Kamala Harris’ Crusade Against Freedom of Religion By Terence P. Jeffrey for CNS News
Do you have a right to run your business in keeping with your moral and religious values? Or can the federal government force you to act against your conscience and the teachings of your faith?
Can the government force you — because you own a for-profit enterprise — to cooperate in the taking of an innocent human life?
Sen. Kamala Harris of California believes the government ought to have that power. She has made it one of her crusades.
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After President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010, his Department of Health and Human Services issued a regulation requiring all health insurance plans to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved “contraceptive methods.”
Some of these so-called contraceptives acted post-conception — aborting the life of a newly conceived human being.
Catholic moral teaching, of course, opposes sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion. Thus, no faithful Catholic could conscientiously obey this regulation.
Many other Christians objected to at least the abortifacients it required.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.)
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The controversy the regulation caused should have been settled by simply looking at the First Amendment.
It says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Clearly, a regulation that forces Christians to act against their faith violates the First Amendment.
Yet Congress had enacted a law in 1993 that expressly authorized the government to violate the free exercise of religion.
The ironically titled Religious Freedom Restoration Act says: “Government may substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person … 1) is in furtherance of a compelling government interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”
