LEE’S SUMMIT, FEBRUARY 8, 2012 – The Department of Health and Human Services – the people assigned the task to put the rules around Obamacare – have taken the commerce clause one step further by requiring the Catholic Church to provide health insurance that includes contraception benefits, and by some short extrapolation abortion coverage.
Obamacare first required all Americans to buy insurance or face IRS consequences. To make the point, the Obama administration hired some 16,000 IRS auditors to ensure compliance to the health care requirement. In essence President Obama required the purchase of a service. Many states, including Missouri have filed law suits claiming that it violates the constitution to force the purchase of any good or service.
Let us analyze the Freedom of Religion part of the First Amendment. To do so properly we have to put it in context of the 16th and 17th centuries, where European monarchies defined for its citizens what religion it sponsored. If you lived in a Catholic State, you could not openly have any other religious affiliation. The same was true if the State was of any other Christian Faith.
Europeans fled Europe to the Americas to avoid the religious persecution so rampant at that time throughout the different monarchies.
The framers of our Constitution understood the fundamental need that drove people to what was becoming the United States of America. As the debate raged they reached the agreement that while the States may choose to have a State sponsored religion, the Federal Government would not establish a religion.
In order to ensure this would be one of the protected civil rights of Americans, the First Amendment includes the following statement:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
One of the fundamental tenets of the Catholic Church is that life is precious and must be encourage and protected. To that end, and from Christian Biblical reference, the use of any contraception – which discourages or retards the conception of a child – is considered against the teachings of the church and further a sin against God. Further the Catholic Church is against the termination of a conceived life through abortion.
In my personal opinion it fits with the fifth commandment: Thou shalt not kill. There are two ways to kill. The most obvious is to end a life, and to me life begins at the moment of conception. You may argue that you are not fully cognitive at that moment; but if the pregnancy continues a child is born, so to remove it from the mother at that point is a form of killing. The other form is to prevent the life from developing. So in either interpretation of the Christian Commandments life’s preciousness comes first.
These are matters of personal faith and values. All of which the framers of the constitution felt strongly enough about that they limited the power of the Federal Government with the first clause of the First Amendment.
The imposition of commerce rules upon the Catholic Church as well as any other religion whether Christian or not, clearly tramples over the First Amendment. It violates the clause that clearly states “…or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…” by forcing actions that violate the fundamental tenets of the Faith.
If you were like me during the Obamacare debate you said to yourself “if they can make me buy this, what else can they make me buy: A Chevy Volt?” Well here is the answer, if they can make you and I buy health care, then they can make me buy a product that is against my religious beliefs.
If you want to do more than just read this blog, and shake your head in agreement, here’s a link to the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment Action Alert that helps you quickly and painlessly reach your Senators and your Representative in Washington to express your opinion: http://www.nchla.org/actiondisplay.asp?ID=292
President Obama is setting a very bad precedent by violating the letter and the intent of the First Amendment. This needs to be stopped or we are going to start down a very slippery slope where the Government not only can tell us what not to do, but now they can force upon us certain actions that may not be limited to personal fiscal matters. Further, if the Government can violate the Freedom of Religion clause, can they not also violate the Freedom of Speech clause?
If Freedom of Speech is no longer sacred in the United States, then this blog – which counters the wishes of the current Administration – would also not be permitted.
Is that the America we want?
Respectfully Submitted,
The Lee’s Summit Conservative
