H.H.S and the 'Contraceptive' Mandate: Culture of Death Advances Its War On Life

A contraceptive culture is a society which hates itself

We live in an age in which pregnancy and the transmission of life is seen as a disease that must be actively combated with mechanical and chemical contraceptives, including invasive surgical sterilization procedures. The gift of life is no longer seen as a gift, but rather as an intolerable burden which must be shirked through technological means. If this anti-life climate is allowed to continue, our society will be guilty of calling for its own demise and embracing its own death.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) -- On 1 August 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new mandates concerning preventative health services in group health plans and health insurance coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. 

The National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) reports that the HHS, "under the signature of its secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, issued new mandates concerning preventive health services to be covered by such insurance plans.  These mandates require that all such plans provide the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive methods, as 'preventive health services' for women. These FDA-approved contraceptives include potential abortifacients such as so-called emergency contraception and IUDs, as well as surgical sterilizations. Furthermore, no co-pays are to be charged to beneficiaries.

"Thus, every insured, insurer, employer, and policy implementer included under the Health Care Reform mandates would be coerced into cooperating through insurance premiums and tax dollars, or through actualizing policy mandates in these state-driven and ideologically based violations of a true understanding of human reproduction."

NCBC further reported that "these mandates apply to all group health plans and health insurance issuers in the group and individual markets; they also apply to self-insured group health plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)."

According to the NCBC, there are few exceptions: group health plans "which were in effect before the Health Care Reform was enacted," and plans "offered by employers who are deemed by HHS to qualify as a 'religious employer.'" As would be expected, the scope of the definition of "religious employer" used by the HHS is beyond narrow.

This is nothing other than the continued advancement of the Culture of Death's war on life. The HHS would have it not only that contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations become more readily accessible and therefore more widespread, but also that insurance providers -- including businesses and faith-based organizations who provide group insurance -- be forced to participate in the moral evils of the contraceptive culture. Further, the HHS would have it that nearly all Americans participate in this same moral evil through the payment of insurance premiums to providers who readily supply mechanical, chemical and surgical means of birth control.

We have now reached an age in which relativists, infected with nihilism, are actively coercing Christians and other people of good-will into disregarding the dictates of conscience and the natural moral law. What, we might ask, are people to do who are involved in the insurance industry?

Consider also business owners: what action is necessary of those who are trying to provide insurance to employees according to an upright and properly formed conscience? And what are mothers and fathers to do who, seeing the beauty of God in each of their children's eyes, hand over their hard earned income to insurance providers that shell out deadly abortifacients without co-pay charges to beneficiaries?

Furthermore, this is an attack on the Catholic Church herself, since she is the largest provider of non-governmental health, education, and social services in this nation. It is the Church who transmits in its fullness the gospel word of light, life and moral truth; consequently, it is she who clearly and uncompromisingly reveals to all people of good-will the grave moral evils associated with the use of contraceptives and sterilization procedures.

The Church, as minister of salvation and caring mother, unceasingly urges her children toward what is right and good. These attributes are, of course, despised by the dictators of relativism, who thus take the offensive against all that is good, pure and holy. While it is true that attacks on the Catholic Church are nothing new, they are, nevertheless, in a nation that espouses freedom, all the more deplorable.

The NCBC reports, "Not only are individual employers who have a moral, ethical or conscience objection to paying for contraceptives for college students -- a group specially referenced as needing these 'preventive health services' before going back to college -- not exempt, but also the majority of faith-based ministries in the United States who are committed to serving all persons and not just those of their own faith."

The HHS is presently treating pregnancy as if it were a disease; as if even the possibility of transmitting life according to God's loving plan of procreation is an illness which must be actively combated with hormones, invasive surgical procedures and mechanical devices whose sole purpose is to either prevent or terminate life.

One would hope that the majority of Americans are adamantly opposed to such an evil. However, largely due to the effects of intellectual custom, disregard for love of truth, inadequate or inappropriate educational practices, and the amoral doctrines of relativistic propagandists, we cannot make such a claim.

This is the age in which we now live: sex is raised to the status of a god; it is worshiped over and above life; it is claimed as a "right" to which each person is entitled -- even at the cost of the death of an innocent, unborn child.

Comments to the HHS concerning this issue should be sent before 30 September, 2011 to: E-OHPSCA2713.EBSA@dol.gov

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F. K. Bartels is a Catholic writer who knows his Catholic Faith is one of the greatest gifts a man could ever receive. He is a contributing writer for Catholic Online.

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