Q: What’s behind growing support in Congress for the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act?
A: Lawmakers are responding to a decision by the Obama Administration to disregard the freedom of conscience supported by the First Amendment. In issuing a federal rule to implement the 2010 health care law, the Administration said religious-affiliated organizations must cover certain preventive services free of charge, including contraception and sterilization procedures, or be subject to substantial monetary penalties. Public alarm about the January announcement forced the Administration to modify plans. In practical terms, the affront to religious freedom remains even in the scaled-back rule. The issue is whether religious-affiliated institutions will be able to practice their faith without government intrusion.
Q: How would the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act change things?
A: The legislation would amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the 2010 health care law, to protect rights of conscience with regard to requirements for coverage of specific products and services. It reaffirms the conviction articulated by Thomas Jefferson in 1809, when he told New London Methodists that “[n]o provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.” The principle is part of our nation’s tradition and has been codified in state and federal laws, including previous health care laws. Support remains strong today, with 202 members of the House of Representatives and 38 Senators having sponsored and co-sponsored the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. The President’s attempt to ignore the freedom of religion guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, which he tried to remedy only as an afterthought and under pressure, is unconstitutional and unconscionable.
We must have in our country, freedom to practice the faith we choose. All other rights are pivotal on Freedom of Religion.
Yet, this law is not needed. The rights we so desire are spelled out clearly in the First Amendment, and by previous court cases that uphold it. Some of those cases have been talked about here on NIT at one time or another.
Your beliefs as a Catholic for example, prohibit you from eating meat on a Friday during Lent. A Hasidic Jew may not labor past sunset on Friday. No Dutch Reformed business may be open on a Sabbath. The list goes on.
Yet secular laws may not interfere with those rules of our faith in any way. As a society, we have made many accommodations for different faiths, or have been forced by the courts to yield.
I truly believe this issue belongs before our courts (as it is their Constitutional duty – not that of the Legislature), that there is enough affirmative cases on the subject, which will again strike a blow against the violators of our First Amendment and it’s basic freedoms.
Why muddy the waters, when the original Law is still in full force and standing?
Watch out-if they can do this to religion they can do it to everything. It is just the start of controling everyone’s life. Fight back and do it now.
What a crock!