War on people of faith evident with new attacks on religious health care groups
The war against pro-life people of faith is perhaps most evident in health care. Many and frequent attacks from the Biden administration and the far Left have made life-affirming health care an increasingly difficult commodity to provide or access.
Recently Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) threatened to strip St. Francis Health System – a Catholic hospital system in Oklahoma which happens to be one of the largest in the country – of its federal funding for refusing to blow out a sanctuary candle in its hospital chapel.
Those familiar with Catholic Church teachings were rightfully outraged by this pathetic stunt, and attempt to drive faith from health care. Catholic teachings require that all churches or chapels have sanctuary candles continuously lit by the altar to represent the real and comforting presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
The federal government seized on this practice as an opportunity to decree that St. Francis must extinguish the sanctuary candle which they claim poses a "safety threat," even though the candle in question had been repeatedly approved by the local fire marshal and government. St. Francis Health System, which Biden’s HHS threatened to effectively shut down, accounts for about 11,000 jobs and cares for more than 400,000 patients in Oklahoma.
Only after public outcry did the administration walk back its threat. Such targeting of St. Francis over a candle seems ridiculous until one confronts the reality that it’s not about the safety of the candle at all – rather, it is the continuation of years of injecting politics into health care, and years of discrimination against any faith-based health care workers who dare to get in the way.
In fact, HHS under the Biden administration appears hellbent on completely eradicating faith-based providers and workers from the health care field.
There’s HHS’s discrimination against people of faith in the health care field through new rules and regulations that nullify religious and conscience exemptions, forcing conscience-objecting doctors, nurses and other medical professionals to perform abortions, gender transition surgeries, and other types of "gender affirming care." This move continued the HHS’s long perverse history of using mandates to force conscience-objecting medical professionals to perform gender-transition procedures on their patients, including children.
Similarly, the HHS spent years persecuting the Little Sisters of the Poor, Catholic nuns whose entire existence is dedicated to showering love and support on the elderly poor in their final days, for refusing to violate Church teachings and provide things like abortifacients in their health insurance plan. HHS forced these good nuns to divert their limited resources to seven years of litigation just so they could continue serving the elderly poor without violating their consciences.
Thankfully, the Little Sisters eventually won their case at the Supreme Court. But the Biden administration is - to this day - attempting to force employers with moral objections similar to the Little Sisters.
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Aiding the administration in their persecution of those who seek life-affirming health care are woke bureaucratic professional organizations like the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. It recently told the over 7,000 doctors and medical professionals in the American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYN's they were not welcome at a major medical conference purely on account of their commitment to life-affirming health care.
And the board certifying body for OB-GYNs has attempted to silence pro-life physicians if they voice their views that abortion is not health care, threatening to revoke their certification for spreading "misinformation and disinformation." At a time when our nation is experiencing a major shortage of medical professionals, such discrimination is not only unacceptable – it's dangerous.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration and far-Left have shown repeatedly that they do not care, and that they're unafraid to politicize health care at the expense of American's health and safety. They have demonstrated they will use every weapon at their disposal to wage war on life-affirming health care until it has been eradicated from the entire health care system.
The first step toward combating these attacks on life-affirming health care is being aware that they are real and are going to continue. But we can’t stop there. Pro-life people of faith who wish to practice and access life-affirming health care must speak up and stand together refusing, like the Little Sisters, to participate.
That’s one big reason why health sharing ministries like Solidarity HealthShare exist – to provide a concrete way for pro-life Americans to say no to the culture of death and yes to a culture of life. And it is why a growing number of Catholics and people of faith are turning to us as an ethical and more comprehensive way of accessing health care.
