[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 27 (Friday, February 17, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S898-S900]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, earlier today, we were treated to some very 
partisan remarks from one of my colleagues on the preventive services 
mandate. That is the legal term. Here is what the mandate is in 
practice.
  It is a mandate that will require religious individuals and 
institutions to purchase abortion-inducing drugs for their employees. 
It will require that they purchase insurance coverage that provides for 
sterilizations and the morning-after pill. In doing so, it will require 
that they violate their most

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deeply held religious beliefs, in stark contrast to the first 
amendment's guarantee of religious liberty.
  You would not know that from hearing some on the other side talk. You 
would think that opposition to this mandate was grounded in bigotry and 
a lack of concern for our fellow citizens.
  This is a serious charge--one deserving of a response. My colleague 
from California suggested earlier today that the reason Republicans are 
opposed to this mandate--and the reason tens of millions of Americans 
are opposed to this mandate--is because they are antiwoman.
  With due respect, one would be hard pressed to concoct a more 
insidious and misleading explanation of the opposition to this mandate.
  People are opposed to this mandate for one simple reason--because 
they are in favor of religious liberty. They are opposed to it because 
it is an affront to our constitutional government, to the first right 
listed in our first amendment--the right to free exercise of religion.
  We would not know that from my colleague's remarks. She did not even 
mention the Constitution--not once.
  As Members of the Senate, we take an oath to support and defend the 
Constitution. But to hear members of the administration and some 
Members of Congress talk, it is clear to me that providing abortion-
inducing drugs, sterilizations, and the morning-after pill to women is 
more important than the first amendment we are sworn to the Nation and 
our constituents to defend.
  I do not shock easily, but the cavalier attitude of the President, 
his administration, and many in Congress to this frontal assault on 
religious liberty is truly shocking.
  There was a time when both parties, liberals and conservatives, could 
come together on the matter of religious liberty--but not any longer, 
apparently.
  I think it is because for many liberals, religion and the right to 
practice it freely are not the foundation of our Nation's liberties; 
rather, they are viewed as a threat to our Nation's liberties. They do 
not understand religious people. I guess we should have seen this 
coming when the President ran for the White House in 2008, and he 
referred pejoratively to these American who cling to their Bibles.
  But the fact is, it was people who clung to their Bibles who were at 
the forefront of some of our Nation's greatest civil rights struggles 
and have been most committed to advancing the cause of personal 
liberty. They are at the forefront today serving as a solemn witness of 
the importance of religious liberty, threatening civil disobedience 
against the President's unconstitutional abortion mandate that would 
force them to violate their most cherished moral beliefs.
  Instead of treating these powerful witnesses to our founding ideals 
with the respect they deserve, they are looked at with contempt. This 
morning, one of my colleagues referred to a panel testifying about this 
assault on religious liberty as full of ``dudes.''
  Her suggestion was that the all-male composition of this panel 
somehow serves as proof that the objection to this abortion mandate is 
due to hostility to women. Give me a break. Let me tell you who these 
so called ``dudes'' were: the Roman Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, CT; 
the president of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod; the Graves 
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Union University; the director of the 
Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, and 
the chair of the Ethics Department at Southwestern Baptist Theological 
Seminary.
  These men, whom my colleague refers to as ``dudes,'' came to Congress 
to testify about the grave impact this Obamacare rule poses to 
religious freedom. My colleague from California does not mention these 
other names because they are inconvenient. She does not mention 
Margaret Brining, Mary Keys, and Nicole Garnett of the University of 
Notre Dame. She does not mention Harvard's Mary Ann Glendon or the 
University of Chicago's Jean Bethke Elshtain or Maria Garlock of 
Princeton University.
  She does not mention Helen Alvare of George Mason University or Maria 
Aguirre of the Catholic University of America. She does not mention the 
Mother Superior of the Sisters for Life.
  All of these women signed a letter, along with hundreds of other 
scholars and clergy, stating the obvious truth--that the President's 
so-called compromise is unacceptable.
  Are they all antiwomen too?
  These thoughtful citizens, scholars, and religious people deserve our 
attention not our ridicule. Here is the bottom line: Obamacare is an 
unconstitutional abomination. It is unconstitutional to its core. The 
individual mandate is obviously unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court 
will rule on that soon enough.
  But what this episode shows is that Obamacare is unconstitutional in 
its very DNA. It transfers power over one-sixth of the American economy 
to the Federal Government, and the government has proven with this 
episode that individual liberty is threatened by that transfer of 
power.
  If the administration cannot be relied on to protect even religious 
liberty, the right of persons and churches and synagogues to practice 
their faith without interference from the State, then nobody is safe. 
If they are willing to trammel on the first amendment, they are willing 
to trammel on anything. That is the story.
  The story is that earlier this week, Secretary Sebelius acknowledged 
to me and to the Finance Committee that she never consulted the Roman 
Catholic bishops before announcing the politically driven compromise 
that they would be forced to comply with.
  The story is that Secretary Sebelius admitted that she never 
requested any first amendment analysis of this rule from the Department 
of Justice. The administration has clearly decided this is a political 
loser for them, so they are trying to change the subject. They send out 
their surrogates with talking points designed to scare the public into 
thinking this fight is about contraception. It is not, and the American 
people will not be fooled. They will not be tricked into thinking that 
those who oppose this mandate are antiwoman.
  Do those who are promoting this spin think we do not have mothers, 
wives, and daughters? Do they think the women in the Senate and the 
House representing millions of more women are antiwomen? This is beyond 
absurd, and the American people will not be duped.
  They know this rule exists because the administration is beholden to 
the pro-abortion lobby. And I can tell you, there is one group that the 
modern Democratic Party will never cross, never. They will never cross 
the abortion lobby. So it is no surprise that the Nation's largest 
abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, came out in support of the so-
called compromise.
  The Catholic Church and millions of Americans, however, responded 
that this is unacceptable. I agree with their assessment. The so-called 
compromise is nothing of the sort. But as bad as this mandate is, keep 
in mind it is only the beginning. It is only the first step in a fresh 
assault on the constitutional liberties of the American people. Believe 
me, the tragedy of Obamacare is only beginning.
  The other day, former Speaker Pelosi suggested that even the Roman 
Catholic Church itself should have to provide abortion-inducing drugs 
to their employees. Catholic bishops would be forced, in her regime, to 
subsidize practices that the Church finds morally abhorrent. That is 
where this is going. The administration might feel cowed into providing 
a weak exception to their rule for religious institutions right now, 
but in the long run we know where they want to go. And the resulting 
loss of liberty would be bad for men and women alike.
  Our Constitution protects all of us. By undermining religious 
liberty, this administration goes down a very dangerous path. In so 
doing, the officers responsible for this decision, if they knew of the 
serious constitutional issues and still went ahead with this action for 
political reasons, violated their oath to uphold the Constitution.
  The Congress and the American people are going to hold them 
accountable. The President and his reelection campaign would prefer 
that this just go away. Hence, the admonition from the mainstream media 
that we stop talking about this issue.
  Well, I, for one, am not going to stop talking about it, and I am not 
going away. I am just getting warmed up. We have seen major countries 
slip down

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the road toward totalitarianism because they did not stand up for 
religious liberty. This is not a question about contraception. This is 
a question about religious liberty and where we are going to stand.
  The fact is, once we start down the road of denying the individual 
rights of personal conscience and religious freedom, and begin to tell 
churches and synagogues what they must believe, we are on the way to 
losing the freedoms all of us hold dear.

  Religious freedom is the first freedom mentioned in the Bill of 
Rights. This is important stuff. I am not Catholic. But I would fight 
to my death for the Catholic people to be able to live their faith. My 
own faith feels the same way about many of these issues. No church or 
person should be forced to make abortion-inducing drugs accessible, as 
the President's mandate will require them to do.
  I do not think any compromise has been suggested so far that would 
meet the high bar set by our Constitution. There is only one option for 
the President on this issue. He needs to rescind this unlawful 
regulation. There is no middle ground. When it comes to the first 
amendment right to religious liberty, there can be no compromise.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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