Outrage at President Obama’s mandate that religious institutions provide health care dominated the first day of CPAC 2012, as Republican policiticians lambasted the decision and activists prayed for its reversal.
“When religious and First Amendment rights are under attack, we ask you to give us the courage to defend the concept of freedom,” was one petition in the invocation before the dinner and this evening, in an allusion to the Health and Human Services mandate that private insurance policies — even those paid for by religious-affiliated institutions — pay for contraception.
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., made a similar remark when he took to the podium for his keynote speech this evening, as he said the federal government thinks it can “invent a new right [to contraception] that trumps our constitutional right to faith and freedm.”
Former Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry, R-Texas, put the issue more bluntly earlier in the day. “The Obama administrations war on faith must be defeated,” he said after mentioning the HHS mandate. “We must win this war.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argues that the mandate that religious institutions buy contraception is not a violation of religious liberty, but a way to prevent discrimination on the basis of religion. “Anti-choice forces around the country are yelling from the rooftops about religious freedom,” wrote Laura Murphy, the ACLU’s director of the Washington Legislative office, in an email urging supporters to tell their congressional representatives to support the mandate . “But what they actually mean is the use of religion to discriminate and deny millions of women access to birth control [original emphasis].” She added that opponents of the mandate for “us[ing] religion to discriminate against women.
