The very essences of the principles devoted to the founding of our country were steeped in the preservation of religious freedom. Our founding fathers fled their homes in Europe and England to find a land where they were free to worship God as they believed and pursue their lives as they wished in happiness and peace. They died to gain their freedom of religion.
Today, that freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment has been violated by the Obama administration without firing a shot or even being subjected to a specific and visible vote by the people through Congress. Obamacare, as written in law, requires a mandate that all health care insurance includes coverage for free abortion drugs, sterilization and contraception with no exceptions for religious employers, churches, hospitals or other religious institutions whose religious beliefs condemn the use of these measures of preventing or aborting human life.
The Department of Health and Human Services and its Secretary, Kathleen Sibelius, have decreed that Obamacare requires that sterilization and contraception — including controversial abortifacients – be included among “preventive services” coverage in every healthcare plan available to Americans. It does not matter if Americans find it morally objectionable.
Under Sebelius’ decree, anyone with cancer, a heart ailment, or a major injury will have to pay copays and deductibles, but anyone who wants to go on the pill or rent breast-feeding equipment won’t incur any personal cost — and nobody will be free to decide otherwise. In other words, certain forms of voluntary or elective care (the type of care that a lot of health insurance might well be expected not to cover at all, and once didn’t) will now be granted a status more favorable than is accorded serious medical conditions. Sebelius has turned things on their head — and imposed that inversion across the land. This is what politicized medicine looks like.
In all, Sebelius’ decree will prevent Americans from freely deciding what they want their own health policies to cover. It will force them to pay for other people’s care — even if they find that care to be morally objectionable. It will force those who have religious or moral objections to contraception to pay for contraception — including long-term contraception that many people now assume they can’t afford
Sixty religious leaders and heads of faith-based organizations have signed off on a letter to President Barack Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius protesting the health insurance contraceptives mandate. Signatories of the letter include Protestant and orthodox Jewish leaders representing many churches, religious colleges and universities, K-12 schools, grassroots faith-based organizations, denominations, law associations, rescue missions and more.
The president has denied their request.
This action to enforce government control of personal health care decisions at the cost to individual citizens is nothing less than dictatorship and abridgement of personal freedom and the Constitution. Can we as American sit idly by while our freedom of religion for which our fathers died is unashamedly torn away by our President?
The enormity of this unilateral denial of Constitutional rights is breathtaking.
It must not stand.
