T
Thomas_Francis
Guest
This is a petition to support a new bill in Congress called the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011.
And a selection from the bill itselfPresident Obama and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sabelius, a Catholic, are working hard to ensure the people are not heard and this critical piece of legislation never reaches the President’s desk. On February 18, 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services used its regulatory power to remove what was left of conscience rights for health care professionals. On August 1, 2011, they also issued orders requiring health plans to cover contraception and sterilization and on January 20, 2012 that rule became official.
We must speak out and protect the conscience rights of health care providers and professionals!
My brothers and sisters in Christ, we cannot stand idly by and let this atrocity continue. We MUST fight this.(1) As Thomas Jefferson declared to New London Methodists in 1809, ‘[n]o provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority’.
(2) Jefferson’s statement expresses a conviction on respect for conscience that is deeply embedded in the history and traditions of our Nation and codified in numerous State and Federal laws, including laws on health care. …
‘(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS- A health plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the essential health benefits package described in subsection (a) (or preventive health services described in section 2713 of the Public Health Service Act), to fail to be a qualified health plan, or to fail to fulfill any other requirement under this title on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because–
‘(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or
‘(ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.