..[H]ave you heard about the latest pronouncement by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)? Remember the firestorm created when the HHS announced that religious organizations such as hospitals, charities, schools, and colleges and universities will be required to offer their employees insurance packages that include contraceptives and abortifacients? Never mind that the churches which sponsor those organizations are spiritually and morally opposed to those practices. This is Obamacare and it supersedes trivial stuff like spiritual values, morals, conscience, or religious liberty. Well, that attitude turned out to be not a good thing for an Administration standing for re-election in nine months.
So you’d think now would be the time to offer a compromise, right? Wrong. Instead, the Administration decided to double down.
Last week, the HHS announced that religious colleges and universities (along with all the others) will be required to offer contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization in their student insurance packages. Never mind that they are spiritually and morally opposed to those practices. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Of course, the government is going to order the insurance companies to provide the services “free of charge” to all those students (wink, wink) so the churches which own the schools, colleges, and universities won’t feel morally and spiritually violated.
Apparently, the Administration still doesn’t get it. And besides, why are we offering free sterilization to college students whose lives still lay before them? I would be tempted to say this is just another stupid, tone-deaf maneuver by the Administration if it weren’t for something HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told a Congressional committee.
She argued that forcing insurers to cover the contraceptive, sterilization, and morning-after pills free of charge to the religious institutions (as if that would salve their wounded consciences) will actually save money in the long-run because it will decrease the number of babies born. She said, “The reduction in the number of pregnancies compensates for the cost of contraception.”
Europeans are aborting and contracepting themselves out of existence. Meanwhile, Russia is desperately encouraging its citizens to have more children. And we Americans, the world’s most Christian nation, are forcing our church colleges to offer free sterilizations to their students. The sad truth is that the Progressive Left has long been a pioneer and promoter of population manipulation and control. Is that what this is about? Or is it simply a conscious attack on our religious heritage and freedom of conscience?
from The Hal Lindsey Report – March 23, 2012
