Press Releases

Excerpts from 2012 Battleground State Newspapers

Ohio

Columbus Dispatch: Reverse rule for contraception coverage

I thank Vice President Joe Biden for visiting Ohio today. The Sisters of Charity Health System is a Cleveland-based Catholic health-care organization which, in collaboration with other Catholic health ministries, actively promoted the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are dedicated to increased health-care coverage and access and are supportive of the law’s efforts to improve quality of care and patient outcomes.

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Cincinnati Enquirer: McConnell: No one's rights are safe

The Obama administration’s recent decision to force religious institutions to violate their own beliefs is shocking – because it tramples our First Amendment religious freedoms, and because it demonstrates the dangers of an all-powerful big government. The president recently approved a ruling of his Health and Human Services Department saying that under the health spending bill, religious institutions – charities, hospitals, and schools – will be forced under penalty of law to go against their own teachings. If they refuse, they face fines for millions of dollars. Or they can shut their doors. The decision to force religious charities, hospitals, and schools to comply with a mandate that violates their sacred beliefs is abhorrent to the founding principles of our nation.

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Michigan

Detroit Free Press: Catholics protest ruling that health plans must cover birth control

Catholic leaders are outraged over a recent decision by the Obama administration that would require Catholic-affiliated institutions to cover contraceptives and sterilization in their employee health care plans -- a rule they say would violate one of their core beliefs. The government's move will affect thousands of people who work for 210 Catholic-related institutions in metro Detroit such as social service centers, schools and hospitals. The institutions currently don't pay for contraceptives or sterilization. In pulpits, church bulletins and Congress, concerned Catholics are voicing their disapproval, saying it undermines their constitutional right to freedom of religion. This week, Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron is expected to send a letter expressing his concerns to all 270 parishes in the archdiocese, which oversees 1.3 million Catholics. Vigneron has criticized the Jan. 20 decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, saying the government's move amounts to "discrimination against Americans exercising their right of conscience."

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Detroit Free Press: Guest commentary: Insurance mandate for birth control attacks religious liberty, should be defeated

Nearly three years after President Barack Obama called for the protection of conscience rights at the University of Notre Dame, not only has he failed to honor his words, last month he authorized perhaps the most egregious and sweeping intrusion into the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American citizen.  On January 20 the Obama Administration announced through the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) that religious employers who serve persons of any faith or those of no faith at all must provide in their health benefit plans contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. In effect, the mandate forces charitable and educational institutions, against their conscience, to pay for services they have long held as immoral.

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Florida

Tampa Tribune: Religious birth control debate heats up presidential race

Birth control and religious freedom have suddenly become the dominant issue in the presidential race, an explosive issue with possible risks and benefits to both President Barack Obama and his leading challenger, Mitt Romney. The controversy over Obama's health care reform plan, which requires employee insurance policies to cover prescription contraceptives, has switched the focus of the nation's long-simmering dispute over reproductive rights from abortion to birth control…Catholic bishops across the nation, including Bishop Robert Lynch of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, issued pastoral letters opposing the contraception coverage requirement. Lynch denied he was getting involved in politics but attacked Obama for "willingly and willfully precipitating a constitutional crisis by causing this assault on the freedom of religion." A Lynch spokesman said the letter focused on Obama rather than on Romney or leaders in other states with coverage requirements because Lynch "doesn't have working knowledge of requirements of other states," and that the federal requirement "seems to breach the religious freedom and freedom of conscience to a degree that hasn't been done before."

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Tampa Bay Tribune: Why the president is wrong

In all Roman Catholic churches in the Diocese of St. Petersburg last weekend, this letter from Bishop Robert N. Lynch was either read by the priest or distributed in the church bulletin.

Dear Friends in Christ,

On Jan. 20, President Barack Obama informed the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan that it was his decision that the Affordable Care Act regulations would require many Catholic institutions and agencies to provide mandatory insurance coverage for contraceptive procedures and medicines. As a consequence, all of our elementary and secondary schools, Catholic colleges and universities, Catholic Hospitals, Catholic Charities and Catholic Relief Services to name only a small sector of Church agencies affected may be required by August 2013 to provide these services and medicines under federal mandate. A huge piece of the wall of separation between Church and State has been breached and if allowed to stand, one has to wonder what the government might require next. Mandatory abortion coverage sometime in the future should not be discounted by anyone if we allow this regulatory implementation at this moment to go unchallenged.

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Naples News: Southwest Florida Catholic institutions to fight federal contraceptive mandate  

Prominent Southwest Florida Catholic institutions are recoiling against a new federal regulation requiring most employers to provide health insurance that includes contraceptive coverage. Catholic parishioners Sunday found a letter about the issue from the Diocese of Venice in their church bulletins. Last week, the president of Ave Maria University went public with a video about the regulation. Both said they will refuse the mandate on the grounds that it infringes on religious liberty. "It's kind of frightening in a way to see how the federal government can come in, in a way, and force you to compromise who you are," Ave Maria University President Jim Towey said. Towey is slated to meet with Gov. Rick Scott this morning, and said he plans to discuss the Jan. 20 announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services.

"Ave Maria (University) is not going to provide to employees contraceptive service coverage," Towey said.

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Pennsylvania

The Morning Call: Allentown Catholic Diocese joins outcry against Obamacare mandate on contraception

Bishops say rule violates conscience and First Amendment. There's a standoff going on: The nation's Catholic bishops are on one side and the federal government on the other. At issue are thorny questions about reproductive rights and religious conscience, and it all seems destined to play out in court. It began Jan. 20, when Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius affirmed a rule that will require health insurers to offer contraception and sterilization services in policies, meaning employers offering health insurance will have to offer those services. A religious exemption covers churches, but not church-affiliated institutions that serve and employ people outside the faith. That means most religious hospitals, colleges, charities and other agencies would have to cover services that they say violate church teaching. And that has prompted the nation's Catholic bishops, including Allentown Bishop John O. Barres, to condemn the decision, not only on religious grounds but constitutional ones.

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The Morning Call: Obama administration contraceptive rules attack our freedoms

I write this column in support of the Catholic Church's principled opposition to an unprecedented attack by the Obama administration on religious freedom, as guaranteed by our Constitution, and therefore an attack on all of us and our freedom and constitutional guarantees. It is a peculiar role for me to be defending the Catholic Church! I am not a Catholic; I am a secular humanist. I do not agree with the Catholic Church on the particular issues that are the basis of the government's attack on the Catholic Church. The government's interference with religious freedom, in this case, involves the government imposing on Catholic institutions and hospitals the requirement that employee health insurance covers contraceptive services, which the church opposes as a matter of faith and conscience. The practical effect is that Catholic institutions could not continue operating without complying with the government's edict.

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Indiana

Courier Press: Health care bill an assault on faith

The latest embarrassment from President Barack Obama is more than an embarrassment. It's an assault on faith that begins with a 2,500-page health care bill enacted with no one expected to read it except the bureaucrats paid to translate its obscurities into thousands more pages of regulations. After a prolonged look at a phrase that could have been interpreted multiple ways, the president and the masters of your life in the Department of Health and Human Services bypassed the sensible and decreed we are now in the age of mandated contraception coverage, one step closer to Utopian bliss. Depending on what kind, contraceptives are easy to get for free or very cheaply. A federal study showed that virtually everyone who needs them and desires them has them. The chief reason for unwanted pregnancies is carelessness. The administration nevertheless decided to raise insurance premiums so that even the rich could get birth control benefits without co-payments or deductibles. Then came the real doozy.

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South Bend Tribune: Reform and religious choice

Two years ago, the talk was all about increasing insurance for pre-existing conditions, expanding access to care for the 30 million Americans with no insurance and reining in Medicare spending. At the time the Obama administration sold Congress on health care reform, almost no one foresaw that this would lead to a mandate for the University of Notre Dame and Saint Joseph's Regional Medical Center to provide coverage for contraceptives, including the morning-after pill, in their insurance plans for employees and students. Never underestimate the power of the bureaucrat, however. Some faceless rulemaker narrowed the federal definition of institutions qualifying for conscience exemptions for such services to exclude Notre Dame and the hospital because they don't primarily serve and employ members of their own Catholic faith

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Nevada

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Editorial: Health care rule is clear violation of Constitution

The First Amendment is really quite simple, with little room for argument. Yes, it’s possible to disagree over whether the Constitution bars teacher-led prayers in public schools or a creche in a public park, but it certainly does not allow the federal government to prohibit the free exercise of religion. Nor does it allow the government to order members of a church to do something that goes against its most basic tenets. Yet, that’s exactly what Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, did last month when she required health insurance plans purchased for employees of organizations with religious affiliations to include copay-free birth control drugs. On Sunday, Catholics in Nevada fought back. Thousands of church-goers listened as priests read a letter from the bishops of Reno and Las Vegas that accused the federal government of restricting Catholics’ “free exercise of religion” and asked them to “Share this concern with other Catholics or anyone who cherishes the freedoms upon which our nation was founded.

Click Here to Read Full Article: http://on.rgj.com/zmUiMk

Wisconsin

TMJ4: Contraception controversy heating up in southeast Wisconsin

A contraception controversy is heating up.  Should employers, including religious groups, be forced to provide free birth control? It's a growing conflict among Catholics.  The church teaches them contraceptives are wrong, but the Obama Administration is telling them religious institutions must cover contraceptives free of charge for their employees. Churches are exempt. "If they are a Catholic organization I don't think you can really force their hand on that, they have a right to their beliefs," said Carol Ann Gumina, who is a Catholic. Milwaukee Democrat Gwen Moore defended the president's policy in Congress and went after those who disagreed. "No one is trying to take away religious freedom," said Rep. Moore.  "The concept of separation of church and state does not mean a church can use their bully pulpit to separate millions of women from critical health care benefits."

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The Cap Times: Lon Newman: Bishops’ demands on contraception coverage raise troubling issues

The U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops (USCCB) is incensed at the decision by the Obama administration to guarantee that the preventive health care benefit package in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes contraceptive care. In a USCCB video, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the former archbishop of Milwaukee, wags an index finger as he invokes religious freedom protected by the “very first amendment.” The archbishop calls upon his flock to contact their elected officials and let them know that “religious liberty must be restored.” Under a cloak of reverence for religious freedom, the bishops say reproductive health care must be denied. As do the rights to millions of American women, millions of people of other religious faiths, and even millions of American Catholics — most of whom disagree with the archbishop.

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Find compromise for rule on birth control coverage

The Obama administration signaled this week that it is willing to compromise on a new rule requiring religious schools and hospitals to provide free birth control in their health insurance plans. We hope it does and that the compromise it finds does not result in government telling a religious organization to ignore its core beliefs, as the two-week-old rule would do. Separation of church and state has just as much to do with keeping government out of church as it does with keeping church out of government. Yes, everyone deserves access to birth control, especially at a time when teen pregnancy and women's health matters are such serious issues. And, yes, birth control is expensive, prohibitively so for some people. And, yes, there are many non-Catholics who work at Catholic universities and hospitals. Beyond that, the vast majority of Catholic women use or have used birth control. Some accommodation should be made for employees of religious institutions. Perhaps a compromise could be crafted that would allow women at exempted workplaces to obtain inexpensive birth control or would provide referrals to an insurance provider who provides birth control coverage.

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New Hampshire

Nashua Telegraph: Local religious leaders outraged by federal birth control dictate

A provision included recently under the federal health care reform law could force religious employers to choose between their country and their faith, local religious leaders have expressed in recent days. Officials from Thomas More College in Merrimack, among other organizations around the state, are decrying a mandate announced recently under the federal Affordable Care Act that would require employers, including Catholic colleges, hospitals and other religious institutions, to cover birth control and other contraceptive services under their health insurance plans. Federal officials, who announced the provision last month, say it will increase women’s access to birth control and preventative health services.

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New Hampshire Union Leader: Ramesh Ponnuru: The contraception edict and rule of law

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of Health and Human Services, says that a new health-care regulation “strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.” That’s what she said when announcing that religious non-profit groups would have one year to start offering what she called “recommended contraceptive services” in their employees’ insurance plans. Only churches, narrowly defined, are exempt: Religious hospitals and universities are not. It’s a strange sort of balance. The Constitution provides specific protection to only the first of the two goods being balanced (“religious freedom” and “increased access”). That protection contains no hint of a suggestion that it is up to federal regulators to strike whatever balance they consider appropriate between religious freedom and their other goals.

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New Mexico

Las Cruces Sun-News: Their View: President Obama destroys conscience protections

President Obama and his cabinet have infringed upon a basic private right in their newest sweeping federal mandate. This violation of the longstanding concept of conscience protection breaches the safeguards for personal religious and moral convictions that have been in place since our founding. In a recent op-ed in USA Today, Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York, wrote that this latest demand "cuts against the grain of what it means to be American." I believe the Archbishop hit the nail on the head. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is aligning against the constitutional protection of one's conscience and religious beliefs. We have the First Amendment to allow everyone to practice whatever faith in whatever manner without the government dictating the God that they worship. As the National Association of Evangelicals stated in response to this edict, "No government has the right to compel its citizens to violate their conscience."  President Obama is dismissing our Constitution, and forcing religious organizations to violate their conscience by adopting the agenda of the administration's favored special interests. This is an abhorrent assault on our fundamental liberties, including our right to live the way our faith prescribes. The government is interfering where it has absolutely no place-in our personal, spiritual lives.

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North Carolina

Raleigh News and Observer: Obama 'firm' on birth control

The White House insisted Wednesday that the president's commitment to contraceptive access for women is "absolutely firm," even as Republicans from Capitol Hill to the presidential campaign trail assailed the policy as an attack on religious liberty. Republicans seized on a call from Catholic bishops, who in recent weeks have asked their parishioners to object to a federal law requiring religious-based institutions, such as Catholic hospitals and universities, to provide contraceptives as part of their health care coverage. A new law taking effect this year requires most private insurers to pay for birth control. Religious groups have been given an extra year to comply.

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Virginia

Virginia Pilot: Infringement of religious rights

Religious institutions receive extraordinary protections under the Constitution. Government must be exceptionally careful that its mandates don't impinge on the freedom of a religious institution to pursue its mission. In the case of health care reform mandates, specifically for birth control, Washington has failed to evince that care for America's largest religious institution: the Catholic Church. According to rules released by the Department of Health and Human Services last month, all employers except for "religious institutions," such as houses of worship, would be required to provide employees with coverage for birth control without a co-payment or deductible.

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Richmond Times-Dispatch: Obama and Catholics: Conscience

American Catholics have a reputation for political progressivism and cultural conservatism. Their church rates among the most principled opponents of abortion, for instance. Indeed, official Catholic positions on abortion, contraception and other questions earn the enduring enmity of the chattering classes. Barack Obama won significant support from Catholics in 2008. A recent decision from the Department of Health and Human Services has attracted strong criticism from sources who had welcomed his election. The department says that certain religious institutions offering health insurance must include free contraception in their coverage, although the sponsoring denominations may oppose artificial birth control on theological grounds. The move is unconscionable; it assaults religious rights

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