Support Our Aging Religious will award the 2009 Elizabeth Ann Seton Award to Cokie and Steve Roberts. No surprise, more honoring of pro-abortion advocates. [reference]
My opposition to the health care plan currently under consideration goes way beyond whether it funds abortion or not. Even if it passed with explicit language against funding of abortion I would still oppose it. Simply because it would be modified some point later on to fund it. Though the whole idea is inherently flawed. Jimmy Akin perfectly expresses my thoughts on this:
Any reasoned look at what is being proposed will lead to the conclusion that the long term effects of the program will be to increase costs (something bureaucracy does exceedingly well), increase taxes, lead to greater deficits, lead to health care rationing, drive private insurance out of the market, promote euthanasia, lead to more nanny state interventions in people’s lives, promote greater dependency on government, stifle the development of new medical treatments (just when we’re getting to the point that we might start seriously extending the human life), and basically kill a lot of people, both here in the U.S. and in other countries, which have been relying on American innovation since their own socialized medical systems put the squeeze on domestic innovation.
Why would anyone want that?
Name a big government program where the money spent was the same as what was forecasted? Normally they go three to ten times the fictional cost. But even worse the more the government gets involved in an area, the more they control it.
Manassas, Va. – The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has ruled that a small Catholic college must include coverage for artificial contraceptives in its employee health insurance plan, raising new concerns about the need for conscience protections and religious exemptions in America’s health care policies.
The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) today sent a letter to EEOC acting chairman Stuart Ishimaru, noting that “it is ironic that the federal agency responsible for protecting against discrimination has so blatantly engaged in an inexcusable violation of religious liberty in its Belmont Abbey ruling.”
CNS also is sending a letter to all Catholic bishops in the United States, informing them of the EEOC action against Belmont Abbey College and highlighting the dangerous precedent this ruling sets to force Catholic employers to included contraceptive coverage in employee health plans.
“No Catholic college or other institution should be required by government to violate the Catholic Church’s clear moral teachings,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. “The apparently increasing insensitivity to religious beliefs should frighten all employers and employees. We urge religious leaders to stand in defense of Belmont Abbey College.”
This is the common practice of the government. They make up phony rights and force everyone to go along with them. Catholic Charities in California was forced to do the same thing in a case that went up to their Supreme Court. States again and again have trampled on the right of conscience for medical workers and pharmacists. The same knife that they have used to force contraception coverage is the same one they will use for abortion coverage. They will call it equality while denying the equality of the human person in the womb.
I find it so naive of the Catholic groups that support nationalized medicine. Can they really think that a President who supported infanticide and makes Special Olympics jokes along with a House containing politicians who deny the humanity of the unborn child are going to provide legislation that will be morally grounded. That these same Culture of Death supporters will ensure that boards dealing with the end of life are going to make moral decisions? This is either ignorance or a cooperation with the evils that will occur on some level. There is also a question of some of these Catholic advocates and the tie to federal money they will receive. On a coming “The World Over Live” Raymond Arroyo will be interviewing Catholic Health Association President Sister Carol. This trade organization has been very supportive of Obamacare and this should supply an interesting discussion considering come of Raymond’s criticisms recently.
This isn’t a Democrat/Republican divide. I totally oppose nationalized healthcare by any party. Romneycare in Massachusetts is just as much of a disaster as Obamacare. The only real difference between the two is that a national program harms the whole country. The problem is inherent in the idea, not the good will of the people who propose it. The road to deadly health care is paved with good intentions.
The Good Samaritan helped to provide medical care directly. He did not run back and tell the government there was a man on the road needing care. As Catholics we need to be personally involved in being a part of society in helping to provide health care instead of outsourcing our responsibility to the government.
What would you rather be seen as? As someone made in the image and likeness of God or as a line item in a spreadsheet on medical costs.
But opponents say the legislation introduced in Oregon – the first state in America to allow doctor-assisted suicide – simply does not work. And it’s not just the experience of lumberjack Mr Prueitt that supports their argument.
They point to the fact that although the rules require those handed the lethal prescriptions to have a life expectancy of only six months, some who subsequently decide not to kill themselves have gone on to survive for a year-and-a-half more. Or even longer.
Critics warn that because many doctors refuse to participate, patients end up shopping around for the handful of physicians willing to prescribe.
It makes it all the more likely the person who is writing the prescription will neither know the patient nor provide an impartial assessment of them.
It is also said that those suffering from depression, a condition that can impair decision-making, are rarely excluded from the process as they should be.
Baroness Finlay has raised concerns about a system such as that in Oregon
But perhaps most worrying of all, say critics, is the trend for other treatment to be denied to those who are terminally ill. Instead of being given the medicines that might prolong their lives, they are being offered £30 to cover the cost of drugs that will end their days in a matter of hours.
The one thing the government is actually efficient at is increasing the number of people to kill. Can’t wait till nationalized medicine so we can really crank up the number of people to kill.
Too bad as Wesley J. Smith notes it takes a foreign newspaper to do a long article on the problems with the Oregon plan.
It seems that more and more if you want to find what a bill doesn’t do is that you read the title of it. The title is an indicator of exactly what the bill will not achieve and that in fact the opposite will happen. In the build-up for embryonic stem-cell research we have had plenty of laws with titles opposing human cloning while actually supporting it via redefinition of cloning.
The latest travesty is HR #3312 “Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act.” Which of course means funneling $700 million dollars to Planned Parenthood and other similar groups.
American Papist has been doing great work exposing this bill I would suggest you This type of approach is oh so reasonable and suggest some other legislation that would work just as well.
- Reducing Racism in Our Time Act – $700M to the KKK
- Poverty Reduction and Supporting the Poor Act – $700B to the to another bureaucratic committee filled with the middle class and higher.
- Clean Waterways Supporting Pollution Reduction Act – $700M for introduction of mercury into the aquifer.
- Safe Highways and Accident Reduction Act – $700M to Jack Daniel Distillery.
- Medical Affordability Act – $700M to trial lawyers.
The USCCB was exactly right in calling it the “Planned Parenthood Economic Stimulus Package of 2009.” No surprise that the usual Culture of Death suspects fully support this.
The bill like almost all bills is a mixed bag with some positive mixed with a lot problematic things with lots of leeway to make them more problematic. One of the answers in the bill is even more money towards “comprehensive education on preventing teen pregnancies.” Gee they never funded that before. The old “please delay sexual activity” while showing you the proper use of all the different contraceptives.
Medicaid is provided for “Family Planning Services” which of course means contraception and abortion. Certainly the “services” they plan for pregnant women is not vitamins and checkups since so-called “Family Planning Services” such as Planned Parenthood don’t provide them.
How about grants for Crisis Pregnancy Centers? Yeah right, you can be sure these centers will never qualify under “Family Planning Services.” Give the Pill and Kill is what these services do.
The Hell with reality though – let us just keep up the drum beat of “more contraception” and more “sex education”, it will work eventually, someday, when it gets to the right level don’t you know. Just close you eyes to contraceptive failure leading to abortion. The contraceptive mentality or the right to not get pregnant due to the natural consequence of sexual activity must be ignored. Let us also demand the right to eat all we want and not get fat – which is really unintended obesity.
One of the joys of being Catholic is that you can see reality more clearly and don’t have to pretend to not see the obvious. Though it is a bittersweet joy since seeing this reality is rather frustrating when so many are comfortably ignoring it.
As President Obama presses for Congressional action on a sweeping health-care proposal that would include funding for abortion, the president of Catholic Charities USA has written to legislators urging them to “make comprehensive health care reform a top priority,” without mentioning the heated debate over abortion coverage.
In his July 22 letter, Father Larry Snyder does not specifically mention the Obama health-care proposal. And he does remind lawmakers that a Catholic approach to health care would “address health needs at all stages of life, from conception to natural death.” But the thrust of his letter is clearly favorable to the Obama proposal. And a time when pro-life organizations are working diligently to strip abortion funding from the initiative, Father Snyder does not address that concern.
“Catholic social teaching affirms that health care is a fundamental issue of human life and dignity,” writes the head of Catholic Charities USA. He urges Congress to implement legislation that will “expand and strengthen Medicaid…cap out of pocket costs… address health disparities.” Father Synder emphasizes the need for reform that will offer protection to those who are most vulnerable, provide help for populations currently underserved by health-care agencies, ensure coverage for racial minorities, extend protection to all legal immigrants, and emphasize prevention.[reference]
Catholic Charities and the USCCB need to go to Damascus to do something about their blindness to what Obamacare portends. At least the USCCB has finally objected to the funding of abortion in the current bill, but still they see the whole project as a positive goal.
Father Snyders’ mention of Catholic teaching of course does not address that it does not teach that it must be at the national level. I see nothing but danger along this path. The government has already forced multiple mandates such as contraceptive coverage with no conscience clause allowed for groups such as Catholic Charities. The Culture of Death will continue to use government force to force medical institutions along the path of their “enlightened” mind under the we are a secular society excuse.
To look at nationalized healthcare in general we can see that it tends towards allowing funding for abortion. Malta is an exemption to this rule, but a small country actually causes subsidiarity to some extent. Bureaucratic health care such as so-called Obamacare moves life and death decision to a committee. Now committees have been known to bore people to death, so I guess they want to expand this. Though of course this whole debate is of a prudential nature, but I think subsidiarity is an important principle in Catholic thought and I don’t see how moving this to the Federal level follows this.
The bill itself for those who actually read it only leads to concern. As Karen Hall points out – The Devil is in the details
People constantly complain about customer service at some big cooperation. Yet think that socialized (bureaucratic medicine) is the answer to the problem. They complain about the cost of medical insurance, yet ignore that it was the government through its insurance mandates that helped to raise the price of the policy in the first place.
This whole bill should be called stealth care since it is to get the nose of the camel under the tent in the first place. Once that happens we will see just how long private insurance and being able to pick your own care will remain. Just how long will Catholic health care be able to advertise their “Gospel Values” on their web site and have it mean anything?
I also don’t understand the whole thing of why Federalizing something makes it better. It never makes anything more efficiently and always does it most costly. People are like Bullwinkle thinking that eventually something right will come out of the Federal hat. While in the military I once found that we were paying $500 dollars for a single externally relieved screw we used to secure the top of an avionics black box. After filing a fraud, waste, and abuse claim it came down to something like just over a buck for a hundred of them. But we will get federal health care right – right?
When candidate Obama was being embarrassed by the words of his pastor he later denied that he was there when he said those things. Pretty good timing that he managed to go that Chicago church regularly and just missed out on those days something controversial was said. Though I always thought this was a silly excuse even if true. This is to say that you go to a church for years and years and are friends with the pastor, but somehow don’t know about his controversial positions. So this either shows a situational stupidity of ineptness or just plain lying.
Judge Sotomayor seems to be taking a page out of Obama book. Today she testified about her involvement as a board member with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund where she had held multiple positions over the years. There were several PRLDEF briefs in support of abortion. In testimony to Sen. Hatch she repeatedly said she did not know anything about the contents of the briefs, just that they were filing briefs. Though earlier in her testimony she know they had filed briefs in support of abortion. So it certainly appears she contradicter herself and most likely committed perjury.
But again if she was telling the truth later about not knowing what was contained in the briefs then she is inept. If you are a board member of a group for a bit of time and don’t know what is going on – it does not show very favorably to your case. If she perjured herself she is unqualified to be a Judge of any stripe. If she did not know what was going on around her it also does not make her a very astute judge.
Dawn Eden has an in depth article at Americans United for Life on the testimony today and should be read.
Jill Stanek also has lots of information on Sotomayor’s testimony along with a detailed look at her work with the PRLDEF.
Via Father Z
When the Pope Benedict admitted Pres. Obama into his presence today, he gave him gifts of a medal, a mosaic of St. Peter’s Square and, according to Catholic News Service Twitter feed, a copy of CDF’s instruction on bio-ethical questions Dignitatis personae.
This was not in the regular story CNS filed, however. It might be a good thing, as a follow up to this “historic meeting”, to ask the WH Press Secretary, or the President himself, if the President read what the Pope gave him.
Dignitatis personae is only a little under 10K words, after all. Surely someone as brilliant at this President would be able to absorb Dignitatis personae in the limo between the Cortile San Damaso and the Via della Conciliazione.
According to the Catholic Herald, the best UK weekly, the Holy Father also gave the President a copy of Caritas in veritate.
Well… Caritas in veritate is nearly 28K words. The President might need a little longer in the limo to read that. Perhaps as far as the Campidoglio.
UPDATE:
One Italian news broadcast says that Pres. Obama said that he would read the encyclical on the airplane.
Also, according to SKY TG24 Fr. Lombardi said that Pres. Obama told the Pope that he would try to reduce the number of abortions in the USA.
In the past is was not usual for the conversation of the Pope with a head of state to be reported.
If the Vatican is saying this… well… I suppose it could be a way of vindicating the meeting and trying to holding them to.
I have seen many reactions to the gift of this instruction by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the President. Many see it as a kind of slam to the President. No doubt though that for the Pope it was a true gift. He saw an area of the truth that the President was especially deficit in and decided that this somewhat recent instruction would be a positive thing to give to him. It was certainly not an accidental selection that he be given a document regarding embryonic stem-cell research, the disposition of frozen human embryos, IVF, abortion and any intentional destruction of a human person from conception to natural death. The President has been awful on both sides of that with now him recently talking about futile care (euthanasia). The document starts:
1. The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death. This fundamental principle expresses a great “yes” to human life and must be at the center of ethical reflection on biomedical research, which has an ever greater importance in today’s world. …
The Pope should have told him there would be a test later on the contents of the document.
Lots of stories coming out on President Obama’s meeting with Pope Bendict XVI, a meeting lasting around 40 minutes and turning out to be a more substantial than I thought it would be.
The president explicitly expressed his commitment to reducing the numbers of abortions and to listen to the church’s concerns on moral issues,
Two days ago the President promised to reduce global temperatures. The only thing that I am sure he will reduce is the size of our wallets. Sometimes it is annoying being skeptical. I would like to take the President at his word, but unfortunately it has been worth about the same as the paper the Treasury printing presses are pumping out. If the president was serious about his pledge, then what would he personally do?
As far a making abortion illegal this is one front where we will see no change. His current and likely future candidates for the Supreme Court will make no progress in this direction. The idea that he would appoint somebody actually open to overturn the bad law of Roe v. Wade is pretty slim. The law is a teacher and as long as we have legalized abortion we will have plenty of abortion.
Will he rescind his executive order that allowed agencies that provide abortion from receiving Federal money overseas?
On Jun 30th President Obama issued a budget recommendation for the 2010 fiscal year that would ease the restrictions on taxpayer funds for abortions in Washington D.C. Will he withdraw this? Funding abortions in D.C. will increase them.
Allowing destruction of frozen human embryos is a form of abortion. Well he order this stopped?
Will he change his executive order funding embryonic stem-cell research and then provide funding for adult stem-cell research (which he stopped)?
What really needs to be changed is the culture of death that says abortion is like having a mole removed and the same moral weight. This altitude is part of the problem. The only way we could take seriously the President’s promise to reduce abortion is for him to say that abortion is morally wrong – the only real reason to reduce abortion in the first place. Again if he was serious he could do great good just by proclaiming this truth.
I don’t see any of the above happening. Now we so often hear about common ground and those areas that where there could be cooperation to reduce abortion.
One of those areas is abstinence education. Something which the Obama Administration has not been friend to at all. As Cosmos-Liturgy-Sex has shown is that those states accepting abstinence only funds have dramatically reduced teen abortion while states who rejected this have only seen a slight decrease. Abstinence education is one of the very few areas that actually got budget cuts in the Obama Administration. Will he change this?
How about the Pregnant Women Support Act? Will he encourage fellow Democrats to actually bring this to debate and pass this bill so that he can sign it? Up until now the President has not lent his support to this bill, though there were previous false reports that he did.
How about asking congress to stop funding Planned Parenthood?
Actual reduction in abortion has come about in the state level from parental notifications laws and ultrasounds. Will he be a leader in this regard in speaking out to states on using these types of laws to help reduce abortion?
How about the sneering and hatred of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” by his party? Will he lead in talking about the good they do in helping women to bring their child into the world? The bully pulpit could certainly be used to proclaim the good that has been done at the local level helping women.
How about talking about the toxic culture that denigrates women as sex objects in all forms of the media which contributes to sex outside of marriage and abortion?
So let us see what is left? Funny I don’t see anything, common ground, or not that he would ever do. Maybe more sex eduction and contraception and other ideas that throw gas on the fire.
Oh I guess I can see him saying he will reduce abortion and then not doing anything at all in this area. Yeah I know he is a politician, but his track record on promises is even worse than most.
Please Mr. President prove me wrong. I would so love to be wrong and would rejoice in being wrong. We should certainly pray that whatever seeds the Pope speaking to him has had will grow on fertile foil.
The White House is saying that pro-abortion President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI, the head of the Catholic Church, will have a “frank’ talk on abortion when they meet on Friday. Obama is currently in Italy for the Group of Eight summit and the two will meet after the conference concludes.
“I think there will be a frank discussion [about abortion],” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One, according to an AP report.
On subject like abortion where Obama is out of step with the pro-life teachings of the Catholic faith, Gibbs said “even if we don’t see eye to eye on everything, there are steps that can be taken on a number of issues that will show progress, whether it’s on something like unintended pregnancy or adoption.” (LifeNews via American Papist)
Seems to me like a phony story. Maybe the Vatican does list topics that are going to be discussed ahead of time, but for a 15 minute meeting the list can’t be very long and the talk not very substantial. A frank discussion on abortion would certainly take more than 15 minutes. Heck the President can ramble on about women rights and it being a moral issue as he normally does and pretty much 15 minutes is gone. Plus how frank of a discussion can you have with a guy who thought infanticide was acceptable in some cases and then lied about what he voted on.
I really wish the Holy Father was a bit of a practical joker. For example when meeting the President he could raise his hands and start repeating “The Power of Christ compels you” with some splashed of Holy Water to accent this. That would be classic.
CNSNews.com) – Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said President Barack Obama supports existing federal laws that prevent federally funded health care providers from forcing doctors and pharmacists who morally oppose abortion from either performing the procedure or providing abortion-inducing medication.
But Obama opposes a regulation put into place by the Bush administration that would require those federally funded providers to certify compliance with the law, Sebelius said.
On March 10, the Obama administration submitted to the Federal Register a proposal to rescind the “conscience clause” rule entitled “Ensuring That Department of Health and Human Services Funds Do Not Support Coercive or Discriminatory Policies or Practices in Violation of Federal Law.”
“There really hasn’t been a change in status of what the president proposed,” Sebelius told CNSNews.com during a conference call with reporters on Monday. “The president continues to support the underlying law.
“He felt the regulation issued in the final days of the Bush administration was overly broad and jeopardizes critical health services for women,” she said. [reference]
First they argued that the newer additions from the Bush administration were not needed because existing laws covered it. Though they never explained why this set of guidelines need to be repealed if they are just duplicates. No reason to go through this whole thing of public comment and then repeal if this was so. They could be just left in place.
The key to what the Obama administration is really saying lies in “jeopardizes critical health services for women.” They pretend to say that their will be no change in conscience protection while at the same time saying it jeopardizes health care services for women. Obviously to provide the level of so-called “women’s health care” somebody has to have their conscience violated to do so – at least according to their action. Protection of conscience is just fine as long as it is a politically correct conscience. Otherwise you must bow down to the state and do their will in the name of “women’s health care” which always means contraception and abortion.
I really find this whole thing despicable and even worse how little of an outcry relatively to this usurpation to the human conscience there is. Ironically it is often liberals who appeal to the protection of conscience even if it is an ill-formed one. But have a properly formed conscience that respects the actual dignity of humans being and God’s plan for human sexuality and you have an inconvenient conscience that must be attacked into submission. God help us.
Plus there was this story yesterday
Although 30,000 of the approximately 49,000 comments on the National Institutes of Health’s draft guidelines on human embryonic stem-cell research opposed any federal funding of such research, those responses were “deemed not responsive to the question put forth,” according to the acting director of NIH.
“We did not ask them whether to fund such funding, but how it should be funded,” said Dr. Raynard S. Kington in a telephone briefing with the media July 6.
But Richard M. Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said it was “disingenuous (for Kington) to say that comments criticizing the guidelines overall were to be ignored.” [reference]
We seek input that matches are pre-drawn conclusion.