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published: Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Government in clear violation

Editor:

The Obama administration has mandated that Catholic hospitals must now provide services which include abortifacients, sterilizations and contraceptives for their patients. Additionally, any Catholic school, Catholic charity and Catholic hospital employee must be guaranteed health insurance that includes coverage for these services as well. So, in effect, these Catholic entities, are now, for the first time in the history of our country, required by law to violate their consciences.

Now, the administration would like us to believe that the Catholic church is simply trying to prevent U.S. citizens from having access to these services. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, even though the church itself is morally opposed to these services, it knows full well that they are and have been readily available to any U.S. citizen, whether Catholic or non-Catholic and will continue to be so.

No, this is not an attack by the church on U.S. citizens. Rather, it is a clear violation, by the government, of the First Amendment to our Constitution which unequivocally prohibits the enactment of any law that impedes the free exercise of religion. Even the Canticle of Zechariah in the Gospel of St. Luke states that God swore to Abraham and the Jewish nation that He would "...set us free from our enemies, free to worship Him without fear..."

We must never forget that our Founding Fathers were clearly aware of these Judeo-Christian beliefs when they drafted the Constitution. Now, let us hope and pray that God will inspire our governmental leaders through a "softening of their hearts" to relent their current position and start standing up for and defending this amendment that has served all of our citizens well over the past two centuries.

Ray Stebbins

Sebring

and that TOM is when you owe.. (by: Ray Napper - 6/30/2012)

her an apology. that was about as uncalled for a comment that I've ever seen you write. Terrible Tom, terrible.
And if those hospitals and doctors don't want the government involved then QUIT taking the governments money. They give you money they call the shots. You are in the poker game and want to change the game in the middle of the hand. Not hardly. All you have to do is stop taking public funds and be completely private AND you know it.

How dare you assume... (by: Djkitty - 6/29/2012)

How dare you assume I wouldn't give my life for my children. I certainly would. And I certainly wouldn't have an abortion myself. I would make sure I had the necessary medications in place to not be in that position. Which brings me to the fact that giving people birth control in the first place would avoid that scenario all together.
Get off your self righteous high horse because you have no idea what I would actually do, but you also have no right what so ever to tell me what to do with my body. I believe a woman has the right to chose what she wants to do, not some stoggy old catholic priest or some bureaucratic idiot who know absolutely nothing about what the actual woman is going through.
So unless YOU have a valid comment that has something to do with the actual subject instead of adding comments meant to back up your point of view with twisted inflated reasoning about another article not even related to this subject, I suggest you keep you missinformed speculations to yourself.

What do you know??? (by: tom walsh - 6/29/2012)

You, Djkitty, apparently missed the article about that mother in Venus who gave her life to save her 3 year old baby. With your attitude, as expressed in your comment, would you have done the same?

What do you know??? (by: Djkitty - 6/28/2012)

You, Mr. Stebbins will never be faced with the difficult choice of having to chose between your life and the life of a fetus/baby.
If you don't want an abortion, the pill or a hysterectomy, then by all means don't have one. (of course YOU wont be doing any of these things anyway). But you have no right to dictate to me what I want to do with MY body, and neither does my employer, if I happen to work for a Catholic entity. They also have no right to deny me health care benefits.
So you can give it a rest. It has nothing to do with freedom of religion. You just want to push YOUR religious ideas on other people.