“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”
This quote from the very first line of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution is on many people’s minds this week. Our leaders are debating whether or not the government can force Catholic charities to provide contraceptive AND abortion pill services as part of health insurance.
Some try to paint the issue as being about health care and cost efficiency. But make no mistake; this is about our God given rights to exercise our religious beliefs, and whether they will be recognized by our ever-encroaching federal bureaucracy.
The preamble to the Bill of Rights says these first ten constitutional amendments have been added to provide clarity and “to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers.” I believe that the Affordable Care Act, and its implementation by agencies of the Executive Branch, is an abuse of power on many levels, but today I will focus on just one.
The First Amendment does not just protect our right to worship privately; it clearly protects our right to live out our faith on a daily basis, what it calls “free exercise.” My religious faith is based on God’s Word, the Holy Bible, and it makes it clear to me that God creates and values individual human life. Therefore, for me it is a matter of faith to respect what God has made. Providing medicines that terminate a pregnancy violates my conscience, just as directly as paying for an actual abortion would do.
President Obama spoke today, claiming to have found a solution to this debate. His plan is that somehow the insurance companies themselves will provide these services for “free”, meaning that everyone’s premiums will necessarily be increased to cover these services. He claims that forcing all American citizens rather than purchasers of particular group insurance to share the cost of sterilization and “morning after” pills somehow gets around the First Amendment.
Jesus told the Pharisees to pay taxes and “give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” In a nation where our laws tell us one thing (religious exercises are not to be infringed upon) and a particular President is enacting policies that do the opposite, what should we do? I don’t claim to be a constitutional or biblical scholar, but more and more I sense that obeying God requires that I speak against immoral laws. How will you respond in your own life?
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