SPRINGFIELD – Here's a list of questions Iowa social conservatives want answered before they decide who will get their votes in the upcoming caucuses. Illinois social conservatives should be asking these same questions of their primary candidates.
Each presidential candidate still standing in the Republican and Democratic primaries should be repeatedly asked these questions over the next few weeks:
- Twice in the last three years the Supreme Court of the United States narrowly resuscitated the Affordable Care Act, first by reinterpreting its individual mandate as a tax and second by making premium tax credits available even in states that decided not to set up their own insurance exchanges. The ACA has also impinged on the conscience rights of religious organizations, forcing even the Little Sisters of the Poor to fight all the way to the Supreme Court for their right not to furnish their employees with drugs and devices that violate the Sisters’ faith. How will your decisions and actions about the ACA help the Sisters and all Americans protect their rights of conscience?
- Aggressive bureaucrats in California are compelling all employers, including Christian churches like Calvary Chapel and Catholic universities like Santa Clara, to provide elective abortions in their health care plans. This is a nightmare situation that even the ACA did not impose on similar employers. Will you lend your strong support for the swift enactment of the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act to help remedy this problem? In the meantime, will you instruct your Department of Health and Human Services to enforce already existing law and prosecute conscience-violation complaints it has already received in situations like these?
- The Democratic candidates for president this cycle are committed to protecting legal abortion until birth, and their judicial appointments will undoubtedly rely on a litmus test to keep this commitment. Among the Republican candidates, only a few have commented on what their federal judicial appointments will look like, and one — Donald Trump — has mused that a family member of his would make a great pick, even though she signed an opinion striking down a ban on partial-birth abortion. Will you commit to ensuring your judicial nominees preserve the ability of the American people to protect human life in the womb and to remain self-governing on other issues of social policy?
- Will your nominees to lead the crucial Departments of State, Justice, and Health and Human Services likewise bear a commitment to the sanctity of human life and to the constitutional principles so frequently betrayed by court decisions over the past generation?
- The People’s Republic of China recently changed its “one-child” population policy to a “two-child” policy. The new boss is the same as the old boss: state determination of family size, ruthlessly enforced. Will your administration actively oppose this profound human rights violation in every available forum and ensure that U.S. aid decisions never reinforce its application against the Chinese people?
From Friday's Des Moines Register's op-ed written by Chuck Donovan and Jenifer Bowen.
