Recently, we posted about the double speak that is the US Department of Health and Human Services. In 2006, HHS’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) assisted in funding a Mayo Clinic study proving that oral contraceptives (the Pill) are directly linked to cancer, but then five years later helped mandate that these types of medicine  be given free to all women. The twisted thinking of this organization shows its submission to the evil entity of the abortion industry.

Now the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and St. Gianna Physician’s Guild have responded to this outrageous mandate by speaking out against the lack of choice for pro-life people in this mandate. Calling it an “an unprecedented attack on religious liberty” the USCCB has openly called for a rescinding of this egregious violation of freedom of choice for pro-life citizens and workers. LifeSite reports:

“By failing to protect insurers, individuals, most employers, or any other stakeholders with a religious objection to such items and procedures, the HHS exemption, like the mandate itself, violates” the U.S. Constitution and various federal statutes, they argue.

Meanwhile St. Gianna’s has gone to a full scale detailed petition against this act.

Under these new guidelines, mandatory coverage will be provided for surgical sterilization, all prescription contraceptives approved by the FDA - including drugs like Ella that can cause abortions in the early weeks of pregnancy – as well as counseling to promote them. This directive from the Affordable Care Act initiative will be supported by tax payers without a conscience clause exemption, violating the civil and religious liberties of millions of Americans.

St. Gianna’s then outlines a succinct but complete list of the underlying problems with the Obama Administration's free birth control mandate. They  argue that this mandate is “undermining, deceptive, discriminatory, biased against Catholic health care professionals, misleading, bad medicine and lacking transparency.” To read the entire petition and sign it, please click here.

A couple of their points should disturb everyone regardless of whether they claim to be pro-life or not. For example, their assertion that the mandate is deceptive is based on the fact that  “Many FDA approved birth control methods are classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency of Cancer Research (IACR), a research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO) and categorized in the same group as cigarettes and asbestos.” Do you really have to be opposed to abortion rights to have an issue with this?

Additionally, this mandate removes the freedom of choice for many of us. While the abortion industry and the Obama Administration pretend they care about choice, the truth is what they care about is abortion on demand at everyone’s cost. Choice, at its very minimum, should mean I don’t have to have higher health insurance rates or pay more taxes to fund something opposed to everything I believe in. Choice should mean that any doctor or nurse who is pro-life should have a right to not issue birth control, not preform abortions—to not be forced to act against his or her conscience.  The birth control mandate has no opt out for the majority of people involved, In fact the USCCB says that:

Religious employers that do not meet HHS’s narrow definition will also be subject to the mandate. “HHS has concluded, for example, that a church is not a religious employer if it (a) serves those who are not already members of the church, (b) fails to hire based on religion, or (c) does not restrict its charitable and missionary purposes to the inculcation of religious values. Under such inexplicably narrow criteria—criteria bearing no reasonable relation to any legitimate (let alone compelling) government purpose—even the ministry of Jesus and the early Christian Church would not qualify as ‘religious,’ because they did not confine their ministry to their co-religionists or engage only in a preaching ministry. In effect, the exemption is directly at odds with the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus teaches concern and assistance for those in need, regardless of faith differences.”

The mandates the Obama Administration and its agencies are putting on Americans, from its medical professionals to average citizens like you and I are disturbingly controlling, removing freedom of choice in the name of choice. Reading like a troubling novel of a power hungry society with an elite ruling leadership, the health care situation in the United States has become worse than fiction; instead, we are being controlled by those who think a baby’s death is a human right that 100 percent of society should have a hand in providing. It’s like a mob-run crime unit where the leaders force everyone in the society to participate in the crime so they are bonded in iniquity.

Pro-life friends, we have to do more than pray. Always we are called to pray, but we are also to act. Like Peter and the apostles in the book of Acts, when government has usurped the will of God, we are called to stand and obey the Word of God.

But Peter and the apostles answered,"We must obey God rather than men. (Acts 5:29).

So must we.