At the end of Sunday mass at the church this writer attends in Washington, D.C., the pastor asked the congregation to remain for a few minutes.

Then, on the instructions of Cardinal Archbishop Donald Wuerl, the pastor proceeded to read a letter.

In the letter, the Church denounced the Obama administration for ordering all Catholic schools, hospitals and social services to provide, in their health insurance coverage for employees, free contraceptives, free sterilizations and free “morning-after” pills.

Parishioners were urged to contact their representatives in Congress to bring about a reversal of President Obama’s new policy.

Now, not only is this a battle the Church must fight, it is a battle the Church can win if it has the moral stamina to stay the course.

In forcing the Church to violate its own principles, Obama has committed an act of federal aggression, crossing the line between church and state to appease his ACLU and feminist allies, while humiliating the Catholic bishops.

Should the Church submit, its moral authority in America would disappear.

Now, undeniably, the church milquetoast of past decades that refused to discipline pro-abortion Catholics allowed the impression to form that while the hierarchy may protest, eventually it will go along to get along with a Democratic Party that was once home to most Catholics.

Obama’s problem today is that not only is he forcing the Church to violate her conscience; he dissed the highest prelate in America.

In November, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, held what he describes as an “extraordinarily friendly” meeting with Obama at the White House.

The president assured the archbishop of his respect for the Church, and the archbishop came away persuaded Obama would never force the Church to adopt any policy that would violate her principles.

Ten days ago, Obama sandbagged the archbishop.

He informed Cardinal-designate Dolan by phone that, with the sole concession of the Church being given an extra year, to August 2013, to comply, the new policy, as set down by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, will be imposed. All social and educational institutions of the Catholic church will offer health insurance covering birth control, or face fines.

“In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” said Archbishop Dolan, who went on:

“To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their health care is literally unconscionable. … This represents a challenge and a compromise of our religious liberty.”

Where do Obama and Sebelius get the power to do this?

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010, the colloquial name for which is “Obamacare.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America is celebrating the new policy. Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, calls it a “health-care issue … based on what’s best for women’s health.” Others have argued that many Catholic women practice birth control.

But that Catholics choose to ignore doctrine does not justify the U.S. government imposing on Catholic institutions a policy that violates Catholic teaching.

Even Washington Post liberal E.J. Dionne, in a Jan. 30 column titled “Obama’s Breach of Faith,” charges that the president “threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus. …

“Speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government … the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings.”

Why did Obama do it?

Facing a close race for a second term, Obama chose not to antagonize his left. Yet he must have known that siding with them meant leaving Archbishop Dolan with egg all over his face. Obama, calculatedly, came down on the side of those he believes to be more crucial to his re-election.

This affront should tell the Catholic hierarchy, if they did not already know, where they stand in the party of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Kathleen Sebilius. And where they sit – in the back of the bus.

Yet if the bishops will look upon this crisis of conscience, this insult, as an opportunity, they can effect its reversal and recapture a measure of the moral authority they have lately lost.

Not only should the bishops file suit in federal court against the president and Sebelius for violation of the constitutional principle of separation of church and state, they should inform the White House that no bishop will give an invocation at the Democratic Convention.

Then, they should inform the White House that in the last two weeks of the 2012 campaign, priests in every parish will read from the pulpit at Sunday mass a letter denouncing Obama as anti-Catholic for denying the Church its right to live according to its beliefs.

If Obama loses the Catholic vote, he loses the election.

The White House will come around, fast. Rely upon it.

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As the implementation of Obamacare rolls into high gear, we’ve been given insight into how it will be implemented in general. On January 20, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it would not exempt health plans provided by non-profit religious employers from the requirement to provide “contraceptive services.”

… Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA -approved forms of contraception. Women will not have to forego these services because of expensive co-pays or deductibles, or because an insurance plan doesn’t include contraceptive services.

The cateory of “all FDA-approved forms of contraception” includes the abortifacients like the “morning after pill.” At the same time I couldn’t help but note that the group of health plans provided by “non-profit religious employers” who do not support contraception winnows the field down rather quickly to those provided by either the Catholic Church or one of its social service or medical subsidiaries.

The best is yet to come.

By way of full disclosure, I’m Roman Catholic. I’m a convert who became Catholic with eyes wide open rather than a “cradle Catholic” who was born into the religion. As such I’ve never ceased to be amazed at the antics of many of our Church leadership. I write it off to equal parts cognitive dissonance and a pathological desire to be popular.

The Democrat party has been anti-Catholic in its political positions since George McGovern ran for president yet the priesthood and heirarchy of the Roman Catholic Church in America tend to hail from Democrat constituencies. So on the one hand the Magesterium is teaching very traditional social values while on the other it is embracing without even a hint of credulity every lefty scheme that comes down the pike.

For instance, in 1983, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops declared nuclear weapons to be immoral and weren’t terribly fond of deterrence either. By 1988 they had decided SDI was destabliizing as was the US linking a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan to future arms treaties. When communist terrorists were trying to create a people’s paradise in El Salvador, many of our bishops ignored what was happening to personal libery under the Sandinistas in Nicaragua as they stumbled over themselves to create the “sanctuary movment”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_movement

Without putting too fine a point on it but there was no daylight between the position of the Magesterium and that of the Kremlin on these issues.

Not that they are all commies or anything. But there were MOVEMENTS out there that had freakin Pete Seeger singing protest songs and James Earl Jones and Ed Asner at their rallies. How could you not be in favor of these things?

Similar stampedes took place on global warming and immigration.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in. When given the choice between seeming to endorse a religious conservative for office and seeming to endorse a heterodox leftist there is no limit to the contortions a large share of our bishops won’t put themselves through to help the lefty. To wit: by the black letter of the Catechism of the Catholic Church supporting abortion is forbidden. If a public figure does so this failure is compounded by “scandal”, that is, an action that could cause others to question their faith. The fact that there are very few bishops in the nation who have taken steps to discipline pro-abort advocates and politicians especially when they proclaim themselves to be devout.

The second strain is the want to be liked. For most of American history, Catholics were THE OTHER. It was a foreign religion practiced by all manner of foreigners who either couldn’t speak English (Italians, Poles, etc.) or who could barely speak it (the Irish, it goes without saying). What other religion still has amendments to state constitutions directly aimed at its religious schools?

Just when things were going well with JFK (another devout Catholic) in the White House, he gets killed and the whole counter culture begins. If there was anything less cool in the 1960s than being in ROTC it was being a Catholic who believed in monogamy and abstinence until marriage not to mention avowing any religion that did not use mind altering drugs. Being cool is still important and despite his views on abortion Obama, that epitome of coolness, was invited to give a commencement address at a Catholic university.

This mindset was most egregiously on display during the 2008 election. The Catholic heirarchy — and I have to digress here for a moment to emphasize that we have many traditional bishops in this country who have fought the good fight for decades — wanted to catch the Hope-and-Change wave and had a problem: Barrack Obama loves him some abortion. Not just plain vanilla abortion. He is in favor of partial birth aboriton. He is in favor of killing a kid who happens to survive the abortion procedure.

Demonstrating again a contortionist skill that would gain them employment at any county fair in the country the bishops issued a document called “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship.”

As first blush it looks like a strong statement in favor of life which would not have helped Obama, or any other elected Democrat for that matter, until one reads deeper.

34. Catholics often face dificult choices about how to vote. This is why it is so important to vote according to a well-formed conscience that perceives the proper relationship among moral goods. A Catholic cannot vote for a candidate who takes a position in favor of an intrinsic evil, such as abortion or racism, if the voter’s intent is to support that position. In such cases a Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in grave evil. At the same time, a voter should not use a candidate’s opposition to an intrinsic evil to justify indifference or inattentiveness to other important moral issues involving human life and dignity.

35. There may be times when a Catholic who rejects a candidate’s unacceptable position may decide to vote for that candidate for other morally grave reasons. Voting in this way would be permissible only for truly grave moral reasons, not to advance narrow interests or partisan preferences or to ignore a fundamental moral evil.

In other words if you feel like the opposition to the war in Iraq or midnight basketball or furthering the ends of labor unions or any other pet peeve are “morally grave reasons” you can vote for the pro-abort. And they got what they wanted: American Catholics gave a majority of their votes to Obama.

Then came Obamacare which gave the bishops a real taste of what happens when you create a moral equivalence between universal health care and abortion. You get them both.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops was heartbroken and gobsmacked, or gobsmacked and heartbroken, when they got the bad news about the elimination of an exemption for religious conscience in health plans.

President Obama telephoned Archbishop Dolan on Friday morning to tell him of the decision, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The pair had discussed the issue during a November meeting, during which the archbishop “got the message that they could work together,” said the spokeswoman, Sister Mary Ann Walsh.

The issue was likely to form the “backdrop to future relations,” she said. “It’s too big to ignore… the elephant is tramping around in the sanctuary.”

An administration official on Tuesday confirmed the call was made on Friday and reiterated comments made by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the administration is committed to its partnerships with faith-based groups.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), a Catholic who supports abortion rights and access to contraception, said she thought the White House had handled the decision “very well” by being open to listening to religious leaders. “Contraception is about preventing unintended pregnancy,” she said. “I think that they did what they needed to do.”

So up until November Archbishop Dolan was being led to believe that he and the Obama Administration could work together and there would be a conscience exemption in the health care reform regulations and then he gets a call telling him that he’s been played for a chump.

It is really difficult to understate the cultural significance of this decision. If Congress doesn’t intervene and we end up with a pro-abort in the White House, which seems virtually certain regardless of how Obama fares in November, it is hard to see how this precedent will not be applied first to euthanasia, which seems to be the next big thing, and then to abortion. If left as it is, it really marks the end of independent churches in the United States.

The decision even managed to concern the Washington Post’s E. J. Dionne, another of the “smells and bells” Catholics on the left, or Catholycs as my friend Tom Crowe terms them, whose collective ass gets tired when confronted with the whole issue of morality.

One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law.

His administration mishandled this decision not once but twice. In the process, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus and strengthened the hand of those inside the Church who had originally sought to derail the health care law.

Reading all of this I was reminded of one of my favorite jokes, involving a guy in a bar and leprechaun. I won’t retell it here because this is a family website but I will link to one of the many variations here.

And I’d like to ask Archbishop Dolan and a lot of other members of our heirarchy, “You’re how old? And you still believe in leprechauns?”

View original article.

By: Susan Jones

(CNSNews.com) – Witnesses told a House panel on Wednesday that the Obama administration’s definition of a “religious employer” under Obamacare must change immediately, or else Catholic and other

View source page.

There they go again.

The American left, caught in the act of brandishing their
electronic rope for yet another conservative black man, is busy
dodging their long and horrendous history of racism.

Mother Jones
tries to turn attention from the left’s abysmal record on
lynchings — high tech or with a rope — by re-visiting my
criticism of ex-Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod. My point back
then, of course, was that Ms. Sherrod cited a Supreme Court case in
which she claimed the Court said her relative was lynched. I read
the case. The words “lynch” or “lynching” appeared exactly nowhere
in the case. Ms. Sherrod, surprise, finally emerged as just another
standard left-winger who, sadly, employs race and state to push a
progressive agenda. That was my criticism and it stands.

But the Sherrod incident highlights exactly why leftist
publications are so wildly excitable on the subject of lynching, as
Media Matters is here
as it foams about (the list is long) Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity,
Ann Coulter, Matt Drudge, Monica Crowley, Peter Johnson Jr., Greg
Gutfeld, Brent Bozell, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and
yours truly. All of us having in our individual fashion called them
out on their wretched history. (Note to Media Matters: You missed
Mark Levin. Get on the stick over there.)

The American left has a brutal and vivid centuries-long
history on race, as we have previously detailed at length
here and
here. This is a political faith that has historically exhibited
a mind-bending addiction to judging their fellow Americans by skin
color. The point the left didn’t want to go anywhere near in the
Sherrod case is that Sherrod’s relative was beaten to death –
brutally — by the local sheriff, and in 1940s Georgia sheriffs
were part of the Democratic political machinery. And the Supreme
Court case was judged by a lifetime Klan member — Justice Hugo
Black. So whether it was the sheriff on the bottom rung of justice
or the Supreme Court at the top rung, the long hand of the
progressive/racism tie was operating. That tie literally beat a
black man to death — and then sat favorably in judgment of his
killers. Progressives are well on record as having supported
slavery, segregation, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan (which actually
ran the 1924 Democratic Convention known to history as the “Klan
Bake”) and every race-based approach to life right on down to
today’s belief in racial quotas and refusing to prosecute the Black
Panther voting rights case in Philadelphia for racial reasons. (See
J. Christian Adams book
Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice
Department.)

To cite one of a gazillion examples, here is the
Republican view of lynching as expressed all the way back in 1924
in its platform of that year:

We urge the Congress to enact at the earliest possible date a
federal anti-lynching law so that the full influence of the federal
government may be wielded to exterminate this hideous crime.

And the Democrats? How did they stand on the lynching issue?

We condemn the efforts of the Republican Party to nationalize
the functions and duties of the states.

Get that? This was the left’s response to the GOP on lynching.
In other words: buzz off. We’re busy lynching black men,
particularly if we catch them associating with white women. Take
your anti-lynching law platform and stuff it.

And, but of course, this anti-anti-lynching plank was
seamlessly tied together with every progressive nostrum of the day,
right down to assailing the GOP for taking campaign funds from
“predatory interests.” The same blather promoted by today’s
progressives in the Citizens United case.

In short?

This is what the left does. Today with Herman Cain,
yesterday with Clarence Thomas, long yesterdays ago with a 1924
platform that essentially issued a coded endorsement of their right
to lynch the uppity black men of their day. And with Shirley
Sherrod’s relative Bobby Hall — who, by the way, was a black man
from Georgia just like Herman Cain.

Nothing has changed this tie between progressives and
racism. The latter is used to drive the policies of the
former.

It was true in 1924. It was true in the 1940s’ Bobby Hall
case. It is true today.

And all you have to do to see the modern version of this
at work is keep your eye on the double-standard being used with the
black Herman Cain and that used to ferociously defend the white
liberal Bill Clinton, the latter accused by three women
successively of rape (Juanita Broaddrick), groping (Kathleen
Willey), and dropping his pants with a request to “kiss it” (Paula
Jones).

What’s unfolding here is a dramatic stripping bare of the
progressive double standard on race and sex. Why? Precisely because
conservatives are fed up with letting these people get away with
the double game. The spotlight is now on.

Make my day: read Mother Jones and Media
Matters.

Where the 21st century version of the sentiments of 1924
progressive/racism ties are carefully updated and skillfully
presented for all to see.

Herman Cain may be President of the United States. He may
never be President of the United States.

But he damn well isn’t going to be lynched for trying to
be President of the United States.

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Saw a headline that made me smile, I swear: “Obama’s team banks on his ‘regular guy’ appeal.” (Article here.) Our president, regular guy? Where? An Antioch faculty lounge?

Herman Cain was explaining to Fox News why he was facing questions about sexual-harassment charges in the past: “A lot of people have a problem with the fact that I’m doing so well and I’m so likable.”

Keep reading this post . . .

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Nancy Pelosi has taken hyperbolic statements to a new level today with this sound bite.

For Democrats, preventing federal funding from being used to pay for abortions, something specifically refuted as a possibility during the healthcare reform debates, will produce this result.

The House is scheduled to vote this week on a new bill that would allow federally-funded hospitals that oppose abortions to refuse to perform the procedure, even in cases where a woman would die without it.

This would be news to the sponsors of the amendment since it very clearly states that the opposite is true:

Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced last week that the Protect Life Act, H.R. 358, will be considered in the House of Representatives on Thursday. The measure would amend President Obama’s Affordable Care Act to reflect the Hyde amendment by prohibiting taxpayer dollars from funding any health plan that includes coverage of elective abortions.

]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/pelosi-%e2%80%9crepublicans-will-allow-women-to-die-on-the-floor%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/obama-promises-to-veto-abortion-bill/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/obama-promises-to-veto-abortion-bill/#comments Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:08:38 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/obama-promises-to-veto-abortion-bill/ From RenewAmerica:

(National Journal) – President Obama threatened on Wednesday to veto any bill that would restrict insurers from paying for abortions, saying it goes too far. “Longstanding federal policy prohibits federal funds from being used for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered,” the White House said in a statement…

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]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/obama-promises-to-veto-abortion-bill/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/love-for-sale/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/love-for-sale/#comments Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:00:00 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/love-for-sale/ From NRO Articles:

As is well known, the movie business is pretty much dead to audiences unless you’re a teenage boy, so times is hard out here in Tinseltown for a scribe like me. I mean, how am I supposed to write a hit sequel if there’s no breakout original for me to rip off? Like our fearless leader, His Serene Majesty the Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II, Lord of the Flies, Keeper of the Hoops, Master of the Greens, Bringer of Kinetic Military Action, Vacationer-in-Chief, Slayer of Osama, Atomizer of the Economy, Sultan of the Slippers, and Protector of the Holy Cities of Honolulu and Chicago, I need love and inspiration. And right now, except for Ginger, I’m not feelin’ it.

Where is the spirit of Hope and her lovely sister, Change? Where are the triumphal Styrofoam columns of Denver, the shouting ersatz Volk of Grant Park, united in their fervid love for The One? If you ask me, America-of-KKK-A has been going downhill since that historic moment on the steps of the Capitol in January 2009, when this rotten country finally put its racist past behind it for all of two minutes before Rush Limbaugh and the rest of you fascists began raining on the inaugural parade.

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]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/10/love-for-sale/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/02/trusting-but-verifying-on-taxpayer-funding-of-abortion/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/02/trusting-but-verifying-on-taxpayer-funding-of-abortion/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 22:00:30 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/?p=3126 From The Heritage Foundation:

On the subject of arms treaties with the Soviet Union, President Reagan famously said, “Trust, but verify.” Now many Members of Congress want to do the same with public funding of elective abortion under Obamacare, but they are meeting new resistance from congressional Democrats, some of whom, nonetheless, insist they have the same goal.

The battle dates back to 2009, when the abortion funding issue held upthe passage of the massive health care bill known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In March 2010, the PPACA was finally adopted when a small group of House Democratsbacked away from a proposal known as Stupak–Pitts, which would have plugged the abortion funding loopholes in the PPACA and established a strict standard governing the use of the new affordability tax credits created by the bill.

The House Democrats voted for the PPACA after receiving assurances that President Obama would issue an executive order that would plug the loopholes, or, as the President put it, impose “strict compliance with prohibitions on abortion funding in health insurance exchanges” and apply the fund restrictions to separate categories like community health centers.

Today, a House Committee led by Rep. Joe Pitts (R–PA) will begin mark-up of the Protect Life Act, which would codify the Stupak–Pitts measure and put the weight of Congress behind what the Obama executive order purports to do. The bill, H.R. 358, which is also sponsored by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D–IL), has 118 cosponsors.

The reaction of certain Members of Congress to these developments has varied over time. In 2010, during a campaign debate, Senator Barbara Boxer (D–CA) said of the Hyde Amendment limiting public funds for abortion, “I think it’s a good compromise right now. So that’s my position, and that’s why, in the health care debate, not one pro-choice senator or a member of the House that I know tried to overturn Hyde.”

Now, Boxer is leading the fight against the Protect Life Act, claiming that “it tells women they can’t use their private money to purchase insurance that covers a full range of health care.” Section 2(c)(2) of the bill, in fact, tells women that they can use only their private money—and not government funds authorized or appropriated under the PPACA, including affordability tax credits—to purchase insurance with elective abortion coverage.

Moreover, the Hyde Amendment itself both denies payments for elective abortions and payments to “any trust fund” from which funds could be drawn to provide “health benefits coverage that includes abortions.” When Boxer said to an audience in 2010 that she supported the Hyde Amendment, she was apparently referring to only part of the amendment. The Protect Life Act would address the entire scope of that amendment and make clear that the PPACA’s distinctly new feature, the affordability tax credit, operates in the same manner as the Hyde Amendment. It would turn the fig leaf of the Obama executive order into a firewall.

Congress has many good reasons to maintain the separation of public funds from the practice of abortion, including the lack of public health oversight and the controversial practices of prominent agencies that deal withminors.

]]> http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/02/trusting-but-verifying-on-taxpayer-funding-of-abortion/feed/ 0 http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/01/the-vanderbilt-abortion-decision-how-obama-can-better-protect-civil-rights/ http://www.antiobamablog.com/2011/01/the-vanderbilt-abortion-decision-how-obama-can-better-protect-civil-rights/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 21:00:19 +0000 Admin http://www.antiobamablog.com/?p=2987 From The Heritage Foundation:

Vanderbilt University Medical Center made awelcome decision last weekand removed from its nurse residency admission application a requirement that students admitted to its women’s health track agree to participate in training to provide abortions.

The decision came just 24 hours after attorneys at the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal group, filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) challenging the requirement. Events moved so quickly after the complaint was filed that it is not at all clear that the HHS/OCR played a role in enforcing the law in this instance.

Of much greater importance is the prospect that the HHS/OCR will soon play no role in similar situations in the future.

The Vanderbilt case is a classic example of a conscience violation in the context of health care. Federal law has been clear on the issue since the early 1970s when the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade struck down nearly all U.S. abortion laws. Lawmakers like the late Senators John Heinz (R–PA) and Frank Church (D–ID) were concerned about the interaction of federal health care, research, and financing programs with institutions and individuals wishing to exercise their right not to participate in abortion or other controversial procedures.

The Church amendment of 1973 (42 U.S.C. § 300a-7) included a provision that bars any entity that “receives a grant, contract, loan or loan guarantee” under various federal titles from “discriminat[ing] in the employment, promotion, or termination of employment of any physician or other health care personnel” because that person refuses to perform or assist in a “service or activity” that “would be contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.” But this law is silent on key aspects of enforcement. Its reference to recipients of federal grants, contracts, and other funds both defined the scope of the law and carried the implication that federal funds could be cut off if the grantee refused to respect the conscience of health care employees and students.

The law did not make clear, however, how an individual impacted by an infringement of conscience should proceed to file a complaint, nor did it make clear how complaints would be investigated, allegations proved or disproved, and resolutions reached. The law was also silent on whether an individual suffering discrimination or coercion would possess a private right of action to seek redress after a violation occurred.

In late 2008, the Bush Administration sought to clarify this situation and issued regulations setting forth a complaint procedure involving the HHS/OCR. This simple step offered at least the hope that complaints would be taken seriously, investigated thoroughly, and moved forward toward resolution. Elections have consequences, however, and the Obama Administration suspended the regulations in March 2009.

There the matter has stood for nearly two years, as the Administration has said little other than that it is engaged in a review of the regulations. In the meantime, however, it has engaged in a bit of positive practice consistent with the regulations. After Catherine Cenzon-DeCarlo, a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York (an entity that receives federal funds from various sources), complained that she had been forced to participate in an elective second-trimester abortion, the regional OCR/HHS accepted the complaint and launched an investigation. The nurse also commenced an action in federal court, with the most recent result a ruling by a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that the Church Amendment does not imply a private right of action. The upshot is that the HHS/OCR investigation is for now the only game in town.

But the fate of such investigations is very much up in the air as a result of the Obama Administration’ssuspension of the 2008 regulations. In an unrelated legal proceeding, the Justice Department responded late last year to a show cause order from the court to explain the Administration’s intentions regarding the 2008 regulations. The Justice Department stated that “HHS expects to have a final rule published in the Federal Register within sixty to ninety days—i.e., as early as January 31, 2011, and no later than March 1, 2011. HHS is working hard to finalize the rule in this time frame and should be able to do so.”

The outcome of this review is portentous for Mrs. Cenzon-DeCarlo. It is also portentous for potential nursing students at Vanderbilt and every other medical training institution in the country. Vanderbilt’s decision to modify its application process may well have turned out differently in a few weeks if the Obama Administration were to extract the teeth from the Church Amendment, suspend any pending investigations, and leave affected parties without a complaint process.

A civil rights law without an enforcement mechanism is just a noble sentiment. Mrs. Cenzon-DeCarlo and prospective nursing students would prefer to have noble careers.

The freedom of conscience is a core principle in medical care and many other aspects of community life. It was precious to our nation’s founders, and Congress has consistently reaffirmed it in legislation. Keeping such lawsstrong and giving complaints a full hearing and remedial opportunity are cornerstones of civility in a nation that seeks to mediate profound clashes of morality. The Obama Administration would do well to keep this precept in mind as it considers the next step for conscience regulations.

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