Published today in the Wall Street Journal was an article by Donald Wuerl, Chuck Colson, and Meir Y. Soloveichik discussing the contraception mandate and how it completely violates religious freedom in America. The article can be read in full online at Wall online.wsj.com.
Stories involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line. We wish that were the case here, but what brings us together is no laughing matter: the threat now posed by government policy to that basic human freedom, religious liberty.
Last month the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Affordable Care Act requires employers to pay for insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations and contraception. What made the announcement especially troubling is that HHS specifically declined to exempt religious institutions that serve those outside their own faiths, such as hospitals and schools.
Coverage of this story has almost invariably been framed as a conflict between the federal government and the Catholic bishops. Zeroing in on the word "contraception," many commentators have taken delight in pointing to surveys about the use of contraceptives among Catholics, the message being that any infringement of religious freedom involves an idiosyncratic position that doesn't affect that many people. READ MORE...