I normally don’t get into politics in this blog, but this issue is too big to ignore. As an American Catholic, I feel it is my duty to speak out against the recent HHS Mandate forcing almost all U.S. employers, including Catholic ones, to provide insurance coverage for sterilization, contraception, and abortion-inducing drugs.  The religious exemption in the law is so narrowly defined that even explicitly Catholic univerities, hospitals, and charities are not exempt, not to mention individual Catholic employers.

The Catholic church teaches unequivocably that sterilization, contraception, and abortion are all gravely immoral.   And while there are unfortunately many individual Catholics who accept contraception, there’s a big difference between disagreeing with Church teaching, and wanting to see one’s Church (or anyone’s church) coerced into violating its beliefs.

 The HHS Mandate is “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, which is a right protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United State of America.  Hundreds of religious leaders around the country are expressing their outrage, and American Catholic Bishops are vowing civil disobedience.

Please read more about this conscience rights issue on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops website, and consider contacting your state representatives in the House and Senate.

Thank you!