16th District Congressional Candidates: ObamaCare
By: Matthew Fuchs
Updated: October 17, 2012
In the race
for the 16th Congressional District seat, Republican Adam Kinzinger is facing
Democrat Wanda Rohl.
Our question:
The Peoria Catholic Diocese has filed suit to stop some parts of Obamacare,
specifically, mandated payments for birth control.
Should the government work with the Catholic Church on this matter
or not?
Wanda Rohl:
I think they have, and they are trying. And,
my point of that is, I've worked in a Catholic hospital.
Nowhere on my job
application did it ask what my religion was. And if you become an employer,
then you need to follow the laws and the rules just like everybody else. No one
is saying their Catholic Church has supplied that, but if you work in a
Catholic hospital, then I think you should. And if they want to decrease
unwanted pregnancies, then having access to prescription birth control is
something that I do support.
It will
reduce the amount of unwanted pregnancies. And it's prescribed for many
different things, but that's a conversation you have in your home, not with
your Congressman. It's for your doctor to decide.
Adam Kinzinger:
They should absolutely work with the Catholic
Church and I think they should work with them and say if they have a religious conscientious
objection to providing certain services, that's your right under the First
Amendment. People have the right and the freedom to believe what they want to
believe. Of course, the other side is to try to turn this into trying to deny
women birth control and trying intercourse.
That's not the case at all. The case here is,
if someone believes something opposes their religious belief, the government can't
come in and force them to do something against that religious belief. That's
the issue here. And I think if the government could work with the Catholic Church
to ensure there is an exemption for religious conscientious issues, then they
probably should.
