Obama is bullying nuns

Editor's note: Chuck Norris' weekly political column debuts each Monday in WND and is then syndicated by Creators News Service for publication elsewhere. His column in WND often runs hundreds of words longer than the subsequent release to other media.

PolitiFact has crowned the promoter-in-chief's sound bite for Obamacare "The Lie of the Year for 2013": "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it." And let me make a prediction that among his top 10 falsehood contenders for 2014 will be a reversal of what he emphatically stated back on Sept. 9, 2009, when he first came into office: "Under our [health-care reform] plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

Indeed, just a few months later, he reiterated to ABC News, "I laid out a very simple principle, which is, this is a health-care bill, not an abortion bill. And we're not looking to change what is the principle that has been in place for a very long time, which is federal dollars are not used to subsidize abortions. And I want to make sure that the provision that emerges meets that test – that we are not in some way sneaking in funding for abortions …"

"Sneaking in funding for abortions," this administration?

Of course, we didn't have to wait a year before we discovered that federal funds were, in fact, being funneled to provide for abortive services in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

Then the House and Senate on secret Sunday sessions passed an omnibus bill and its provision that also overturned the 1988 Dornan Amendment, which prevented taxpayer dollars from being used to fund abortions in Washington, D.C. (Tragically, that omnibus bill also appropriated $648.5 million for international family planning funding – an increase of $103 million over 2009 – and contained funding for Planned Parenthood and for the United Nations Population Fund, both of which have pro-abortion agendas.)

Of course, there have been many other underhanded pro-abortion moves by Obama's administration since then, right down to the present. In fact, just a week ago, National Right to Life News Today reported what Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., explained is abortion's rapid growth and funding in and through Obamacare:

"At its core, the Hyde Amendment has two parts. It prohibits funding for abortion and funding for any insurance plan that includes abortion except in the case of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. Yet, many Americans woke up to the launch of the Obamacare exchanges only to discover that they had been misled and deceived.

Rollout of the Obamacare exchanges reveals that many health insurance plans will subsidize abortion-on-demand. For example, the preliminary data suggests that every insurance plan on the Connecticut health care exchanges will pay for abortion-on-demand. In the most recent example, we learned that 103 of the 112 insurance plans for members of Congress and congressional staff include elective abortion coverage. Only nine plans offered exclude elective abortion. (Click here to view flyer regarding the nine plans.)

It is clear that there are numerous Obamacare plans that include elective abortion and billions of taxpayers' dollars will now be handed out as credits to buy abortion-covering health insurance – a clear violation of the Hyde Amendment's fundamental principle of restricting funds to abortion-subsidizing health insurance plans.

If Obamacare encompasses the full funding of abortions, Obama knows that he and his cronies must first remove all the stops that prohibit federal funding for the termination of life in the womb. Legislation is one giant obstacle but anti-abortion advocates are quite another.

Legislatively, the Dornan Amendment in Washington, D.C., was their start. And they will continue to chip away at the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the same through Labor, Health and Human Services like Medicaid.

Obama knows if his pro-abortion agenda is to win the war on the womb, his administration must oppose the greatest of anti-abortion advocates, and chief among those warriors is the Catholic Church. You know they're not dumb enough to confront papal power overtly – yet, but that doesn't stop them from chipping away at the anti-abortion wall by putting nuns and Catholic contraception views and values in their crosshairs.

On New Year's Eve, just one day before Obamacare's mandate forced nonprofit companies and other religious-affiliated institutions across the country to provide contraception and possible abortion-inducing drugs in their employee health-care plans, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor blocked the requirement against a care facility for the elderly run by Catholic nuns, who appealed to the High Court for help.

As NPR explained, "Churches and other houses of worship are exempt from the birth control requirement, but affiliated institutions that serve the general public are not. That includes charitable organizations, universities and hospitals."

In response to the nuns' appeal, the Department of Justice placed the Little Sisters of the Poor in an ethical dilemma in which they must violate their faith or pay fines. The DOJ argued in legal papers filed last Friday that the nuns don't have a leg to stand on. The Obama administration tried to explain that they don't have to offer contraception and possible abortion-inducing drugs as long as they sign a government form that delegates the action to a third party. Without signing that "self-certification" form, the nuns would incur steep government fines.

But Mark Rienzi, who is senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, responded on behalf of the nuns to the DOJ's argument by retorting that government officials "are simply blind to the religious exercise at issue: The Little Sisters and other applicants cannot execute the form because they cannot deputize a third party to sin on their behalf."

It is not known when Justice Sotomayor will rule on these ludicrous government actions and violations of the nuns' personal religious liberty and practice. But one thing we do know is that America's founders are rolling in their graves right now regarding the government's obliteration of the nuns' and our First Amendment religious rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …"

And where is President Obama – the so-called constitutional lawyer living in our White House – during the whole debate? Coming out of the closet to protect the nuns' Bill of Rights like he has a number of progressive minorities? No. He's hiding behind the curtains in the Oval Office, manipulating his minions to follow his pro-abortion biddings.

What an utter constitutional and leadership travesty it is that Obamacare's promoter-in-chief is repeatedly breaking yet another promise: "Under our [health-care reform] plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions."

If our president won't honor life in the womb, please write or call your representatives to let them know where you stand. Read and hand out my friend, Randy Alcorn's booklet, "Why Pro-Life?" And then ensure your local community of faith is honoring Sanctity of Life Sunday on Jan. 20, 2014. The day commemorates 41 years since the Jan. 22, 1973 Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court that legalized abortion in our country. Since then, more than 55 million abortions have taken place in the U.S.

(I will follow up in Part 2 next week on Sotomayor's next action and where this case goes.)