Recently the Obama administration through the Affordable Healthcare Act, has ruled that birth control must be made available through all health insurance plans with no co-payment and with no exceptions. This has brought about a lot of blowback from the Roman Catholic and Roman Catholic sympathizing communities. They feel that not excluding the health insurance contracts that they provide for the church and church-related institutions is an infringement on their first amendment rights regarding separation of church and state.

This argument would make sense to me, if they only employed people of the Roman Catholic faith. However, it seems to me that as soon as they open employment to people of any and all faiths, that they cannot claim the right to be excluded from the government's mandate. For in doing so, the government would be trampling on the religious rights of the employees who are not Roman Catholic.

I wouldn't put it past our Supreme Court though to rule in the church's favor. They seem to not be able to distinguish between people and institutions and they would seem to have no problem making the Roman Catholic Church into a person with religious rights. The constitution says that the government shall make no law regarding religion. In this case, the Obama ruling does nothing to force Roman Catholics to use birth control. Those Roman Catholics with health insurance are free to not use this benefit. Thus the only people who's rights are being trampled are those who are not Roman Catholic, if the church gets an exclusion to the rule.

John Stopple

Kirkwood