Since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was formally adopted, America has enjoyed the legal protection of religious freedom, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Today, 221 years later, centuries of progress in the protection of religious and other liberties is at risk of being rolled back in one fell swoop. The culprit: Obamacare.
As we all know, President Obama’s health care law will mandate that religious hospitals, charities, and schools abandon the tenets of their faiths and provide their employees insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization. This anti-conscience mandate is but the latest assault on liberty Obamacare has ushered in. Its shock waves are reverberating across the country, waking Americans to the fact that our first freedom — religious liberty — will be the first to fall now that the federal government has unfettered control over the country’s health care system.
Some in Congress are taking action to combat Obamacare’s onslaught. Today, the Senate will consider an amendment introduced by Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri) and co-sponsored by Marco Rubio (R-Florida) that would override Obamacare’s anti-conscience mandate, allowing religious institutions to keep their faith and provide health care coverage for their employees. So important is this amendment that The Heritage Foundation’s sister organization, Heritage Action for America, has decided to “key vote” the measure, meaning that it has identified the vote as a seminal one.
The Heritage Foundation is the nation’s most broadly supported public policy research institute, with more than 453,000 individual, foundation and corporate donors. Heritage, founded in February 1973, mission is
to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.
