HHS Update and Highlights of the USCCB’s Statement
An email from Helen Alvare
Thought you might like a brief update on the religious freedom front in connection with the HHS mandate on contraception and early abortion drugs.
The White House and HHS would certainly prefer that this issue go away until August 2013 when the mandate is currently scheduled to go into effect. But several federal lawsuits claiming violations of the Free Exercise Clause and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act are proceeding. The marvelous religious freedom law firm, the Becket Fund, is pursuing several cases. Information on these is available at http://www.becketfund.org/hhs/
The public outcry is also continuing. And thank YOU for being a serious part of it. I am getting copies of your letters to the editor and reports of your visits with your representatives in Congress. This is absolutely the way to go! Making a continuing impression on your OWN representatives and your community is the most effective way. Especially when they’re home in their districts about a week per month. Their schedule and local addresses are on the web.
If you’re looking for some talking points to include in your visits or letters, you can’t do better than the current bishops’ statement: “Our First Most Cherished Liberty: A Statement on Religious Liberty.”
Among its cool, usable points:
- The insistence that this is a historic national moment where religious freedom is concerned. Why? Because the government is trying to tell individual faiths what a “religious institution” is and what it is not. It is also insisting upon reaching into the internal affairs of religious institutions and telling their leadership how to interrelate with their employees.
- The bishops argue that the government seems willing to pressure crucial religious institutions to close—silencing the important competing voice they offer on matters concerning human sexuality and women’s flourishing. The bishops’ vision to the contrary? A “free, creative robust civil society,” versus one where the “state alone will determine who gets to contribute to the common good.”
- The document calls the mandate an “unjust law” which “cannot be obeyed,” and encourages us to have the “courage not to obey,” though no one welcomes this scenario.
- It uses memorable words to capture the civil society it imagines: not a “naked public square”, not a “sacred public square,” but a “civil public square,” where “all citizens can make their contribution to the common good.”
Finally, it says very forcefully and more than once that lay citizens are crucial players where the political fight is concerned.
Commonweal magazine called the USCCB statement “exaggerated,” “counterproductive,” and “partisan.” But the facts are the facts. The state is really proposing to control the internal affairs of religious institutions and to silence an eminently credible, admirable competing voice. This is extreme. I can bore you with the legal details in a future email if you wish.
Remember to spread the word about womenspeakforthemselves.com and to join the discussion at . One of you wrote this on our Facebook page: “They keep saying this many women think this etc. No one has ever asked my opinion except this Facebook page.”
Again, thank you. I hope you know how wonderful you are.
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