“Moral and economic injustice”

By Tom Quiner

It had been a year since I saw her.

This young lady just completed her first year of college. She was excited to tell me about her reactions to Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.

She obviously loves it there. I soaked up her enthusiasm, as I have read of bundle of books written by various faculty members from Steubenville.

This is a very Catholic university.

Today I learned that their students have become the latest victims of Obamacare. Franciscan University has been forced to drop the health plan for their students because of it.

Let me be more specific: they have been forced to drop it because of Barack Obama.

Mr. Obama’s HHS edict forces Catholic institution, such as Steubenville, to provide contraception in its health plans for students. Up to now, they haven’t done so because it would be a violation of Catholic religious beliefs. As a spokesperson for the university said, it:

“requires us to violate the consistent teachings of the Catholic Church on the sacredness of human life.”

This is obviously not a big deal to the president and his party whose beliefs “evolve” on a daily basis.

It’s a huge deal to Catholics whose beliefs are consistent, timeless, and immutable.

There’s another problem. Obamacare forces the university to up the maximum coverage per student to $100,000. Guess what? When you up the coverage and add in other mandates, the price goes up. How much? For Steubenville students, it would double the first year and triple the second.

This is called a double whammy.

The university is forced to drop coverage for moral and economic reasons. Says the school’s vice president of advancement, Mike Hernon:

“This is putting people in a position where they are having to choose between their faith and their morality, and now an unjust cost. These sorts of regulations from the government are forcing our hand in a way that’s really wrong. This is unconscionable, a moral and economic injustice.”

This didn’t have to happen. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act never said faith-based institutions would have to violate their religious beliefs to comply with the law. It would never have passed had we known this was in it.

Barack Obama chose to insert it. He forced the issue.

Another classic example of the ongoing “evolving” of a president who, it has become clear, is virulently anti-Christian, generally speaking, and anti-Catholic specifically speaking.