RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN CT ATTACKED…AND DEFENDED
April 3rd, 2006 by Peter
Democrats in the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee last week launched a sneak attack on religious institutions by inserting a measure into the budget that would withhold millions of dollars from hospitals that refuse to provide chemical abortions. Reactions have rightly been fast and furious:
“This is war,” declared the state Senate’s top GOP leader, Sen. Louis C. DeLuca of Woodbury. “It’s a shameless assault on Catholic hospitals and the Catholic religion.”
Republican Gov. M. Jodi Rell condemned the Democrats’ attempt to use the budget to push through a controversial non-fiscal policy “a slap in the face to the process of the General Assembly.”
“We’ve never done that before,” insisted Rell.
State House Minority Leader Robert M. Ward, R-North Branford, labeled the Democratic maneuver “a total misuse of the legislative process.”
“Frankly, I think it shows an anti-Catholic bias to do it in this way,” said Ward…
“I was not pleased to see that resurrected,” [Speaker of the House Rep. James] Amann said Friday. “It was never run by me … It should not have happened.”
Amann said he plans to talk with the House chair of the appropriations committee, state Rep. Denise Merrill, D-Mansfield, to ask, “How did this happen, why did this happen.”
“This should have been a budget debate, not a debate about contraception …not a debate about abortion issues,” said Amann…
Ward said he’s seen a “distinct move among a new group of (General Assembly) Democratic leaders… to follow the federal method of doing things in a sort of partisan and sneaky manner.”
More from the Republican-American:
DeLuca vowed to fight to remove the Democratic provision from final budget. He also said the debate kindled a spiritual reawakening in himself.
“I have been a Catholic all my life, and I probably have not been one of those rah-rah Catholics. My wife is very religious. I haven’t been, but this has reaffirmed my faith, and made me stronger in my faith, because I’ll be damned if I am going to stand here and allow those people to brush this aside as if the Catholic Church is inconsequential, whatever they believe in is not important,” DeLuca said.
Under these circumstances, Rep. Merrill’s proclamation that Catholic hospitals are not a target sounds hollow.
Finally, Rep. Merrill needs to be aware she is jousting with the First Amendment, which provides for the “free exercise” of religion. The Catholic stand on abortion is centuries old and well known. The preservation of life in the womb is a major point of church dogma that she evidently wants to circumscribe with a tricky mandate.
If the Catholic hospitals mount a court challenge to this attempt to force them to dispense Plan B, how do Rep. Merrill and her Appropriations Committee colleagues expect to deny that the provision is nothing but government intrusion in the free exercise of religion?
Defenders of religious freedom rallied in front of the state’s four Catholic hospitals yesterday:
WATERBURY — More than 100 abortion opponents gathered in front of Saint Mary’s Hospital on Sunday afternoon to protest Democratic legislators’ inclusion of an emergency contraception clause in the state budget…
Republican Alderman Dennis Odle attended the Saint Mary’s rally and denounced the legislators for including the section in the budget.
“The cause is important, but how this happened is also important,” Odle said. “It was an under-the-table, unethical, dirty ploy that shouldn’t happen in any party, anywhere.
FIC has said all along that the pro-abortion attack on religious hospitals is just one of a number of attacks on religious freedom in Connecticut to occur just in the last few months. Now, in addition to the renewed attack on the hospitals, there is the potential for another front in the war on faith in Connecticut: the confirmation of Peter Zarella as Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court. We hope that will not be the case, but we do note these items buried in an article on why the nominee “rattles some:”
Paindiris said Zarella has a strong Catholic and family background. “That’s part of what makes him conservative,” he noted. “Because of his strong character, he’s going to convince people to go his way.”…
[Zarella] also joined Sullivan, another devout Catholic, in dissenting in a ruling that paves the way for public access to reams of files in the mammoth Bridgeport diocese sex scandal case.
Will Justice Zarella’s Catholicism be a point of contention in his confirmation hearings? Watch this space and your in-boxes for information on what you can do to counter the current attacks on religious freedom. Should new attacks appear, we will be responding to those as well.
