By Benjamin Mann
Chicago, Ill. (EWTN News/CNA): On June 8,
Stand Up For Religious Freedom will hold its second round of
national protests against the contraception mandate, continuing
the movement that drew tens of thousands of protesters in March.
“We're up to 154 rallies across the country now,
which is about 10 more than we had last time on the rally day,”
said Stand Up For Religious Freedom's communications director
Matt Yonke. The group is “expecting a few more (cities) to
trickle in before Friday,” when the events begin at noon local
time.
Organized in response to the
Obama administration's denial of conscience rights to religious
institutions, the first set of rallies included 28 Catholic
bishops as well as other Christian and Jewish leaders. This time
around, Yonke said, publicity and group endorsements have “only
been bigger.”
“We had 64,000 (people) last
time,” he recalled, noting the attendance tally from the first
round of coast-to-coast demonstrations that took place March 23.
“I definitely think we're going to top that.”
Under the leadership of national co-directors
Eric Scheidler and Monica Miller, Stand Up For Religious Freedom
has built a coalition that includes 96 Catholic and non-Catholic
religious and civil rights organizations.
Stand Up For Religions Freedom's first nationwide
rally took place on the anniversary of Patrick Henry's “Give Me
Liberty of Give Me Death” speech. Its upcoming event coincides
with the 223rd anniversary of James Madison's introduction of
the Bill of Rights to the first U.S. Congress.
The new wave of protests comes as the Supreme
Court prepares to rule on the 2010 health care law, under which
the contraception mandate was drafted and finalized. The mandate
requires employers to purchase plans that include coverage for
contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even
if doing so goes against their beliefs.
Soon after the June 8 protests, U.S. Catholics
will join with their bishops in a “Fortnight for Freedom”
dedicated to religious liberty.
The forthcoming Supreme Court decision, Yonke
explained, is “one of the reasons we wanted to do the rally when
we're doing it.”
That
way, he said, “(whichever) way the ruling goes, we've got people
who are engaged, and active, and ready to move on to the next
step of the fight” for the free exercise of religion.
No matter what the future of U.S. health care
brings, Yonke said Catholics and other religious believers “need
to have a significant place at the table.”
The Church has “been doing health care for
thousands of years now. And we have something to say about it.”
Yonke said the dispute over
conscience rights had intensified in recent months, as the Obama
administration “dug in its heels” and refused to reach a
mutually-acceptable agreement with critics of the contraception
mandate.
Meanwhile,
Stand Up For Religious Freedom's message has “spread farther and
wider,” building popular momentum against the federal rule.
“There are new people getting informed all the
time. And the more they get informed about it, the more they're
getting upset about it,” Yonke noted. “So the opposition is only
growing.”
Some activist groups have
accused opponents of the mandate of fighting a “war on women,”
or using the cover of religious freedom to advance a partisan
agenda. But Yonke disagreed, citing well-known allies of the
president who have broken ranks over their disagreement with the
contraception rule.
Prominent commentators and thinkers, including National Catholic
Reporter columnist Michael Sean Winters and former U.S.
ambassador to Malta Doug Kmiec, have found the mandate to be “a
bridge too far,” he pointed out.
“This is far from a partisan
effort,” said Yonke. Rather, it is simply an attempt to stop
“the government imposing itself on our faith.”
