This provision is a direct result of President Obama’s deeply flawed health care law — the first federal health care law that doesn’t honor religious beliefs.
This outlandish rule rightly was met with opposition from both sides of the aisle, and amid increasing pressure, President Obama announced a so-called compromise earlier this month that was nothing more than an accounting gimmick.
Instead of addressing Americans’ very valid concerns, the president simply reissued the same rule it already had unveiled with a vague promise to protect faith communities from the cost of the regulation in the coming months.
What President Obama doesn’t seem to understand is that this debate is not about cost. It’s not about contraception. It’s about the Constitution. It’s about faith and who controls the religious views of faith-based institutions. Based on his statements and recent actions, it’s clear that President Obama believes he should have that control. But our Constitution states otherwise.
Last August, I introduced, with Senator Ben Nelson from Nebraska, the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” a broad, bipartisan bill that has garnered 37 cosponsors in the Senate and support from all of the major organizations that are concerned about this issue.
Our bill protects health care providers and insurers from being forced to violate their principles to provide products and services under the new health care law, and it ensures that all Americans are protected against discrimination, penalty or exclusion from the health care market for exercising their rights of conscience and following religious beliefs.
I recently attempted to introduce this provision for an up-or-down vote in the Senate — an effort that was blocked by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who called the debate ‘senseless” and urged Americans who are concerned about this issue to “calm down.”
Americans don’t need to calm down. This debate is fundamental to the very freedoms that make our country great.
The work of the church, synagogue or mosque cannot and should not be defined by or limited to the four walls of a building — faith based groups are often our charities, universities, and hospitals. The Christian school, the Jewish day care center, the Islamic community center should be distinctive. And this issue needs to be decided by the constitutional means of the legislature and the Court — not by some “regulation.”
We have a responsibility to project those liberties from government intrusion, and I will continue to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure that the Obama administration’s unlawful health care mandate is repealed as soon as possible and replaced with the common-sense reforms our health care system needs.
I am so not impressed.
Senator Blunt is tinkering at the edges and Harry Reid blocked it.
Obamacare is the problem. Not provisions in it.
Why are the Republicans so afraid to introduce legislation to repeal Obamacare? Let Harry block something really significant, not this twaddle. It almost seems like the GOP wants to keep Obamacare.
Pathetic response from a pathetic party, which cannot even find a way to illuminate the idiocy of Obama's plan to grow algae for gasoline.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, because if there's one person you want representing your cause it's a corrupt Senator and adulterer like Roy Blount.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYes, it's true that he's an adulterer. But so what. It's not like you're forced to pay taxes to cover his salary, even if his adulterous actions are contrary to your core religious beliefs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBen Nelson...Could a politician possibly say something more stupendously stupid? Does this idiot want horselaughs on purpose?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe constitutional order has been inverted. We are supposed to be a free people who accomplish certain public functions through limited government. Instead, freedom has been seized by a government that only recognizes very narrow limits to its authority.
Free-exercise of religion is one of those narrow exceptions, and yes, current policy seeks to make that exception even narrower. But how is it the government thinks itself powerful enough to chase us into these redoubts of freedom? And how did we not stand our ground when the framework of law was being subverted over all those years?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you think this move by Obama is bad, you should check out your fellow conservatives elsewhere on the corner this morning who want government to force citizens to undertake intrusive and unnecessary medical procedures.
Forcing institutions to adopt certain insurance schemes is one thing, government forcing its citizens against their will to take Unnecessary medical procedures is a whole lot more serious.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseEmployer-employee agreements are reached by consenting adults -- they are already looking each other in the eye. There is no unwilling victim.
Is it too much to ask that you look an innocent baby in the eye before killing it?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd therein lies the rub. Conservatives believe that right's are God given. However, one does not have to believe in God to accept inalienable rights. Accepting the Declaration of Independence at face value means that we are all endowed with certain rights, among which is the right to life.
What abortion advocates never really want to discuss is that issue of when life begins, because where life lives, in their minds, trumps the right to life.
I don't see how right to life and right to abortion can be reconciled completely. I have only been able to reconcile the issue of a woman's right to choose (note:the right to choose is restricted by the state in many other areas) and the right to terminate a pregnancy by allowing that it is justifiable homicide, in self defense of the mother.
However, the state and the unborn have an interest, which stems from our Declaration of Independence. At some point, the state intervenes in many medical issues...infectious diseases, etc. The state is not, with legislation about ultrasound, forcing the issue...it is merely ensuring that maximal information is made available to the mother.
Also left unsaid, in this issue, is the fact that abortion can have a deleterious effect on the mother as well.
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