The US Agency for International Development boasts
that the United States is “the world’s largest family planning bilateral donor
for 50 years, ” “supports voluntary family planning” and “takes a rights-based
approach to family planning.” Here at home with its own citizens, however, the
administration has taken the opposite tack.
Rather than directly providing contraceptives for voluntary
use as it does overseas, the Obama administration instead has mandated coverage
through employer-paid insurance plans. Not even nuns who care for the
elderly—like the Little Sisters of the Poor, who this week had to ask the
Supreme Court for protection—can claim a conscientious objection.
The administration’s “accommodation” of conscientious
objectors is to force the nuns to sign a form that tells the government to make
their insurance company provide contraceptives. That’s like making a
conscientious objector to military conscription designate a proxy for combat.
The nuns and other religious objectors simply seek the
freedom to follow their beliefs without fear of government punishment—in this
case, draconian fines that would wipe out the ministry. At stake is not only
the First Amendment freedom of religious exercise, but the rights of all
citizens to speak and act in accordance with their beliefs—even when those
beliefs challenge the government’s ideology and power.
[Note: The Christian Medical Association has filed an amicus
brief in this case, Zubik v. Burwell. A dvidided Supreme Court recently asked both parties to consider and report back new solutions.]
No comments:
Post a Comment