Starting today, and for the next thirty days, the Department of Health and Human Services will be "accepting comments from the public on a proposal by the Obama administration to completely rescind federal regulations placed into effect by former President Bush that protect the right to conscience for healthcare workers….The regulation mandated federally funded health institutions to certify their compliance with existing federal laws that uphold the rights of doctors and nurses to refuse a medical service on religious or moral grounds."(Obama Publishes Proposal to Rescind 'Conscience' Rule) With this and several other decisions (repeal of the so-called Mexico City Policy; an executive order allowing Federal funds to be used to support research involving the destruction of the embryonic form of human life; the nomination of a rabid pro-abortion extremist as Secretary of HHS) Obama implicates the whole people of the United States in his own pitiless promotion of abortion at any cost. The only thing so far lacking is an effort to repeal or supercede the law that prevents implementation in Federal Hospitals of his depraved support for infanticide in cases where a baby is born alive in consequence of a failed abortion. Catholics and other professing Christians should take note. Except they repent of it, those who voted for Barrack Obama surely face grim judgment from the Supreme judge of the World for their enlistment in the electoral army of this paragon of evil. But even before such judgment in the next life, in this life we will all have to suffer the grim consequences of his abandonment of respect for the unalienable rights to life and liberty.
The reaction to Obama's policies has rightly focused on the relentless implementation of his morbidly pro-abortion views. Though morally repugnant, his consistent support for these views throughout his relatively brief political career prevents sincere surprise from anyone even superficially acquainted with it (unless they are Republicans who expected Obama to imitate the deceitful practices of all too many Republican politicos who are pro-life on the stump and AWOL in the clinches.) Given the hoopla surrounding the false claim that his election represents a breakthrough for black Americans, however, what should be profoundly shocking is his willingness to be the focus and tool of an historic effort to reintroduce the worst aspects of human slavery into the United States, this time extended beyond an oppressed portion of the population to encompass people regardless of race or pigmentation.
In my previous post, I alluded to "the moral degradation that Frederick Douglass and others held to be the greatest misery of my slave ancestors." These words bring to my mind the deep humiliation of married women and mothers, forced to act as concubines to serve the lusts of their so-called masters. It brings to mind husbands and brothers forced to tolerate this degradation of their loved ones, or be subjected to the lash for fighting against it as God and conscience required of them. It brings to mind other enslaved people forced to inflict such punishment upon their fellows; or to give unwilling service to those who did so, even including forced labor to build the scaffolds from which apprehended rebels against slavery and degradation were hung by the neck to edify and terrorize anyone tempted to imitate their courage. Slavery to my mind has never meant only the spectacle of bodies bent to hard labor in the fields, for free men and women also must toil. That is the lot of all humanity. Rather it means the searing contemplation of souls tortured by burning anger and indignation against injustice, which they are helpless to act upon; of consciences racked by the defiling knowledge of their complicity with the very evil that abuses them, and shamed by the fear that deters them from rejecting it, until in all too many ways the habit of submission finally stupefies and deadens the pangs. It is the thought of anguished prayers raised up to the almighty God, that He would deliver them from their humiliating servitude to evil, until it seems the strength of faith gives out, and prayers are tempted to cynicism and despair.
This is the essence of that slavery, which the Obama faction now means to impose upon all our health care workers. Because some people wish to do and benefit from evil, others must become its tools and instruments, against their will. Because some wish to escape responsibility for the nascent life invoked by their cries of sexual ecstasy, others must accept complicity in the murders that carry out their will. At the very least the people who embrace this foul cult of human child sacrifice should have to do the dirty work themselves. But when has evil been content to wallow in its own excrement? The very pride that impels it to defy the boundaries of decent conscience rouses its resentment against those who, by standing apart from its rituals announce their condemnation of its crimes. As it was with slavery, so it is now. Evil does not accept a house divided, but will "press forward" until "It will become all one thing, or all the other."
What the Obama faction proposes to do now, without warrant in law, implements what by law it wishes, but does not yet have the legislative strength to do: secure passage of the deceitfully misnamed Freedom of Choice Act. Because both the proposed regulatory action and the FOCA deal mainly with abortion, people mistakenly think that what is at stake is just the controversy over abortion. But it must be increasingly evident to all but the most stubbornly blind among us that government control of the banks and the health care system is only the first stage in the imposition of complete government control of every aspect of our economic lives. In service to this aim, the Obama faction moves to bankrupt the nation, so that none will have the wherewithal and will to resist their coup d'état. Today they move to make all health care workers slaves in conscience to the state. Soon and very soon, this shall be the fate of us all. Our soldiers and police are being trained and will be required to move against the right to keep and bear arms, born of our unalienable right to preserve and defend the innocent lives of others. Our pastors, rabbis and other religious leaders will be required to surrender the right to live according to their beliefs whenever their free exercise of religion runs counter to the demands of "gay pride", the selfish-esteem of homosexuals; or the anti-religious bigotry of atheists who cannot bear to hear the prayers of others. Parents will be required, without exception to surrender their children for indoctrination by the state. Scientists and technical people will be required to lend their knowledge and expertise to refine and operate the instruments of surveillance that utterly destroy all privacy, and the instruments of mollification (chemical and otherwise) that utterly subvert the will. And so on.
With every extension of state control will come a new sacrifice of conscience, of decency and goodwill. And like my enslaved ancestors, many of us will raise up anguished prayers to almighty God, to deliver us from our humiliating servitude to evil, until perhaps the strength of faith gives out and we are tempted into cynicism and despair. Was it for this so many fought and died? Was it for this, they were planted as seeds of freedom? So that we could harvest the gut wrenching bile of moral subjection, and face the galling prospect that our children or our children's children will not remember enough of freedom to be dissatisfied? Too bad we have so little patience for the best flowers of our thought and language or it might occur to us, at least in spirit and will, to "take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing, end them." But we seem now to lack more than words. We lack spirit, and will and courage. Else in the next thirty days not just pro-lifers, but everyone who cares a whit for conscience and true liberty would direct a tidal wave of comments toward the bureaucrats at HHS, defending the health care workers' rights of conscience in the hope that we will thus safeguard our own. Visit www.regulations.gov, to look for a way to do just that.
Worth considering? Then don't forget to DIGG IT!!!!
3 comments:
The comparison, between the laws requiring return of escaped slaves, and the proposed rule requiring the abetting of abortion, is apt. The tale of how a privacy right was claimed to trump the right to life is sad enough, but requiring the participation of others in that so-called privacy is smack-dab in the realm of evil and I'm heartened that you're pointing this out. The states which seceded after President Lincoln was elected did not care a whit whether the states that stayed in the US eventually banned slavery or not. By that benchmark, today's abortion industry seems much worse.
I am particularly impressed with the clarification that the evil of slavery is not in the servitude itself, "for free men and women also must toil", but in the implicit requirement that slave-masters have absolute power over their fellow humanity.
Lord Acton's famous quote springs to mind when we are confronted with the brutal reality underpinning the practice of concepts like "slavery" or "abortion". We are reminded that it is not a matter of risk that a person given such power might use it badly, but that any use of such power is itself the darkest evil. Even God will not stoop to compulsion, despite His authority over all creation. For to violate His children's spirit in such a fashion would turn Him from our Father and God into nothing but another tyrant.
My own position on abortion is that we should seek to eradicate every hint of state support and shelter for the practice in law. Further than that we must rely on moral suasion, rather than law, because in the modern era such laws are becoming inherently unenforceable. We may be able to revoke the medical credentials of abortionists, but modern abortion requires little medical training. We must eliminate the legal protections afforded molesters who detain children and coerce them into undergoing such a procedure, but the law is too crude an instrument to use in encouraging those children to seek the help they really need.
But while I may be called pro-choice by some, let us not forget that our true enemy is not "choice" or even murder, but the evil of absolute tyranny which relies on the entire destruction of freedom.
The following is a link to the comment page Mr. Keyes referenced:
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=090000648090229f
The following is a link to instructions for submitting comments in other mediums:
http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=DocumentDetail&o=090000648090229f
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