A diverse coalition of 500-plus religious leaders, university presidents and professors, and health care professionals has signed a statement calling the contraceptive/abortion compromise a “grave violation of religious freedom” that “cannot stand.”
“The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization,” the Feb. 27 letter reads.
“It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.”
“Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services” that were offered before the compromise, the statement reads.
“It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not ‘paying’ for this aspect of the insurance coverage.
“For one thing,” the statement adds, “it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers. More importantly, abortion drugs, sterilizations and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the religious institution or believing individual. They will only be made available to those who are insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.”
It matters not “who explains the terms of the policy” purchased by the religious organizations, the statement says.
From a moral perspective, it only matters “what services the policy covers” — and the policy covers contraceptives, abortion-causing drugs and sterilization.
“This so-called ‘accommodation’ changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience, which gave rise to the controversy,” the statement reads. “It is certainly no compromise.”
Among the Baptist signers were Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas; R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.; Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C.; Robert Sloan Jr., president of Houston Baptist University; David Whitlock, president of Oklahoma Baptist University; Samuel W. “Dub” Oliver, president of East Texas Baptist University; David Dockery, president of Union University; and Timothy George, dean of Beeson Divinity School of Samford University.
(BP)
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