Saw in the news on Friday (3/23), in various cities across the country, the Catholic church organized members to protest the upcoming contraception coverage mandate that is part of the Affordable Care Act. Under the guise of religious freedom, Bishops, nuns, and others – mostly men – complained about the mandate. The problem is their protest was for the wrong reason and made them look silly.
At one such protest in Toledo Ohio:
In the wake of the Obama Administration mandating employer coverage of contraceptives under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) introduced a bill that would allow employers to not offer coverage for any preventive health service due to religious objections. The amendment is due for a vote in the Senate as early as Thursday March 1st. See the following links to easily contact your Senators and ask them vote against the amendment.
As the old proverb goes “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” On Sunday 02/05/2012, GOP presidential sideshow Rick Santorum removed all doubt that his extreme religious views make him an idiot when it comes to science. He told his friends on FOX “news” that abortion causes breast cancer. Current science and public health policy has shot that kind of “scientific” thinking down. It only proves that Santorum should stick to his frothy day job.
A Washington Post columnist, E.J. Dionne Jr., who I generally agree with most times, wrote in a recent column that President Obama’s administration messed up twice in drafting Department of Health and Human Services rules requiring insurance coverage of birth control under the health care reform law passed in 2010. It seems Dionne feels that since the President is a believer, he threw his liberal Catholic supporters under a bus by not allowing a exemption for Catholic hospitals, universities, and social-services. Dionne’s column was disturbing and yet educational as to why we must all play by the same rules.
I was doing some “spring” cleaning by finally digitizing some old VHS tapes I had. These contained TV show clips and news stories I saved over the years. One of the news stories was about a controversy over a Nativity scene in Lancaster Ohio back in 1999. I wrote about it for my website back then but had no way of embedding a video clip. I watched it again and found a perfect example of Christian privilege and persecution complex in the space of a short 15 second comment from someone interviewed by the reporter. I now have a short clip I can show people who don’t know what Christian privilege is or don’t understand their expressed irrational persecution complex.
The recent Ohio House Bill 125, aka the “Heartbeat” Bill, would prohibit an abortion if a fetal heartbeat is detected. This usually happens as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. One common argument anti-abortionists use for needing such laws is to save the lives of unborn children. In a recent newspaper interview, one of the authors of the bill stated the real reason anti-abortionists want the ‘heartbeat’ bill passed. It’s all about ending legal abortion not saving lives.
Linda Theis, of Findlay, Ohio, has been involved in the anti-abortion movement since the 1970’s. In a profile and interview in the Findlay Courier she gave her reasons for joining the effort to take away a woman’s right to choose:
