On August 1 just past, the Obama administration’s HHS secretary, Donna Shalala published a rule under the healthcare act commonly referred to as “Obamacare” that will impose requirements on organizations and businesses that purchase health insurance to include full coverage, without deductible or co-payment, for birth control products, including abortion drugs such as Ella and Plan B.
There is a narrow exemption in the proposal directed at churches and religious seminaries that, under the HHS definition “primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets” and “has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose.” This narrow exemption will, by it’s definition, not apply to religious organizations that serve the poor, provide health care, provide food, provide abortion, rape or abuse counseling or provide private school services to their communities. Under liberal interpretation it could even fail to exempt local churches that provide benevolence services or even missionary or evangelical ministries to other than their core constituency.
Christian ministries by their very Biblical basis are focused not on other Christians, but on reaching and ministering to the hurting and needy of all religious persuasions, or no religious affiliation. Widows and orphans are specifically mentioned by James as among those to whom the Church is to minister. A church that looks only into itself is a church that is not only violating it’s Biblical mandate, but is dying.
HHS reveals it’s lack of understanding of the basic purpose Christian ministry. According to Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the proposed regulation, according to her, “conveniently ignores the underlying principle of Catholic charitable actions: we help people because we are Catholic, not because our clients are.”
I would go a step further and offer that this proposal understands this core tenet, that applies to all Christian ministry, and takes advantage of it knowing full well that these ministries will fail the exemption clause and suffer the imposition of a government mandated increase in their cost of providing insurance services to their employees, while at the same time summarily impose federal regulations that are antithetical to the philosophies, beliefs and objectives of these ministries in particular, and Christianity in general.
Catholics, who as a rule have a stronger stance against birth control products and abortion than mainline or even Evangelical Christian groups have taken a strong stance against the proposal. Michael Sean Winter wrote in National Catholic Reporter, “Keeping the rule as is would give me great pause in casting my ballot for Barack Obama next year, not because he failed to do right by my Church, but because anyone who fails to grasp the constitutional issue here probably should not be entrusted with the post of Chief Magistrate under that same Constitution.”
All Christians, yes, all Americans, should stand together, acting as a bulwark, against this proposal that is an affront to our beliefs and our compassion, an imposition against our Biblical authority for service, a marginalization of our ministry to those less fortunate and a violation of our First Amendment freedoms.
HHS-OS-2011-0022-0001 is a draconian rule designed to marginalize Christian groups by limiting their Biblical mandate under federal law and is more akin to what one would expect in a majority Muslim or Communist nation. As such it should be struck down and withdrawn for the following reasons.
By ignoring the basic tenet of Christian ministry, HHS-OS-2011-0022-0001 will, in effect, act as a tax on these groups, and impose rules that require them act against their core beliefs and philosophies.
This proposal ignores and violates the the First Amendment of the US Constitution and will, if enacted as proposed, serve to prohibit the free exercise of Christian organizations and their adherents, it will limit their free speech rights to share their beliefs, and it will violate their freedom of assembly, under threat of federally imposed rules that will increase their costs and cause them to spend contributor donations on insurance services that may violate their belief structure.
In summary, HHS-OS-2011-0022-0001 should be withdrawn as it violates the constitutional freedoms of a large groups of citizens and their organizations and is antithetical to the guarantees given in the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
The comment period is still open as of this post. You can weigh in and post your comments, for or against HHS-OS-2011-0022-0001 by going to regulations.gov. In the field for “select document type” choose “proposed rule.” In the field for “enter keyword or ID” type “HHS-OS-2011-0022-0001,” then press “search.” You’ll be taken to a page where you can type your comment.
It may be helpful if you compose your thoughts and comments in a text editor before going to the comment page, then paste them into the comment field and add a title for your comments.
