Religious Liberty has ended in the USA

Wednesday August 1st is Chick fil A Appreciation Day, and my girls and I are travelling 2 hours to Burlington MA on the 95 beltway around Boston to eat lunch at the nearest Chick fil A.  We hope to express our appreciation for the founder of Chick fil A's bold stand in support of traditional marriage. We are privileged to be exercising our right to Free Speech.

HT Catholic Advocate blog

But it is also a tragic day. On the very same day, the first of August, we have lost our First Amendment Right to the Free Exercise of Religion. Its the day that the HHS mandate takes affect, and soon Catholic institutions will be fined for their refusal to carry health coverage which pays for abortifcacient drugs like Plan B, and the Pill. No longer will Catholics be able to live like Catholics in the public square, unless this law is overturned either in court or by Congress.
That is not the only provision the HHS will mandate. Prenatal testing as a preventative measure for Down syndrome will be covered by the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare. I describe in this article how this is a cost saving measure to save the government the expense of raising children with Down syndrome.

A 2004 study published in the journal Fetal Medicine explored the connection between prenatal-screening policies in Europe and termination for neural-tube defects and Down syndrome. Excluding data from Ireland and Malta, where abortion is illegal, results showed that more than 90% of women terminated following a prenatal diagnosis. So, having a screening policy results in more prenatal detection, and almost all babies with Down syndrome are terminated.

Could it be the intent of the Obama administration to prevent children with Down syndrome from being born? If so, it would not be the first time a eugenic agenda has darkened American public policy. Tucker Carlson pointed out in a 1996 Weekly Standard article that Joycelyn Elders, in 1990, when she was Arkansas state health director, testified before Congress that “abortion has had an important, and positive, public-health effect,” in that it has reduced “the number of children afflicted with severe defects.”

“As evidence, the future (U.S.) surgeon general cited this statistic: ‘The number of Down syndrome infants in Washington state in 1976 was 64% lower than it would have been without legal abortion,’” Carlson wrote.

So, as of August 1st.  our government is forcing us to pay to end babies lives calling it preventative care. Abortion is not health care, and we will continue to protest until we no longer fund death for the unborn.

See an excellent post at Catholic Advocate on the death of religious liberty.