Dear Senators Brown and Kerry,
Dear Senator,
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, S. 2043, is a blatant attack on health care. I urge you to staunchly oppose this bill. I understand that birth control is a complicated issue for you both personally and professionally. I understand that you must weigh both the views of your constituents, and your own, personal spiritual beliefs.
I cannot speak for the latter, but as a constituent let me be perfectly clear about this:
The US government does not have any place protecting the views of any one religion over the individual freedoms of all women. You may debate whether you believe the government can or should mandate health care at all, but within the context and framework that we in Massachusetts especially, and we in the US in general have established, the government has a vested interest and obligation to protect employees and ensure they have proper renumeration and support in access to basic health care. Debate the question of health-care access as a whole separately. As long as we do have government regulations regarding health-care access, however, those regulations must not favor one religion or spiritual belief system over another.
You may or may not, personally, believe that a woman should have access to birth control or abortion services. Will all due respect, Senator, this is not your place. You do not have a uterus. There are no bills being debated that discuss my personal and spiritual views toward your prostates. If reproductive health services are outside of a person's religious believes than that individual will make appropriate choices regarding such care.
In as long as the government has ANY legislation regarding access to health care, it is absolutely inappropriate for the religious views of persons other than the receiver of that care to be considered. Employers do not get to decide if their taxes should support foreign wars. They do not get to decide if their health care provides services to which they are personally opposed.
This is not an appropriate place for your own, or for an employer's own feelings or convictions. It would only ever become an issue is an employer held one set of religious beliefs and the employee held an alternate one. In that case it is not up to the employer or Congress to over-step their bounds into the actions of the individuals.
I strongly urge you to reject the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, S. 2043.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, S. 2043, is a blatant attack on health care. I urge you to staunchly oppose this bill. I understand that birth control is a complicated issue for you both personally and professionally. I understand that you must weigh both the views of your constituents, and your own, personal spiritual beliefs.
I cannot speak for the latter, but as a constituent let me be perfectly clear about this:
The US government does not have any place protecting the views of any one religion over the individual freedoms of all women. You may debate whether you believe the government can or should mandate health care at all, but within the context and framework that we in Massachusetts especially, and we in the US in general have established, the government has a vested interest and obligation to protect employees and ensure they have proper renumeration and support in access to basic health care. Debate the question of health-care access as a whole separately. As long as we do have government regulations regarding health-care access, however, those regulations must not favor one religion or spiritual belief system over another.
You may or may not, personally, believe that a woman should have access to birth control or abortion services. Will all due respect, Senator, this is not your place. You do not have a uterus. There are no bills being debated that discuss my personal and spiritual views toward your prostates. If reproductive health services are outside of a person's religious believes than that individual will make appropriate choices regarding such care.
In as long as the government has ANY legislation regarding access to health care, it is absolutely inappropriate for the religious views of persons other than the receiver of that care to be considered. Employers do not get to decide if their taxes should support foreign wars. They do not get to decide if their health care provides services to which they are personally opposed.
This is not an appropriate place for your own, or for an employer's own feelings or convictions. It would only ever become an issue is an employer held one set of religious beliefs and the employee held an alternate one. In that case it is not up to the employer or Congress to over-step their bounds into the actions of the individuals.
I strongly urge you to reject the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, S. 2043.
Thank you for your time and consideration.