isn’t likely a key concern for them. However, it ought to be a key concern for President Obama, who last year promised to respect religious rights as he garnered support from the church community to pass the health care reform act. To assuage concerns, President Obama went so far as to issue an executive order promising that the health care reform act would not fund abortion or force people and institutions to violate their consciences. HHS is on its way to violating that promise. For the sake of basic integrity – the President’s keeping his word and for the protection of the right to religious freedom – President Obama needs to speak up now.


This insurance mandate violates our religious rights which are guaranteed in the Constitution.