Freedom And Conscience Calling

The USCCB has been aggressively encouraging all people of faith to speak out to defend conscience rights in health care. You only have until Thursday, April 9, 2009 to make your voice heard by the Department of Health and Human Services as they consider whether to rescind the conscience protection laws currently in place. Repealing these protections will hit Catholic health care workers particularly hard.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is inviting public comment on a proposal to rescind an important federal regulation issued in December. The regulation implements and enforces three federal laws protecting the conscience rights of health care providers, especially those at risk of being discriminated against because of their moral or religious objection to abortion.

The Catholic community must speak out to protect Catholic doctors, nurses and hospitals.

Our church had a petition signing drive outside of Mass today, so if you can't or don't want to post your comments publicly the good old paper method works just as well. They had us sign it in triplicate (for some unknown bureaucratic reason), but I'd sign it nine times if I thought it would help. I joked that the triplicate was so the Gestapo could find you later; I was joking -- mostly.

Not to sound too alarmist, but this is one of those watershed moments. Speak out before you're told what you can think.