Yesterday CNN posted an article detailing some of the impact of the 2013 Politifact “Lie of the Year.”
The article reminds us of one of the deals made in order to pass ObamaCare:
Lest people forget, passage of the Affordable Care Act happened in part because Obama struck a deal with a single Catholic holdout: Bart Stupak, D-Michigan. Stupak agreed to vote for the bill in exchange for an executive order protecting conscience rights and preserving the Hyde Amendment‘s ban on the use of federal funds for abortion. Stupak had insisted on an amendment. Instead, he took the President’s word.
The President’s promise to protect conscience rights for American Catholics was broken quickly when HHS wrote the mandate that all health insurance policies written under ObamaCare must include coverage for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.
The article reports:
This came after the President assured Catholics in his commencement address at Notre Dame that he would “honor the conscience of those that disagree with abortion and draft a sensible conscience clause” and after assuring Congress that “under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience protections will remain in place.”
…In the words of Stupak, “I am perplexed and disappointed that, having negotiated the executive order with the President, not only does that HHS mandate violate the executive order, but it also violates statutory law. I think it is illegal.”
The President is largely responsible for this invasion into the conscience rights of Catholics and other Americans who do not support abortion, but those in Congress who voted for the bill (without having read it) also need to be held responsible. ObamaCare is bad for the economy–it will be very expensive to implement–and it infringes on the religious rights of Americans. We have a Congressional election coming up in less than a year. I strongly suggest that any member of Congress who voted for and supported ObamaCare be voted out of office. I doubt we can repeal ObamaCare–the President would veto any repeal that reached his desk–but a new Congress may be able to defund it or change it enough to make it palatable to all Americans.
It is interesting to me that CNN,, usually a strong ally of the President, posted this article. There is a bit of a disclaimer at the top of the article explaining that it was written by Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with The Catholic Association and is the founder and editor-in-chief of AltCatholicah, a Web magazine devoted to the exploration of faith and gender. Even so, CNN posted the article.
