Un-merry Christmas from the ACLU
The ACLU’s Unholy War on Catholic Hospitals
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010
Ho, ho, ho! Just in time for Christmas, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched a new salvo against people of faith. Even as billions around the world celebrate the birth of Christ, joyless, abortion-obsessed secularists never take a holiday.
On Wednesday, the ACLU sent a letter to federal health officials urging the government to force Catholic hospitals in the U.S. to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn. They’re counting on sympathetic Obama rationing czar Donald Berwick — a recess appointee whose radical views on wealth and health redistribution were never vetted by Congress — to dictate which religious principles hospital operators can and cannot follow.
The ACLU reiterated its call for a federal probe — read: fishing expedition — of Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide “emergency” contraception and abortions to women. In practice, of course, every request for abortion is an “emergency” to the left.
The Catholic Church makes clear that it is morally permissible under certain circumstances to treat directly the cause of the mother’s medical condition, even if those efforts unintentionally and indirectly cost the baby’s life. But Catholic health providers must never directly trade one life for another.
Civil liberties activists have a particular vendetta against devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who recently revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church’s ethical and religious directives for health care. “It would be unfaithful to pretend the institution is still Catholic,” Olmsted concluded.
“The dioceses cannot be permitted to dictate who lives and who dies in Catholic-owned hospitals,” the ACLU’s lawyers fumed in response.
But shall it be left to the ACLU and Obamacare bureaucrats to determine the Catholicity of a Catholic hospital?
And shall it be left to litigious secularists to sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities with impunity?
Hell no.
The ACLU now seeks to unilaterally rewrite a federal emergency medical treatment law passed by Congress in 1986 to mandate that all hospitals provide abortions. But for more than three decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, federal law has firmly established strong conscience protections for individual health care providers and hospitals who are reluctant or unwilling to “counsel, suggest, recommend, assist or in any way participate in the performance of abortions or sterilizations contrary to or consistent with” their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
As the Washington-based Becket Fund, a public interest law firm that defends the free expression of all religious traditions, pointed out to the feds: “The ACLU has no business radically re-defining the meaning of emergency health care,’ just as it has no business demanding that religious doctors and nurses violate their faith by performing a procedure they believe is tantamount to murder. Forcing religious hospitals to perform abortions not only undermines this nation’s integral commitment to conscience rights, it violates the numerous federal laws that recognize and protect those rights.”
According to the Catholic Health Association, Catholic health care facilities form the largest not-for-profit health service sector in the United States — serving one out of every six patients in America and providing 15 percent of the hospital bed capacity in the country. Moreover, Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers.
If the abortion lobby gets its way, faithful Catholic hospitals and Catholic medical professionals who follow their consciences and adhere to canon law could see their federal funding yanked. And radical social engineers may well force the shutdown of countless Catholic hospitals at a time when Obamacare costs and consequences are already wreaking havoc on the health industry.
Fewer jobs, less access to health care, less freedom and more lives lost: Merry Christmas from the ACLU.
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This is just absolutely horrible! Now a person personal faith is mandated by the government how WE must feel and act? I bet if something was against the rop type’s faith, the government would be doing all they could do to see rop type got their way. It sure will be interesting to see how the Catholic hospitals deal with this. I wonder if they will just close down?
L
*It’s going to get ugly for the American Communist Liberties Union if they continue to push this abortion issue and the non-existent separation of church and state; We know they have an ally in P-BO, who’s wishing for a Kenyan Utopia for us all, but 60% to 70% of the citizenry can and will fight back; The tide will turn if we continue to fight back in numbers, Lord willing!
Stop the progressives at every opportunity; give them not one inch of ground!
Indeed it it more than a moral code; it is a not-up-for-debate “article of faith” for Roman Catholic folk.
At the same time, the ACLU (and it’s ideological cohorts) demand a ban on employees having a piggy bank or Porky Pig figure on their desks for fear of offending Muslims. The ACLU has made religion-based cognitive dissonance an artform.
This is a Happy Christmas site for all of you that have little ones to help keep track of where Santa is.
http://www.noradsanta.org/
L
Democratic Socialists/Communists love to kill.
And the more innocent the victim, the more they like it.
They have a long history of imprisoning and executing the
“counter-revolutionaries” who oppose them.
Listen to one who speaks from intimate first-hand knowledge:
Thank you. I was going to look for this. This is one of the things that I wish I could be a part of–alas, not in Colorado nor a computer person.
Merry Christmas to all! (and if you don’t believe, then enjoy the happiness of much of the population)
The ACLU fancies itself the defender of the 1st Amendment. Far from it… the ACLU is the enemy of the 1st Amendment. What they are currently seeking to have the government do is exactly contrary to the 1st Amendment:
The ACLU wants the government to prohibit the free exercise of religion.
The ACLU is a domestic enemy of our Constitution.
And, speaking of babies…
Merry Christmas!
Why does this not surprise me. I am so tired of the likes of the ACLU and their bunch. Maybe it is time to file a lawsuit against the ACLU for offending us…lol
On a good note..The fire department where I live has a Christmas tree up and decorated and has the words Merry Christmas on their message board. It is so nice to live in a bright red sliver even though we are surrounded by a sea of blue.
Silly me: I thought that in this context “Catholic” meant that the hospital or clinic would generally conform to Catholic Church values.
Frankly, I would rather go to a Christian or Jewish hospital than one with the ACLU brand or seal of approval.
Is anyone surprised?
This is what you get when you put government in control of charities. It is EXACTLY what the big goverment control freaks have planned all along.
If McVeigh had blown up an ACLU office instead of the Murrah Federal Building, I’d have a picture of him on the wall in my living room.
It’s not just Catholic hospitals that won’t do abortions, although they are the largest entity to attack.
Betcha those religious hospitals are the ones who write off the most charity cases too.
Merry Christmas everyone…and God Bless You ALL!!! There was a Jewish guy on Fox this a.m. and he wished everyone a Merry Christmas!!! Yes, we CAN all get along!!
I am taking a 3-day break from the news…waiting for the grandkids right now and we will go to Lino Lakes for tonight. Tomorrow at my brother’s, then Sunday, the kids and grandkids will be here! No News, no internet!!!
I pray you will all be blessed this season with the peace that only GOD can give. That is the greatest gift of all. You Christians know what I mean. Those of you who aren’t Christians…I urge you to seriously consider it!! God will provide the FAITH, if you ask Him to.
Love,
Happyscrapper
Mele Kalikimaka, Scrapper!
Make no mistake. The ACLU wants Catholic hospitals to shut down. It wants any Christian institution or individual OUT of the health care business. Why? A completely secularized, government-run system can make its own decisions on who lives and who dies without pesky things like “thou shalt not kill” getting in the way of the decision process.
And it further pushes religion out of the public square. The ACLU wants only faith in the State.
I used to be opposed to all abortions that were not necessary to save the mother’s life and health.
Nowadays I don’t oppose abortions for the Left.
How’s that for becoming a moderate?
happyscrapper#18,
I wish you and yours a very blessed and Happy Merry Christmas. It looks like you will be having snow on the ground in MN. It was six years ago tomorrow here in S TX WE had snow, lots of it, for us. It didn’t last long, but it was beautiful all over the palms.
L
Seriously? Do you have a link? I couldn’t find it.
I find it difficult to believe. It would completely upend their whole reason for being.
Perhaps they are just defending a private company’s right to ban them in the workplace?
That’s my kind of conservative moderation. Practical. If we don’t allow them to kill their young, they will quickly overrun us, just as the andolians are overrunning the kemalists in Turkey.
Now if there was just some way we could get the Muslims to embrace abortion ….
Merry CHRISTMAS to all-even the
ACLU and those FOOLS who deny Christ. If any object that is between them and GOD; those of the anti-Christ ACLU will have all eternity to ponder their mis-guided war on the Faith and lying about it.
Yes indeed “The ACLU has no business radically re-defining the meaning of emergency health care, but being the evil they are they will. There should be no federal emergency medical treatment law-nose of the camel again. Many of the great tyrants of history were anti-Christ-not being willing to share their power with anyone. But though Stalin pulled down the great Churches of Russia he did not kill the Faith-many of them are now rebuilt. One Roman emperor after another persecuted the Church to no long term avail.
The ACLU may have it’s time of glory but compared to eternity it means nothing. Hold firm and we will win. Millions may fall away due to their own pride but the remnant will remain-it always does. The Grinch only TRIED to steal Christmas.
Merry CHRISTMAS to us all.
Late term?
Up to 40 years old?
===
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
should be a convenience store,
NOT a government agency.
Dhimmitude Beyond Parody
Though this is the ACLU’s ideological cohorts at work, ya just know that the ACLU and like anti-Christian groups gotta love it, being of the same mentality. Can’t risk upsetting members of the religion of peace, y’know.
The ACLU is the modern day NAZIs. What do you expect? Maybe their is a way to reverse this, and ban ALL late term abortions.
Merry Christmas to you, but understand all conservatives are not Christian.
The leftist jackasses at the ACLU probably do love it, but they know better than to go that far themselves.
It’s all the left. And the entire left (including all of those who call themselves ‘moderates’ on the left)has embraced Islam as a fellow destroyer of western values.
Moral relativism, the skank ‘philosophy’ that is the basis for their worship of the collective, has more in common with fundamentalist Islam than it has with the thinking of those who wrote the Constitution.
Another example of the ACLU’s religious-based cognitive dissonance:
Where was the ACLU on this?
“Parents were told their children would be learning about the architecture of a mosque and they would be allowed to observe a prayer service. But the students wound up being given a lecture on the Prophet Muhammad, and some boys participated in a midday prayer service.”
The whole site (StopTheACLU.com) is a good resource on the ACLU’s religious and other bias. There’s also a related FaceBook group page titled “ACLU Really Stands for “Anti-Christian Litigation Unit”.
The ACLU will be recruiting Law School grads pretty heavily now that DADT has been “repealed.”
Lots of people discharged for foul behavior over the last 50 years are going to need retirement privileges, back pay, restoration of rank, etc.
How long ’til the American Communist Lawyers Union, oops, I mean the Anti-Christain Lawyers Union tries to force Christians to stop worshiping Jesus Christ?
Well, I’m not afraid to say it;
!!A VERY BLESSED CHRISTMAS TO YOU, MICHELLE, AND TO ALL READERS HERE!!
Back at ya, tre!
Couldn’t agree more…after all the aclu was conceived by a communist, and nothing has changed.
——-
How is it the minorities are dictating to the majority how we are to live?
I don’t know it the repeal is retroactive, Hangfire. But looking ahead the immense cost of treating a huge influx of HIV-AIDS cases will bankrupt the VA, if not the country.
So much is wrong with Michelle’s summary of this story it’s disgusting.
Has anyone read what’s actually going on in this Arizona hospital? I challenge you to read it and compare Michelle’s version with the straight version.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2010-12-21-phoenix-catholic-hospital_N.htm
Also, contrary to Michelle’s insinuation, the hospital in question gets NO funding from the Catholic church. Zero funding.
This column was slapped together at the last minute. Just throw out a few bogeyman terms like ‘abortion’, ‘church’ and ‘ACLU’ and you all throw a hissy fit.
Easy, predictable recipe.
This is a civil rights issue. They’ve got to make it retro.
/sarc
The American Communist-Lickers Union is worthless – but there’s a good replacement: The Institute for Justice. It’s a (real) civil liberties defense foundation with libertarian values.
http://www.ij.org/
Help build up IJ and diminish the ACLU.
I think you give them too much credit, Roland, going by their record so far.
One of the cutesy little games the ACLU likes to play is the very rare instance where they will join, in a perfunctory legal fashion, in a case that is not politically correct or that is “on the side” of some Christian interest. Then they point to such rarities and say “See – where not biased!!” It’s like having someone who kicks you 3 times in the teeth every day of a year but who gives you a toy trinket the on leap year days – “Look, we’re fair!!”
Well, it’ll sure be interesting. Many, if not most, guys won’t re-up because they are used to having comrades who are watching their back, not their backsides.
A few years back (ok, a lot of years) two of our crew were caught in flagrante delicto at the barracks during a duty officer’s tour.
Their ACLU lawyer maintained at their hearing that the idiots had reasonable expectation of privacy in the barracks. She also pressed that the failure of the duty officer to knock constituted unreasonable search.
Also, one of the two sailors declared that he was not a homosexual, but just experimenting (kind of like trying marijuana).
By “insinuation” you mean it’s only in your brain? It’s not at all in her story nor insinuated. It isn’t even relevant.
Actually, those terms describe the TOPIC.
You shouldn’t discourage a rich fantasy life, Aloha Guy – it’s all some people got to work with.
They’ve destroyed so many public hospitals by swamping them with illegals that now they have to take out the Catholic hospitals too? Maybe hospitals are a luxury that an “advanced” and “civilized” society just can’t afford.
If we could just separate institutions who exist to serve death panels and political death mandates (the “culture of death”) from those who exist to cure and heal, we might discover that without the subsidies from the latter, the former cannot survive. Maybe we don’t need government-mandated death services? Now there’s an idea!
I wouldn’t cite the Catholic Health Association, the CHA, as a source for Catholic-related matters. It has had a falling out with the Church over abortion. The nun who heads the CHA (I’m posting from my phone, so I can’t look up her name) is a BHO supporter who believes he doesn’t support abortion. The CHA isn’t in the good graces of the Church.
Understood-but then Conservatives are not the ones attacking our public expression of Faith-it is indeed the statist who wish us all to conform to their humanist/statist/fascist system-that we will not do. The unbeliever who neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg/attacks my right to express my faith can be my fellow American; the other is my enemy.
Today they use the courts, public opinion and such to attack us; they work for the day they can come for us in the dark of night-their history is well documented. Some claim we are seeing a Fascism with a Smiley Face–I tell you it is but a mask to hide their true intentions. William Ayeres is not an aberration of the left but very much mainstream-just a little genocide.
===
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
should be a convenience store,
NOT a government agency.
Somebody send the ACLU after Islam…
They’ve destroyed, or at least made insolvent, everything that starts with the word, “public.”
Public schools
Public safety
Public awareness
Public libraries
The only thing they haven’t destroyed with the word “public” in it, is restrooms…the low class/no class people, many of them unaccountable aliens, have made them unusable. Have you been to any California shopping malls lately, that are located in the large metropolitan areas? OMG!
The public banos in Los Cabos are cleaner (and the people are nicer!)
right_on#52,
I know what you mean by the public restrooms. The ladies room has tissue of both functions on the floor. They put trash cans for those who don’t flush, but it still is on the floor. If you don’t think disease isn’t being spread, you need to re-think!
L
All ACLU members should get a lump of coal for Christmas. (And that’s more than they deserve.)
OK, I read your link, and I don’t see what you’re getting at. What is there in the story that remotely justifies getting the ACLU or the government involved in a purely ecclesiastical concern? The hospital could still perform all the abortions it wants, but it just can’t claim association with the Catholic Church.
None of the government’s business.
The United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is not in the good graces of the Church, either.
Founded in the ’60s, the USCCB is way, way too Liberal for the rest of the Church. Especially since they were all too anxious to look the other way with pedophilia they knew was rampant. While many European priests still are ordained from monasteries, the majority of U.S. priests get degrees in Theology at American Universities prior to ordainment.
Instead of “un-Merry”, if it is just a crime against Catholic hospitals, wouldn’t it be “anti-Mary”? Heh, I love you Catholics. It’s an effective brainwashing for sure. Merry Christmas anyway.
Lighten up, ThackerAgency. There’s a special place in hell for abortion doctors, politicians, and insurance salesmen.
I would like to take this moment on Christmas Eve to tell all of the people who VOTED FOR OBAMA that I hope they get nothing of what they wanted for Christmas. I hope they get coal in their stockings, I hope all the shirts they get as gifts are two sizes too small, and I hope the Christmas turkey burns in the oven and is inedible.
Since none of you obama voters will be in Church anytime soon, I hope your cable goes out just as you start to watch the game. I hope your neighbor comes over for eggnog and confesses that he slept with your wife this entire past year.
May you car battery not start, your roof leak, and may you lose your insurance due to the effects of obamacare.
For all others, I wish you Merry Christmas!
The ACLU is a political organization it has to go the same way ACORN did.
Their politics has destroyed and shifted community morals to the federal government, the result is nation wide immorality and entitlement syndrome.
Not one taxpayer penny should ever go to the sham of private “civil rights” groups.
The Communists (ACLU in the USA) bulldozed our Churches. — Man from Ukraine.
I would bet that almost every religious-based hospital does not take ‘funding’ or orders from their church. Most are operated as non-profit entities. For example, Centura Health, the largest healthcare provider in Colorado, runs both Catholic and Adventist Hospitals. There are diverse foundations that raise money for each of those hospitals beyond what revenues the hospitals generate themselves. Their founders were religious people and their stated mission is about healing, not killing, so they keep their activities to limited to their mission statements. How could they not?
This is an obviously co-ordinated attack on religious institutions in general. As long as religious institutions are allowed their freedom of conscience we are fine, but when they aren’t, we are in trouble.
I’d like to see them revoke the Catholic status of some of these “Catholic” universities, too. Catholic institutions have no business sponsoring the showing of ‘The Vagina Monologues’, or giving honoraria to the most pro-abortion president in history.
“Screw you… it’s ‘Merry Christmas!’” – Walter (Jeff Dunham)
I understand your sentiment and would generally agree, but on this one night of the year, I wish everyone, left or right, evangelical or atheist, friend or enemy, Christian, Jew, Muslim or otherwise, PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TO MEN.
When will the brave ACLU take on “honor killings” and murder fatwas against cartoonists by psychosharist muslims? Oh that’s right… the ACLU defends those who would kill Americans or strip us of our rights and freedom. F the ACLU. Countersue them for harassment and discrimination based upon religious preference. All ACLU types are dedicated America haters who do all they can to damage this country. Anyone belonging to or donating to the ACLU should be disqualified for employment by government, never be trusted with any kind of security clearance and should not be allowed a law license. How about posting photos of ACLU members and their home addresses – just freedom of speech n’est pas?
You do know that in hell everyone will be insurance salesmen. . . that’s the punishment. If I was a good salesman with inspiration I wouldn’t be working or commenting here because I’d already have made enough money to retire and check out of this society.
This whole article is another point about how terrible society is. It’s not an attack on Catholics (that’s kind of my point). . . it’s an attack on unborn babies. Who would want to be a part of a society that even debates such an atrocity (regardless of religion)? I don’t. And I don’t have the desire to put forth the effort to attempt to persuade people that they are wrong. . . so I make myself un necessary. I create a job for myself where I become obsolete. And I do what I want and let this society do whatever it wants because it will anyway.
I am aware that this is likely some purgatory for me and I’m supposed to be learning something. . . but it is a purgatory that does have a Christmas for what it’s worth.
I encourage Christians and Catholics everywhere to defy any government regulations that advocate abortions. Disobey them and refuse to perform the abortions no matter what.
The ACLU has always been the center of proMuslim activity while simultaneously attempting to drive the Judeo-Christian tradition out of public life. In NYC, the ACLU has attempted to ban any checking of backpacks from the NYC subway and busses. Although the ACLU was not successful altogether, it did have enough clout to make the random checks useless. The ACLU did this by making sure that there could no bag checks of obviously Muslim young men, precisely the people who committed the 9/11 hijackings, the subways bombings of London, the attack on the airport in Scotland, the attacks in Madrid and Bali and Tel Aviv. Instead, the NYPD only checks elderly grandmothers when the NYPD does its random checks. A complete surrender to the ACLU. While the ACLU in NY has been busy rendering law enforcement useless, it has waged war on religious Jewish schools. The ACLU is also notorious for its dogged and emotional defense of the rights of selfstyled Nazis to trample through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors in Skokie, Illinois. Can anyone imagine the ACLU supporting the right of Jews and Christians to have a protest march in a Muslim neighborhood? Instead, the ACLU would have RICO lawsuits and would bankrupt the protestors. Actually, the ACLU has already done just that.
Merry Christmas to you and yours Michelle and Doug!
Perhaps, out of “fairness,” the government could require the ACLU to file an equal number of religious claims against mosques and other islamic groups as they have of organs of the Christian faith.
Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year to all!
Out of fairness, the ACLU should be forced to change its name and remove “American,” which has, in its own view, I’m sure, such a negative, nationalistic connotation.
Perhaps the ACLU could be sued for false advertising? They surely don’t care about CHRISTIAN civil liberties.
#57 On December 24th, 2010 at 4:08 pm, ThackerAgency said:
A rather lackluster shot at best. I doubt that many Catholics here were righteously offended. However, if it made you feel better on Christmas Eve, more power to you.
While I think this is despicable, as long as the Catholic church can allow the Kennedy’s and Pelosi and all the liberal dems to participate in services and receive communion, I have no sympathy for them. They manage to look the other way for them, so how important is abortion for the church?
Ask the ACLU why they won’t file suit against states like New York and New Jersey who actually have ” Offices of Kosher Enforcement” within their agriculture arms. Taxpayer funded too.
The ACLU is playing with dyanamite.
There is nothing to prevent these Catholic hospitals from closing house if forced to continue abortions. If the government seizes them, there is nothing they can do to mandate the doctors continue to practice at them.
But even far worse, they are heavily supported fiancially by Catholic fund raising that will dry up immediately.
The aclu is just a bunch of lawyers….they have to litigate to survive, that is where they find the sacred billable hours. Right or wrong has no meaning here. Our big government approves because no matter which way it goes some bit of Freedom will have been chipped away. I guess it is good that they are going through the motions….one of The Obama’s czars could just issue a decree. and take over all the Catholic hospitals….
As members of the ABA, they may have to litigate to survive. However, the purpose and agenda of the ACLU involves more than mere litigation.
The fact the Catholic church provides no financial support for this particular hopsital, and the revocation of the ‘Catholic’ label means only that Mass will not be preformed inside the hospital, and that they may not call themselves Catholic, is another reason why this hospital has no claim to any injury.
They have lost nothing of material/secular value, and have no standing to be involved in a lawsuit.
Sure they have. They’ve lost the ability to deceive Catholics about who they really are. There could be a real bottom line cost to that.