A Supreme Court ruling provides a harbor of
protection that will help the faith community weather the remaining years of an
administration apparently bent on waging an aggressive
campaign against religious freedom.
The Court's ruling in a consolidated pair of religious freedom
cases involving family-owned businesses,
Hobby Lobby and
Conestoga Wood Specialties, upheld the rights of
conscientious objectors to opt out of a federal mandate that employers must
provide insurance coverage of virtually all contraceptives and sterilization surgeries.
Under the sweeping authority accorded the bureaucracy by
Obamacare, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has rigidly imposed
the mandate on religious objectors. The Obama administration, though meek and
muddled when faced with foreign tyrants and terrorists, has trained its guns
aggressively on domestic conscientious objectors to abortion, especially
targeting religious conservatives who often oppose administration policies.
The administration pointedly refused to provide exceptions for most
religious objectors who conscientiously oppose pills that can
end
the life of a human embryo, choosing instead to highlight the clash of
values as a wedge issue to rally its abortion-supporting political base in the
2012 election.
The HHS Obamacare mandate threatens to punish with draconian
penalties (in one case,
$179
million per year) anyone who dares oppose the administration's ideology. An
astounding
300
plaintiffs, including elderly Catholic nuns, faith-based charities, family
business owners, Mennonite woodworkers, evangelical nonprofits, Bible
publishers, hospice nurses and other unlikely enemies of the state, have fled
to the courts like refugees to escape the administration's jackbooted
intolerance of their convictions.
The Court ruling last week focused
on the HHS Obamacare mandate's violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act, a two-decade old, bipartisan law that prohibits unwarranted and
heavy-handed government interference with religion. Yet the cases also serve to
highlight more broadly how Obama's intolerant and divisive domestic policy
threatens the fundamental purpose, values and assumptions of the US
Constitution. Consider the preamble to the Constitution and how its goals and
principles relate to the HHS Obamacare mandate:
"Form a more perfect union" - The Constitution's framers knew from
firsthand experience that maintaining a union requires accommodating a
diversity of opinions and conscience convictions. Mandating submission to the
state's contraception and abortion ideology could not more clearly contradict
the requirements for unity.
"Establish justice"
- Establishing justice means to many increasing healthcare access for all
citizens, especially for the poor. Ironically, the conscience-trampling HHS
Obamacare mandate penalizes and threatens access to healthcare, by barring employers
from providing healthcare coverage consistent with life-honoring standards.
"Insure domestic
tranquility" - Peace can prevail even amid diverse and conflicting
values, by avoiding conflagration through compromise. The administration's
inflexible, intolerant HHS mandate that unduly penalizes the faith
community--to the point of requiring even elderly nuns to participate in
contraception--needlessly and recklessly undermines domestic tranquility.
"Provide for the
common defense" - The purpose of the preventive services provision of
Obamacare (under which the HHS mandate falls) is to provide a defense against
disease--not against pregnancy.
President Obama
has asserted that 99 percent of women already use
contraceptives, so why not focus instead on increasing patients' access
to hard-to-get, lifesaving medicines? It's like taking aim at the Boy Scouts
while jihadists assault Iraq.
"Promote the general welfare"
- Given the unquestioned ubiquity and relative affordability of
contraceptives, it's implausible for the administration to argue that the
welfare of every woman from the Hamptons to Beverly Hills hinges on
government-mandated free handouts. Nor, as the dangerously dwindling
populations of Europe and Russia and the forecasts for Social Security attest,
does it serve the general welfare for the government to focus its policies on
preventing the births of its future citizens.
"Secure the blessings
of liberty" - By penalizing conscientious objectors with draconian,
multi-million-dollar fines, the HHS Obamacare mandate denies the blessings of
liberty to all who disagree with the administration's ideology.
While in this ruling, freedom triumphed over tyranny, many battles for
constitutional principles remain. Next up: a
lawsuit
involving the HHS Obamacare mandate imposed on the Little Sisters of the Poor,
a group of elderly nuns providing hospice care.
The Supreme Court's rulings on these cases, by framing the boundaries
of government power and plumbing the depth of our liberties, will ripple out
toward every aspect of the Constitution and impact how we as a diverse society value
conscience and tolerate dissent.
