Register Radio: HHS Mandate and March for Life

Becket Fund's Kyle Duncan and Register editor Tom Wehner

You shouldn’t miss this week’s “Register Radio.”

In the first half, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s senior counsel, Kyle Duncan outlined the recent Health and Human Service’s mandate that will force religious organizations to not only provide contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization, but also counseling for such services. Duncan explained how the mandate will impact Christian hospitals, charities, and universities. In a recent article for the National Catholic Register, Duncan described the mandate as an “inversion of the Good Samaritan.” The only exception, Duncan described, would be for those organizations that hire and serve only people of their own faith, and organizations that serve only a religious purpose, not a humanitarian one. Quoting Washington Post writer Michael Gerson, he said the decision ‘is the most transparently anti-Catholic maneuver by the federal government since the Blaine Amendment was proposed in 1875 — a measure designed to diminish public tolerance of Romanism, then regarded as foreign, authoritarian and illiberal.’

To learn more about the decision and what Christians can do to oppose it, listen to the show.

In our second half, National Catholic Register editor Tom Wehner and Register Radio co-host Thom Price discussed secular media coverage, or the lack thereof, of the March for Life as well as the start-to-finish coverage provided by EWTN and the National Catholic Register. In addition to the lack of coverage, they also addressed the media’s clearly biased coverage in reporting on and picturing the small number of pro-abortion supporters on the sidelines, while disregarding the between 400,000-500,000 pro-life demonstrators participating in the March. One admission of failure in coverage that was discussed was by the Washington Post’s ombudsman Patrick Pexton.

You can hear Register Radio live on any of EWTN’s affiliates at 2:00 p.m. EASTERN on Friday, or the re-broadcasts on Saturday at 7:00 a.m. EASTERN or Sunday at 11:00 a.m. EASTERN, or you can listen to it at the Register Radio web page, or EWTN’s podcast of the show.