by Susan Bergert
“All
Floridians…deserve the opportunity to benefit from programs with a secular
purpose provided by religious organizations.” –Florida Catholic
Conference
In playing the religious freedom
card to justify denying birth control coverage to employees, Catholic
authorities have seriously hurt themselves and the politicians who support
their stand.
The Catholic Bishops, who take
their orders from a foreign potentate—the Pope in Rome—have screamed that by
requiring them to follow the regulations in the Affordable Health Care Act,
President Obama is waging a war on religion. They ordered a letter to be read
in every Catholic church that said, “the Obama administration has cast
aside the First Amendment to the Constitution” and denied Catholics
“religious liberty.”
The public hasn’t seen this quite
the same way. The birth control
controvery is seen by many as not a war on religion, but rather a war on women. Recent polls show that female voters favor
Obama by double digits over any candidate supportive of the bishops’ stand.
Criticism of the bishops has come
from all directions, even Catholics themselves. Jon O’Brien, president of
Catholics for Choice, pointed out that 98% of sexually active Catholic women
have used a form of birth control forbidden by the Vatican. According to
O’Brien, “having failed to convince Catholics in the pews, the bishops are now
trying to impose their religious views by fiat,” and that “in the
process they stand to impede the religious freedom of millions of Americans of
all faiths and no faith, taking reproductive healthcare options away from
everybody. The result will be an unconscionable violation of the conscience
rights of Americans, sponsored and supported by a small group of religious
leaders who have lost all credibility on this issue.”
Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State echoed
this stand. “When the claim of ‘conscience’ by large religions collides
with that of an individual woman, it is her right to make her own moral
decision that must be saved.”
Lauren
Youngblood of the Secular Coalition of America commented in her blog that “Religious institutions are not above the
law or entitled to special treatment “This is especially true,” she
said, “when the organizations in question accept government funding—as so
many religious hospitals, charities and universities do. Religious liberty
certainly doesn’t give organizations the right to force their views, through
taxpayer dollars, on those with different religious views, or to ignore the
law.”
The Bishops have taken another kind of hit: ridicule from the world of
entertainment. The cast of Saturday Night Live and the influential Jon Stewart
and Stephen Colbert have ripped into them. Watch Colbert’s informative take on
the issue here:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/408347/february-14-2012/contraception-crusade
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/408347/february-14-2012/contraception-crusade
I've always felt this to be an extremely private area of a woman's life that is between her and the G-d of her understanding. My beliefs have nothing to do with anothers and it shoud be kept that way. In this country we have a separation of church and state and I was taught to understand that to mean that my religious beliefs shouldn't influence my political beliefs and my political beliefs shouldn't influence my religious beliefs. This is suppose to keep things fair for all of us.
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