Bishops: Obamacare Rule Targets Catholics, Threatens Religious Freedom

U.S. Catholic bishops have issued a plea to the faithful across the country to object to an Obamacare directive on contraceptives and sterilizations that the bishops contend “poses an unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom” and violates freedom of conscience.

The rule’s religious exemption is so narrow that even Jesus wouldn’t meet the standard, the bishops allege. The proposed rule under President Barack Obama’s 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act specifically targets Catholics and violates their First Amendment right to freedom of religion, the bishops insist.

The appeal, which the bishops issued through an insert to parish bulletins nationwide Sunday, lambastes a Health and Human Services department rule “requiring rule requiring almost all private health plans to cover contraception and sterilization as ‘preventive services’ for women.”

“The rule includes a religious exemption so extremely narrow that it protects almost no one. It covers only a ‘religious employer’ that has the ‘inculcation of religious values” as its purpose, primarily employs and serves persons who share its religious tenets, and is a church organization under two narrow provisions of the tax code. A great many religious organizations — including Catholic colleges and universities, as well as hospitals and charitable institutions that serve the public — will be ineligible. Individuals and religiously affiliated health insurers will not qualify for the exemption."

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