Religious Persecution or Just All in a Day's Work for a Health Director?

Wednesday, August 1st was the first day of the HHS Mandate as it applies to some institutions.  The Cardinal Newman Society sees it as the first day of  'religious persecution'  while Inside Higher Ed more sanguinely views the implementation of the Mandate as requiring college 'health centers' to adjust.

After wading through this article, and admittedly not completely grasping all the ins and out of a college health center adapting to the requirements of the Mandate, the general conclusion I reached is that college health centers exist to hand out contraceptives and to provide pap smears along with other euphemistically-termed 'preventive' services.  As one health director says,  “Our mission is to keep students on campus. It’s to ensure that the student is going to be successful in their higher education, and one of the ways that we achieve that mission is by maintaining their health."    I don't get the impression he's talking about preventing the common cold.   As I commented in the comments section of the article, these health centers seem like little more than mills that foster unrestrained sexual activity on college campuses, with the girls (most enter college still in their teens) expected to assume the responsibility for 'prevention.'  Another perk of the liberating feminist movement.

". . . an unprecedented line in the sand."

Just last Friday, the Obama administration rendered its decision on religious organizations receiving a wider exemption regarding coverage of sterilization and contraception in health care plans.  They won't.  Archbishop Dolan has responded with this article in the Wall Street Journal and has also commented that "never has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience."

Some related articles can be found here and here.  Archbishop Dolan offers this video as well.

Iraq Vets for Congress and Combat Veterans for Congress

Fighting back seems to be the order of the day after Obama bullied Americans and imposed on us his health care bill. (Or as Sen. Baucus called it, the bill that will address the "mal-distribution of income in America.") Among the various groups that are organizing, there is the Senate Conservatives Fund here with a petition pledge to vote only for those candidates who will repeal the health care bill. Hugh Hewitt continues to promote the National Republican Congressional Committee here , which appears to have a similar goal. Just today I got a call from the Republican National Committee asking for money to take back the Congress, but Michael Steele fails to impress and has not been that much of a friend to conservatives.

There are two other groups that are keeping tabs on up-and-coming contenders for congressional seats. They are Iraq Veterans for Congress and Combat Veterans for Congress. While I don't know their views on health care, it's certainly worth keeping an eye on these candidates for the same reasons that I wrote about concerning Allen Griffith and Lt. Col. Allen West (who is endorsed by both veterans groups). At American Thinker, Alan Fraser summarizes here a Harris Poll which reveals that Americans have the most confidence in leaders who come from the military. It's also noteworthy that all the veterans are Republicans, as will be anyone else in Congress who will work to repeal this wealth re-distribution, that is, health care bill.

As Hugh Hewitt and Erick Ericson constantly remind their audiences, even if these candidates aren't in our districts, we can support them by donating to their campaigns.

Prayer and Sacrifice to Defeat ObamaCare

Yesterday, the Sisters of Life sent out an e-mail to those of us on their list, inviting any and all of us to join them in prayer and fasting concerning Obama's health care bill. In the words of Mother Agnes Mary, the Sisters will be praying through the night "begging the Lord of Life to protect our nation from the onslaught of abortion and from the marginalizing of Christians in the public square by denying us the right to act on our conscience." She concludes her letter by writing, "May we support the weak, encourage the faint-hearted, and console the sorrowing by our prayers and sacrifices. May the Lord of all be glorified."

Help TALKPAC Stop Obamacare

"Bishop Prays for Demise of Health Care Bill"

Zenit.org, the Vatican news agency, isn't usually the source of a good laugh, but I thought one of their recent headlines was uncharacteristically humorous: Bishop Prays for Demise of Health Care Bill .

The title of the article is suggesting that while Obama and Pelosi are praying for 216 votes to pass their health care bill, Bishop Loverde in the nearby Archdiocese of Arlington, VA, is praying for 215 votes to defeat it.

The mental image of Obama and Pelosi stopping off to pray to God for passage of their bill as they bully and bribe their way through the halls of Congress is kind of funny-- for a moment. It's also a bit tongue-in-cheek of the Zenit writer to suggest that Bishop Loverde is urging us to pray for 215 votes.

Rather, as the article adopts a more serious tone, Bishop Loverde urges us to pray for a conversion of hearts and minds and that means we are to pray for the Obamas and Pelosis, the renegade nuns who support Obama's bill, the Doug Kmiecs, the Joe Bidens and all those Obama Catholics who voted to put this callow, unprincipled man into the office of president. The bishop says, " Through our fasting and prayers, we ask the Lord to lead the hearts and minds of our nation's leaders as they make crucial decisions concerning the protection of life."

The bishop is reminding us to pray for our enemies! I confess to stumbling over Obama's name when I do attempt to include the likes of our president in my prayers, but the bishop's statement is also a reminder that God does hear us and he does answer prayer. Kind of ironic that, in yesterday's Bible reading, Moses reminds us of that. After the Israelites erected the Golden Calf, God told Moses that He had had enough of this "stiff-necked" people and that He intended to let His anger "burn hot against them" and "consume them." But Moses confronted God and interceded on behalf of his fellow wanderers, and God changed his mind.

In the present situation, I'm inclined to pray that God would consume most of Congress along with President Obama as quickly as possible, but that's not the idea here. Our own New York Archdiocese has all the information one needs to follow the true Catholic position on the health care issue including this prayer:

That Congress will act to ensure that needed health care reform will truly protect the life, dignity and health care of all and that we will raise our voices to protect the unborn and the most vulnerable and to preserve our freedom of conscience. We pray to the Lord.

Archbishop Chaput of Denver is again in the news, this time on the health care issue and the support that some supposedly Catholic groups are giving to the Senate version of the bill. The Archbishop makes three points about what he calls a "bad bill that will result in bad law."

First, the Catholic bishops of the United States have pressed for real national health-care reform in this country for more than half a century. They began long before either political party or the public media found it convenient. That commitment hasn’t changed. Nor will it.

Second, the bishops have tried earnestly for more than seven months to work with elected officials to craft reform that would serve all Americans in a manner respecting minimum moral standards. The failure of their effort has one source. It comes entirely from the stubbornness and evasions of certain key congressional leaders, and the unwillingness of the White House to honor promises made by the president last September.

Third, the health-care reform debate has never been merely a matter of party politics. Nor is it now. Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak and a number of his Democratic colleagues have shown extraordinary character in pushing for good health-care reform while resisting attempts to poison it with abortion-related entitlements and other bad ideas that have nothing to do with real “health care.” Many Republicans share the goal of decent health-care reform, even if their solutions would differ dramatically. To put it another way, few persons seriously oppose making adequate health services available for all Americans. But God, or the devil, is in the details -- and by that measure, the current Senate version of health-care reform is not merely defective, but also a dangerous mistake.

To those "Catholic" groups who support the bill, the Archbishop says:

Groups, trade associations and publications describing themselves as “Catholic” or “prolife” that endorse the Senate version – whatever their intentions – are doing a serious disservice to the nation and to the Church, undermining the witness of the Catholic community; and ensuring the failure of genuine, ethical health-care reform. By their public actions, they create confusion at exactly the moment Catholics need to think clearly about the remaining issues in the health-care debate. They also provide the illusion of moral cover for an unethical piece of legislation.

Archbishop Chaput concludes his column by advising us not to be "misled," and says, "In its current content, the Senate version of health-care legislation is not “reform.” Catholics and other persons of good will concerned about the foundations of human dignity should oppose it."

Stand With Stupak

At this point in the health care debate, I don't know if I correctly understand where Rep. Bart Stupak stands, but I do like the video that CatholicVoteAction.org helped put together.

Dr. Daines and Sugar and Salt

Who knew that Dr. Richard Daines is a New York state health commissioner. I certainly didn't until I received one of those 'government' e-mails from him on March 12th, via Governor Paterson's office. Dr. Daines agrees with First Lady Michelle about fat people, namely, he doesn't like 'em and he doesn't want 'em around!

Dr. Daines says that fat people are just too darn expensive (to the tune of $7.6 billion a year), and, therefore, he urges us New Yorkers to support Governor Paterson's proposed tax on soft drinks (not fruit juice, mind you, just soft drinks). Dr. Daines goes on to explain to us numbskulls that, "many New Yorkers don’t realize that sixty percent of us are obese or overweight."

Us? Speak for yourself, doc. I'm neither obese nor overweight. I am also not fat, pudgy, tubby or chubby.

However, even non-fatties like me are targets for our nation's diet police. Redstate.com reported last week that New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (a Democrat from Brooklyn) along with New York City's Mayor Bloomberg now want to ban salt. A good response can be found at My Food My Choice. As the website says, such a ban is "not based on sound science, but on political science and alarmism." They also have a petition to protect New York City's '"diverse cuisine."

Let Us Eat Cake

Two articles among the very many on health care happened to catch my attention.

Dr. David Gratzer, a frequent and outspoken critic of Obama's plan to socialize our health care system, always offers a perspective that makes a lot of sense to me except for this article in which he berates us for eating too much junk food, smoking too much, fueling a diabetes epidemic, being obese and generally acting like fools when it comes to our health. Now even the good Dr. Gratzer has stooped to lecturing and finger-wagging!

Dr. Gratzer enjoins us to promote the sort of health insurance reform that the Safeway supermarket chain has initiated where healthy choices are rewarded. Not really a bad idea, but why the need to denigrate Americans and their health habits. You will most likely remember the hubbub over Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's article on health care. If you'd like, you can read his

original and unexpurgated version direct from his blog. But, even he proffers advice on how we should all be eating.

In a different vein, 'The Pharmaceutical Umbrella,' explains how good health care around the world depends on American innovation and research in the pharmaceutical field. Two quotes should give an idea of the theme:

One reason for America’s drug dominance (though far from the only one) is America’s unsocialized medicine. Here, with the exception of a few programs like Medicaid and the VA system, the government doesn’t regulate the price of drugs, so when a company invents something big—the latest miracle cancer drug, say—it strikes it rich, making its executives hunger for more. Take away the profit motive, as government-run medicine often does by forcing drug companies to sell at discounted prices, and innovation will dry up.

But the lesson here isn’t that America should be stingy about subsidizing French health care. If American consumers and drug companies play a disproportionate role in protecting the world from dangerous microbes—just as America did in protecting it from Soviet missiles—we should be proud. (It would be too much to hope that this good deed will go unpunished among European elites.) No, the lesson is to be skeptical of reports speaking glowingly of socialized health-care systems, because those systems wouldn’t work nearly as well as they do without unsocialized American medicine.

In short, a 'nay' to Obamacare (and a request to leave us all alone to eat what we want).

H1N1

Daily news reports abound about the spread of the H1N1 virus, and I've just read another insipid article reporting that college students who are 'uninfected' are spending time thinking about whether or not they should go to football games, frat parties and other social venues where they might--horror of horrors--actually get sick! During the summer, I received an e-mail from the White House signed by Kathleen Sebelius, Janet Napolitano and Arne Duncan reminding me of the perils of this virus and telling me to wash my hands. And the media instructs us as to how we should sneeze. This is the kind of talking-to that parents give their pre-schoolers.

Americans, get a grip! Green-movement progressives aside, we are still a first world country and it is the 21st century. We have clean, potable water, sewage systems, medicines, highly-trained doctors and an extensive health care system (for the nonce). We have multi-vitamins and Purell.

It seems the media and the White House are on a campaign to convince as many of us as possible that a big, bad wolf is at our door, and, unless we listen to Mom and Dad in Washington, we just might not be able to handle this nasty virus on our own. If the spread of the H1N1 virus does manifest as a national flu epidemic, our concern should rightly be with the youngest and oldest and weakest among us who will be most susceptible to serious complications from the virus, not a healthy college student who might catch a bug because he shares a glass during his mid-week beer bash.

If only our president and our Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano were as concerned about terrorism and national defense as they pretend to be about protecting us from a virus. If only the president and Secretary Sebelius showed similar concern for protecting the weakest and most vulnerable in our society—the unborn, the elderly and the disabled--by denouncing practices such as abortion and euthanasia that exploit and destroy human lives. If Washington and its right-hand-man, the media, are successful in convincing the country to fear a virus, what other scapegoats will they dangle before us to to incite fear? Hope, indeed.

Hopefully, though, we will not mistake Washington's feigned concern about the nation's health for an Obama government that is ever more openly intent on controlling every aspect of our lives, right down to how we blow our nose.