Graphic by Amanda Sullivan
Changes to ObamaCare reveal administration’s disregard of First Amendment
America’s latest issue of Newsweek features a photo of red, white and blue contraceptive pills accompanied by bold print text, showcasing writer Andrew Sullivan’s article titled, “The Politics of Sex.” The cover is just one of many media platforms addressing the health-care debate’s current uprising.
President Barack Obama’s most recent health-care reform efforts requires religious affiliated companies to cover birth control in their employee health insurance plans. As the conservative right has risen up against this, the more liberal media has catapulted a swarm of attacks against them.
Since Obama’s announcement, the debate has waged on in the media with pictures recently surfacing of an all male panel listening to various testimonies supporting the birth control mandate during a house committee hearing last week — a sight that sent many liberal democrats into turmoil over the lack of female representation.
But stepping back into reality, behind all of this salacious sex talk going on, there is a stronger argument being trampled on — one that has nothing to do with sex, contraception or even our issues with health-care.
Since the start of our nation, the First Amendment of the American Constitution has prohibited the making of any law impeding the free exercise of religion.
Likewise, for centuries the Catholic Church has taught its members that unnatural or artificial means of birth control are immoral. In 1968, despite knowing popular opinion was against him, Pope Paul VI issued a Humanae Vitae reaffirming this traditional teaching against any artificial forms of birth control.
Forty years later in 2008, the current Pope Benedict XVI readdressed the Church’s controversial stance stating, “Drafted to treat a difficult situation, (Humanae Vitae) constitutes a significant show of courage in reasserting the continuity of the Church’s doctrine and tradition.”
For the Catholic Church, the stance against artificial forms of birth control is a part of their well-documented doctrine and forcing any religious organization that follows this doctrine to go against it violates the Church member’s First Amendment rights.
Whether a person is Catholic or not, a woman or not, a supporter of birth control or not — the fact is this health care mandate is unconstitutional.
Since the controversy unfolded, Obama has shifted his mandate from the arms of the religious organizations to the insurers themselves, ultimately leaving the burden of funding contraception on the shoulders and the wallets of the American public.
In the end, the entire issue has raised many questions not only about how impractical Obama’s health-care plan really is but also, and more importantly, about his lack of ability to abide by our country’s own well-established doctrine — the Constitution.
In the 2008 Humanae Vitae address Pope Benedict XVI stated, “What is true yesterday is true also today.” Now, reflecting on Obama’s disregard of our First Amendment rights, one can only wonder: Is what is true about him and his policies today also true when it comes to his management of our nation’s tomorrows?