On Friday the Obama administration proposed a rule that it says will appease the concerns religious organizations have about the controversial abortion/contraceptive mandate issued last year by the Department of Health and Human Services. Here’s what you should know about the mandate and the proposed changes.

What is this contraception mandate everyone keeps talking about?

As part of the universal health insurance reform passed in 2010 (often referred to as “Obamacare”), all group health plans must now provide—at no cost to the recipient—certain “preventive services.” The list of services includes sterilization, contraceptives, and abortifacient drugs.

If this mandate is from 2010, why are we just now talking about it?

On January 20, 2012, the Obama Administration announced that that it would not expand the exemption for this mandate to include religious schools, colleges, hospitals, and charitable service organizations. Instead, the Administration merely extended the deadline for religious groups who did not already fall within the existing narrow exemption so that they will have one more year to comply or drop health care insurance coverage for their employees altogether and incur a hefty fine. For example, Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned company that is opposing the mandate, is facing fines up to $1.3 million per day.

Is there a religious exemption from the mandate? If so, who qualifies for the exemption?
Read more on The FAQs: Obamacare’s Contraceptive-Abortifacient Mandate…

What would Diedrich Bonhoeffer have to say about the HHS mandate? Eric Metaxas–best selling author of the biographies on William Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer:Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy gives us some insight in this 2 minute video that explains the real issue behind the HHS Mandate: Religious liberty

Read more on New Video: HHS Mandate and Religious Liberty…

At least forty Catholic dioceses and organizations in the United States have filed suit against the Obama Administration for violation of First Amendment rights.  According to CNSnews.com,

The suits filed by the Catholic organizations focus on the regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last August and finalized in January that requires virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions.

Read more on Catholic Diocese of Washington, DC and Forty Other Groups Sue Obama Administration…

I came across this news story via Catholic World News. And this intriguing passage about President Carter’s disagreements with Pope John Paul II:

Carter wrote that he exchanged harsh words with the late Pope John Paul II during a state visit over what Carter classified as the Pope’s “perpetuation of the subservience of women.” He added, “there was more harshness when we turned to the subject of ‘liberation theology’.”

Read more on Jimmy Carter, Liberation Theologian…

Both the original and compromise versions of the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate (the HHS mandate) coerce people into paying, either directly or indirectly, for other people’s contraception. The policy may have been pushed along by exigencies of Democratic Party constituency politics, but I suspect there’s also a worldview dimension to the mandate, one embodied in one of President Obama’s more controversial appointments—Science and Technology Policy Director John Holdren.

Read more on HHS Mandate Fits Bigger Pattern…

“The power of population,” wrote the Rev. Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798, “is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.” In other words, unless population growth is checked by moral restraint (refraining from having babies) or disaster (disease, famine, war) widespread poverty and degradation inevitably result. Or so thought Malthus and many other intellectuals of his era.

Unfortunately, methods of population control range from the unpleasant (disease, famine, war) to the downright horrifying (abstinence).
Read more on Malthus and the Contraceptive Mandate…

Kishore Jayabalan, Director of Acton’s Rome Office, was called upon this morning by America’s Morning News to weigh in with the view from Rome on the Obama Administration’s HHS mandate that most employers – including religious institutions – provide contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs as part of health care coverage. He did so, and you can listen to the interview by using the audio player below:

Read more on Audio: Kishore Jayabalan on Mandates, Conscience, and Electoral Conseqences…

I just completed a very short interview on Vatican Radio to discuss the current battle between the Obama administration and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. It didn’t permit me to say more than that the Obama administration is making a political mistake, so I’d like to say a bit more about the serious consequences that will likely result and how we ended up with this Church-State conundrum in the first place.

Read more on Obamacare vs the Catholic Bishops…

Last spring I participated in a symposium at the University of St. Thomas School of Law on “pro-life progressivism.” The proceedings have now been published in the school’s law review, which is available here.

Read more on Pro-Life Progressivism…