Ho, ho, ho! Just in time for Christmas, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched a new salvo against people of faith. Even as billions around the world celebrate the birth of Christ, joyless, abortion-obsessed secularists never take a holiday.
On Wednesday, the ACLU sent a letter to federal health officials urging the government to force Catholic hospitals in the U.S. to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn. They're counting on sympathetic Obama rationing czar Donald Berwick — a recess appointee whose radical views on wealth and health redistribution were never vetted by Congress — to dictate which religious principles hospital operators can and cannot follow.
The ACLU reiterated its call for a federal probe — read: fishing expedition — of Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide "emergency" contraception and abortions to women. In practice, of course, every request for abortion is an "emergency" to the left.
The Catholic Church makes clear that it is morally permissible under certain circumstances to treat directly the cause of the mother's medical condition, even if those efforts unintentionally and indirectly cost the baby's life. But Catholic health providers must never directly trade one life for another.
Civil liberties activists have a particular vendetta against devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who recently revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church's ethical and religious directives for health care. "It would be unfaithful to pretend the institution is still Catholic," Olmsted concluded.
"The dioceses cannot be permitted to dictate who lives and who dies in Catholic-owned hospitals," the ACLU's lawyers fumed in response.
But shall it be left to the ACLU and Obamacare bureaucrats to determine the Catholicity of a Catholic hospital?
And shall it be left to litigious secularists to sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities with impunity?
No.
The ACLU now seeks to unilaterally rewrite a federal emergency medical treatment law passed by Congress in 1986 to mandate that all hospitals provide abortions.
But for more than three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, federal law has firmly established strong conscience protections for individual health care providers and hospitals who are reluctant or unwilling to "counsel, suggest, recommend, assist or in any way participate in the performance of abortions or sterilizations contrary to or consistent with" their "religious beliefs or moral convictions."
As the Washington-based Becket Fund, a public interest law firm that defends the free expression of all religious traditions, pointed out to the feds: "The ACLU has no business radically re-defining the meaning of emergency health care,' just as it has no business demanding that religious doctors and nurses violate their faith by performing a procedure they believe is tantamount to murder. Forcing religious hospitals to perform abortions not only undermines this nation's integral commitment to conscience rights, it violates the numerous federal laws that recognize and protect those rights."
According to the Catholic Health Association, Catholic health care facilities form the largest not-for-profit health service sector in the United States — serving one out of every six patients in America and providing 15 percent of the hospital bed capacity in the country. Moreover, Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers.
If the abortion lobby gets its way, faithful Catholic hospitals and Catholic medical professionals who follow their consciences and adhere to canon law could see their federal funding yanked. And radical social engineers may well force the shutdown of countless Catholic hospitals at a time when Obamacare costs and consequences are already wreaking havoc on the health industry.
Fewer jobs, less access to health care, less freedom and more lives lost: Merry Christmas from the ACLU.
Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010). Her e-mail address is malkinblog@gmail.com.
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6 Comments | Post Comment
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Right on Michelle the aclu's overseerer never takes a day off, he Satan works overtime with this group of usefull idiots around the globe. At least the other useful idiots and evil-ducks of the 111th have gone home unfortunately 8 of the foolish 9 in the senate will return.
Comment: #1
Posted by: Woody Arbo
Fri Dec 24, 2010 7:02 AM
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This action is merely another step on the way to fewer jobs (which equates to dependency upon gov't) less access to health care (which is paving the way for Obama-care) and less freedom in general. The lives lost are merely "collateral damage", unfortunately, but all of the lives in America are collateral damage and lost. It is too late.
Comment: #2
Posted by: bill s
Mon Dec 27, 2010 6:12 AM
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I am so sick to death of the ACLU. But it appears to me that nothing is ever done about them but talk. I'm tired of talk. The only reason that the ACLU exists is because WE, that TAXPAYER feed them every single day their lifeblood - money. We pay them to sue us. Now doesn't that make a heck of a lot of sense. But it's true. And this happened because the Congress is made op of mainly (Progressive) lawyers so they made sure to take care of each other. So all the enviro tree huggers and flower lovers and secularists can run to the ACLU to file suit against the government any time they think they've had a toe stepped on. And the members of the ACLU are constantly on the look out of more cases where they can file a class action suit against some government agency and rake in the dough simply by presenting a bill for grossly overcharged hours to the government who never bothers to audit the bills!
I am sick to death of this. Why cannot one of these folks with the national voice influence the others of like mind to take up THIS staff of war? Let's get the law changed in Congress to save the taxpayer a few bucks and stop paying the ACLU to sue us? They want to sue? Fine, they get to pay the bills. IF they win the get reimbursed "reasonable, industry standard" attorney fees. Period! Perhaps I've come on the scene too late and missed this issue being brought up but I have never seen it mentioned anywhere in a blog or an television or in the newspapers. Nowhere. So let's start here.
Comment: #3
Posted by: Bryon Beaulieu
Mon Dec 27, 2010 11:20 AM
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Michelle,
There is something I can't seem to figure out, so perhaps you can help. When it comes this Administration (and the ACLU), where do these people get the authority to do the things they are doing? The Constitution didn't give them the authority. It seems to me, they only have the authority if we obey their commands, i.e. we grant them the authority by doing what we are told. What if we just told them to 'shove it?"
Comment: #4
Posted by: Mark
Mon Dec 27, 2010 12:03 PM
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To find out what the A(all-inclusive)C(communist)L(Law-scoffing)U(unit) is about, Google their history, their communist affiliations, their communist members, and their communist founders. That's right folks, it's a communist organization, planted here with the distinct mission to disrupt and destroy any resemblance of liberty, justice and the American way. By the way, also look up any of our esteemed doofocratic leaders, Prez included, and attach the words communist affiliations after their names, and be amazed at what comes up. These punks are in it deep, and they are not tryin' to hide it. But wuth the FCC now in charge of the internet, the Putz-in-Chief has run an end game around protocol and side-stepped Congress being involved in those sorts of decisions, another 'Whoa Nelly' move by the Muslim from Kenya.
Look into the Rothchild family, Rockefeller, Bilderbergers, the G8 and G20 conferences, the Georgia Guide Stones, the NWO or New World Order, Depopulation of the earth, illuminati, etc., and then shout 'Holy Crap, Martha, they're pullin' a fast one on us!'
Although this is no joke, it is where these elitist scoundrels are chosing to lead us. And when they get us into the stalls, then the hammer comes down, and whack, we are just lambs led to the slaughter!!
As long as we wait to see what's next, we won't have long to wait until we're next.
Thinking that it could never happen here is a safe place to go in your mind, but it won't protect you when the time comes.
Thinkin' you can remain uninvolved won't protect you, as they already have you invloved.
We are nothing to the rich elitists but cattle.....a commodity for them to make decisions concerning our futures....after all, they do know what's best for us, don't they??
The time for us to be in unity, united, is now. No more whites against blacks, against browns, against reds, etc.
We have to stop letting them devide us, and band together in a force of one purpose, to confront them once and for all, to let them no we are not gonna take this crap any more, and we say NO!!, to all this control and government intervention in our lives. No to corruption, no to special interests, no to special treatment, and finally, NO TO BIG GOVERNMENT!!!
We are a responsible, self-controlled people, and we need to demonstrate that in all aspects of our lives, every day.
To the Future, My Friends.
Semper Fi!!!
One Still Patriotic
Comment: #5
Posted by: One Still Patriotic
Mon Dec 27, 2010 12:19 PM
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Would Obama's people force this kind of decision on a Muslim run hospital? I do not think so. There is a separation of state and chruch. But when the state hands out money to any church run hospital of any denomination then they are obligated to give that same amount of money to other hospitals of other faiths if they qualify on medical grounds and not on political policy issues. No faith driven hospital should be forced to give up it's beliefs to recieve the money other hospitals do from the federal government. The people have plenty of other choices for such things as abortions and to force a faith driven hospital to deny it's beliefs is wrong and our government knows it. This is simply a power play.
Comment: #6
Posted by: Robert
Mon Dec 27, 2010 2:09 PM
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