Your Tax Dollars

By Father John Catoir JCD

The First Amendment right to religious freedom is sacred, and must be upheld. In the same First Amendment, the right to express a grievance against any violation of religious freedom, is also guaranteed.

We believe in the dignity of every human life. Why have we been forced to pay our hard-earned tax dollars to the government, when they use it to finance millions of abortions?

Down through the years, Planned Parenthood has received about $500 Million a year in taxpayer dollars. To be exact, they received $528 Million last year, according to their own annual report. In 2013, their CEO admitted to receiving an annual compensation of $590,928, and that figure has been going up each year.

In one year, the period between 2013-2014, Planned Parenthood’s annual report indicated that they killed 327,653 preborn infants. We find even one abortion to be morally abhorrent. How long can this go on?

In a recent column, I wrote about the success of the joint challenge of the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Texas Baptist University and five other litigants, who challenged the Constitutionality of the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. It is officially called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It was passed by the 111th U.S. Congress, and signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010.

However, Obamacare soon became unaffordable, and failed to protect most of the people it was designed to help. An opposition movement soon became a hot political issue. The Conservative Tea Party held its first “March on Washington” in 2009. The policy of forcing citizens to finance abortions with their taxes dollars was a big concern.

The movement was made up largely of women, who tried to bring attention to the disconnect between Congress and the voice of the people. The 2016 election was a referendum on this disconnect.

Our peaceful electoral process was mild compared to the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when a band of colonists, under the leadership of Sam Adam and his raiders, came out at midnight disguised as Mohawk warriors, and boarded three British cargo ships. They proceeded to dump 343 cartons of tea into the Harbor, shouting, “No taxation without representation!”

This all came about because the colonists had already endured thirteen years of Britain’s continued increasing of taxation. The last straw came when the Tea Act of 1773 was imposed. The protest exploded, and the stage was set for the American Revolution. The rest is history.

Today a milder storm is brewing over the government’s funding of abortion services. It’s NOT about a woman’s right to have an abortion in a clean medical facility. It’s about forcing taxpayers to finance actions they deem to be immoral. This amounts to an unconstitutional, First Amendment violation.

We have always believed in the supporting the common good through a fair system of taxation. This is our patriotic duty. But after seeing our religious rights being disregarded for decades, we find it necessary to issue a firm protest.

May the Lord be your strength and your joy, as you deal with this problem in your respective Congressional districts.