The Catholic Church's First Amendment Right to Freedom of Religion is being by President Obama's Health Care Bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and more specifically the HHS Mandate, which is the section of Obamacare that deals with contraceptive materials, abortions, so on and so forth. The Church has made its stance on abortion and birth control very clear. Obama is going directly against the beliefs of Catholics. The HHS Mandate is unconstitutional. It would force employers who might be Catholic to provide health care plans that would include contraceptive materials, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs, which completely disregards the Catholics' freedom of religion. The President made an explicit promise to the Bishops of the Catholic Church that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act would not have anything to do with abortion and birth control. This was, apparently, a blatant lie. According to Kathleen Gilbert, a journalist for LifeSiteNews.com,
English: Barack Obama signing the Patient Protecti...
English: Barack Obama signing the Patient Protecti...
English: President Barack Obama, Vice President Jo..."To
comply with the accounting requirement, plans will collect a separate $1 abortion surcharge from each premium payer⦠being forced to pay for abortion-subsidizing plans is 'just as bad' as directly paying for the abortions themselves;" (LifeSiteNews). The fact is that this bill is unconstitutional and that the President told a lie to gain the support of a major group, which should put Obama on immediate grounds for impeachment. As impeachment is quite extreme though, it is more likely that this bill may lose President Obama many of the Catholic supporters that he had in the 2008 election.
The first line of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (Cornell). Possibly the most controversial section of President Barak Obama's Health Care Bill is that which...