Religious Freedom
For my Public Policy class, one of our assignments is to write a Letter to the Editor. I decided to write mine about religious freedom and the Health and Human Services Mandate that would force Catholic hospitals and companies to provide coverage of contraception, sterilization and abortion-incuding pills in insurance plans. Today, Friday the 23, there are tons of rallies taking place across the country from 12-1 P.M. to protest the HHS mandate and rally for religious freedom.
I ended up sending my Letter to the Editor into our local newspaper and it got in, which is pretty exciting. Here’s the link to it in case you want to see it online, and I’ll also put the text below. St. Thomas has publicly come out in opposition to the Mandate so I am glad to get behind St. Thomas and support the decision! It can be pretty fun to be a semi-informed citizen. Have a great day, everyone!
Mandate is an attack on religion
Lizzy Schmitt
WATERLOO — The Health and Human Services mandate forces all insurance plans to cover sterilization, contraception and abortion-inducing pills. The mandate still includes religious organizations like Roman Catholic hospitals and other companies whose employees are morally opposed to these things. This mandate violates the First Amendment right to the “free exercise” of religion and must be stopped. It is wrong for the government to force anyone to provide something to which one is morally opposed; it’s called the freedom of conscience.
This attack on religion, on morals, on faith, is unprecedented. This is more than abortion or contraception, more than political parties. This is about the fundamental liberty of freedom of religion. The government has gone too far, and we the people need to put a stop to it.
It is time to take action. On Friday, rallies for religious freedom will be held all around the country from noon to 2 p.m. There will be a rally in Davenport, and all of the rally locations can be found at standupforreligiousfreedom.com.
If you cannot attend a rally, you can write to Rep. Bruce Braley, Sen. Charles Grassley or Sen. Tom Harkin to urge them to stand up for religious freedom. The time to act is now.