The law requires all employers to provide health insurance coverage for services such as abortion and birth control. Even if the employer is a religious organization, it will be required to provide these, under penalty of fine and or imprisonment. Before this law was passed, employers were allowed to choose the health care plans for their employees. Churches, Christian Hospitals and schools, chose not to provide these services which were contrary to their beliefs. Employees picked which plan suited their needs best. A woman over 50 need not pay for contraceptive or abortion services as she will probably not use them. No more choosing what is best for us or our families, now the US Government will tell us what health insurance we receive, and what each plan MUST provide.
The law passed by the Obama administration is nothing more than an attack on the Catholic Church and organized religion itself. The Affordable Care Act is an attempt by our government to weaken religious organizations, gain control over one seventh of the US economy, and get more people dependent on the US government for their daily needs. The fact that the Catholic Church is the largest provider of healthcare in America, outside of the US government, means nothing. It does not matter that the Catholic Church operates 600 hospitals and 1400 long term care and other facilities that provides health care regardless of a person's ability to pay. The Catholic Hospitals have operated freely for over 100 years in America, without ever having to compromise their religious beliefs.
This is just the beginning of the war on religious organizations and traditional values from our government. The president has come out and supported homosexual marriage as well. The US government is already pressuring military chaplains to marry homosexuals. Soon they will force Catholic and Christian schools to hire homosexual teachers or face discrimination charges.
It is such a shock to see the US government attacking the Church, while the Russian government defends it. The jailing of the Pussy Riot band for desecrating an Orthodox Church, the recent law passed by the Duma, prohibiting homosexual propaganda aimed at children. Laws protecting the unborn are being passed, as well as removing government funding for some abortions. These are positive signs for Russia. Many in the west will decry these acts, but they show that the Russian government is not afraid to defend the Church's position, not because of a religious preference, but because it is the right thing to do for a nation to prosper. It will help put Russia on solid footing for the future. This is just the opposite of what is going on in the US at the present time.
The US became the richest country in the world because it allowed religious freedom, protected individual and property rights, and its laws and standards of behavior were based on traditional Judeo-Christian values. As a nation, we prospered for over 200 years because of this. In the last 40 years, we have abandoned these principles and look where we are now. We borrow hundreds of billions of dollars each year from many countries just to pay our expenses. Our nation is bankrupt financially and morally. No nation on this earth was capable of destroying us militarily, so we have set out to destroy ourselves through moral decay, or as the late Senator Daniel Moynihan called it "Defining Deviancy Down".
When I was a young boy, we were taught in the Catholic Church to pray for the conversion of Russia from Communism. With the US government attacking our churches and religious organizations, maybe we should start asking the Russian people to pray for the conversion of America.
Michael P Gardner
Jacksonville, FL USA