What’s the best way to create more criminals? Keep passing more laws, some of them are bound to stick. The Obama Administration’s healthcare law will require employers, even religious institutions, to pay for birth control. The Catholic Church is not happy about this and may even refuse to comply. Catholic League head Bill Donohue (pictured above) has said that “this is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets.”
Via CBS New York:
Catholic leaders are furious and determined to harness the voting power of the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters to stop a provision of President Barack Obama’s new heath car reform bill that will force Catholic schools, hospitals and charities to buy birth control pills, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization coverage for their employees.
“Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church,” said Catholic League head Bill Donohue.
Already Archbishop Timothy Dolan has spoken out against the law and priests around the country have mobilized, reading letters from the pulpit. Donohue said Catholic officials will stop at nothing to put a stop to it.
Oddly enough, groups that identify themselves as “pro-choice” are criticizing the church for choosing not to provide those services and fighting against being forced to do so.
But pro-choice groups said they will fight the church and fight for the right of employees of Catholic institutions to have birth control and other services paid for.
“The Catholic hierarchy seems to be playing a cynical game of chicken and they don’t seem to care that the health and well being of millions of American woman are what’s at stake here,” National Abortion Rights Action League President Andrea Miller said.
We all know that “pro-choice” really means “you have to think like us and do what we want”, but pro-choice has a better ring to it. Is there really a crisis in access to birth control? If there is, will the government requiring more fix the problem or just create a shortage? My guess is shortage.
The unConstitutionality of a law like this is obvious, but in a culture thats used to government force stuff like this gets a pass. Now we will have to turn to the courts to determine if government force will trump our religious liberties. If this law somehow survives the courts it will likely turn the Catholic Church into a criminal organization when they refuse to comply. So much for that whole “freedom of religion” thing.
[Featured image via Flickr/Gnarls Monkey]
[Image of Bill Donohue via Catholicleague.org]