Let Them Eat Carcinogens

Barack Obama has apparently opened a full scale war against the Catholic Church. He fomented quite a bit of division in May 2009 with the controversy over accepting Notre Dame's honorary law degree.
But, as anyone following the news knows by now, he has definitely upped the stakes.

Barack Obama now wants all women in the nation to receive contraception and abortion free of charge through their employee insurance. To that end, he is attempting to compel the Catholic Church and any organization that thinks like her to pay for these things.

I have no new thoughts on how heinous this is, but I will attempt to summarize some of the problems involved.

Ancient History
The Catholic Church has always been opposed to both contraception and abortion. Indeed, this is one of the teachings which differentiated the Church from the surrounding pagan culture. Even Reformation Christians agreed with the Catholic stance. Indeed, until 1930, it is impossible to find any Christian leader - Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant - who supported either contraception or abortion.

However, due to the rise of eugenics theory in the late 19th century, contraception and abortion was seen by secular authorities as a necessary tool in keeping the "unfit" from breeding. Between 1930 and 1960, most Christian churches eventually came to accept the use of contraception. The Catholic Church never did.

The Pill
The invention of the hormonal contraceptive was thought to be a ground-breaking technology that might allow a change in the teaching. However, in the closely-reasoned encyclical Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI demonstrated why hormonal contraceptives would do more harm than good. As even Business Insider today admits, the Pope was correct.

The four results Pope Paul VI prophesied have come to pass:

1. General lowering of moral standards
2. A rise in infidelity, and illegitimacy
3. The reduction of women to objects used to satisfy men. 
4. Government coercion in reproductive matters. 

Changing Definitions
Now, ever since the human egg was discovered in 1826, pregnancy has been defined as beginning at conception. However, with the advent of in vitro fertilization in 1978,that definition was no longer convenient. If conception happens in a Petri dish, in what sense is the woman pregnant?

So, many IVF and OB/GYN specialists (though not embryologists, interestingly enough) have been trying to change the definition of pregnancy to begin at "implantation." Unfortunately, at least six days generally passes between fertilization and implantation - by the time implantation occurs, a human embryo exists.

Every hormonal contraceptive acts in a number of ways. One way is to prevent ovulation. This doesn't always work. Another is to thin the lining of the uterus so that a developing embryo cannot implant.

Thus, when the hormonal contraceptive makes the lining of the uterus inhospitable to that human embryo, the embryo aborts, the woman miscarries. Like IUDs, hormonal contraceptives cause abortion.

Worse, the hormonal contraceptive has been judged a Class I Carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

Life Issues
The Catholic Church sees the immense loss of human life via contraception and abortion as a modern-day Holocaust. You can no more demand the Church pay for these death-dealing services than you can demand that Jews pay for the suite of services provided at Auschwitz. It is not just a matter of religious liberty, it's a matter of life and death. 

Catholics will not pay for a woman to be shot full of Class I carcinogens that will harm her and kill her child. Again, it's like compelling non-smokers to pay for their employee's cigarettes.

Just as bad, it treats correctly functioning human fertility as a disease. 

Obama's latest attempt to foist this off on the insurance company rather than directly onto the employer is wrong.

While reports indicate that Catholic institutions will not have to directly pay for this coverage, most Catholic institutions get their insurance through a Catholic insurance provider. If the "adjusted"  mandate were enforced, the Catholic insurance provider would still be just as thoroughly violated as the original Catholic employer.

Now, Catholic hospitals make up 25% of the hospitals in the nation and treat roughly one-sixth of the population. None of these hospitals will fully implement ObamaCare because many tenets of ObamaCare are antithetical to Catholic principles. 


Interestingly, Catholic organizations are unusual in not offering contraceptives in their health insurance plans, so this mandate is meant to strike directly at Catholics. Likewise, it is meant to humiliate them, since the zero co-pay is also unique among "medications" - no other medication is guaranteed a zero co-pay.


Catholic hospitals also provide more free health care to the poor than any other set of institutions in the nation. Obama's insistence on submitting to his commands or paying millions of dollars in fines is an excellent way to destroy Catholic health care and strip the poor of the last health care providers in their neighborhoods. 

Legal Issues

But even if the Catholic Church were gung-ho to provide give women these carcinogens, they couldn't.

It's against the law.

You see, as National Review points out, the Hyde Amendment - which Obama just re-authorized December 11 - says that government funds cannot be used to provide abortion.  So, the HHS requirement violates the very Hyde Amendment which Obama just authorized.

And even if it didn't violate the Hyde Amendment, we have to ask a Constitutional question. 

Where did Barack Hussein Obama get the power to mandate what products a private company will or will not offer?

Obama has unilaterally taken over banks and auto companies, he's unilaterally favored at least a dozen failed "green energy" companies, to the tune of billions, and now he seems intent on taking over the medical and insurance industries.

In the last century, only Mussolini has attempted so much. 

As Steve Chapman has pointed out:

...just because the government gives you money doesn't mean it can force you to give up a constitutional right. If it did, the government could forbid students getting Pell grants from criticizing the president. It could outlaw gun ownership by anyone working for a company that gets federal contracts...

 The government already spends tax revenue to provide contraceptives to Medicaid recipients -- and the Catholic Church does not ask for an exemption.

A more accurate analogy is how we treat religious pacifists in wartime. Defending the nation is important, but when we had a draft, Quakers and Mennonites were allowed to avoid military service as conscientious objectors. The rights of conscience prevailed. 

I suspect many people support the mandate because they strongly disagree with the Church's opposition to birth control -  or just despise the Church, period.  But the First Amendment isn't there just to protect beliefs and practices we all like. It's there to protect even things we hate 

There is nothing in Barack Obama's HHS mandate except a naked grab for extra-constitutional power and a naked attempt to destroy whatever may remain of the Catholic influence in this nation. If he succeeds, he will have unilaterally overturned the Bill of Rights. Think on that. 




Errata:
Doug Kmiec, Obama's own Catholic Ambassador to Malta, jumped out of Obama's ship.

The Orthodox bishops of the United States agree with the USCCB take on this.

Protestants and Jews have already declared their support for the USCCB against Barack.

Even Cardinal Mahoney and Father Jenkins, president of Notre Dame and the man responsible for Barack's ONLY honorary degree, agree with the USCCB that this HHS mandate is unconscionable:

“It would compel Notre Dame to either pay for contraception and sterilization in violation of the Church’s moral teaching, or to discontinue our employee and student health care plans in violation of the church’s social teaching,” Fr. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame said in a letter to HHS according to the Catholic News Agency.

Democrat Lawmaker agrees with the USCCB. 

Here's the USCCB's original response. Over 80% of US bishops have already spoken out publicly.

And the USCCB response to Obama's revision.

Sister Carol Keehan and Planned Parenthood support the revision.

Barack is interested in saving insurance companies' money.