Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is a law firm that represents Christians whose freedom of religion has been infringed. (Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow is a Messianic Jew.) The ACLJ recently filed suit on behalf of college student Brandon Jenkins, who said a community college rejected his application to a program because of his faith.
This week the ACLJ filed suit on a pediatrician’s behalf. Dr. Doris Fernandes, a Roman Catholic, asked for a religious exemption from dispensing contraceptives, including drugs designed to induce abortions. She was allowed an exemption for over 30 years. Then Obamacare happened. An excerpt:
On those very rare occasions when a pediatrics patient would present with a request for contraception, Dr. Fernandes would simply tell the scheduling nurse, “I don’t do that.” The patient would then be reassigned to another doctor.
Beginning in early 2013, however, the City’s Department of Public Health began requiring all of its doctors – including pediatricians – to participate in promoting contraceptive use, particularly such things as the morning-after pill and long-acting contraceptives such as Depo-Provera, among the population served by the city’s public health clinics. This effort appears to have been driven in large part by the receipt by the city of grants under the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) directed at improving access to “preventive care.”
Obamacare rears its bloated head. Under the health care reform law, Fernandes was required to violate her conscience and prescribe contraceptives. She again refused, and she was fired. Her grounds for suing include civil rights violations. According to the ACLJ, a federal law called the “Church Amendment” prohibits federal grant recipients from doing what the city did to Fernandes.
With the government’s recognition of homosexual “marriage” and the Obamacare abortion coverage mandate, people of faith will have to be persistent and determined to fight these violations. We already see the homosexual lobby’s determination to force Christian business owners — people they know object to their lifestyles — to accommodate deviancy. Our faith is not a private matter relegated to the home. Whether working for ourselves or for someone else, we live our faith. It’s only going to get worse, and Christians must not cave.
