129 HHS Mandate Rallies Planned Nationwide

Tens of thousands of Americans are expected to attend 129 rallies that are scheduled in major cities throughout the country this Friday to stand up for religious freedom and oppose the Obama administration’s mandate forcing all employers to cover contraception.

LifeSiteNews.com is reporting that the number of rallies has swelled and enthusiasm for the protest has grown far beyond what organizers anticipated.

“We hoped we’d get maybe 50 cities,” said Eric Scheidler of the Pro Life Action League, who came up with the idea of a nationwide rally with fellow activist Monica Miller. But demand quickly became overwhelming, and his office is now sending thousands of signs across the country.

Bryan Kemper, Director of Youth Outreach for Priests for Life, which is part of the coalition behind the nationwide protest, said he believes that the Obama administration “has woken a sleeping giant.”

“What we are seeing is a Christian unity like we have never seen before,” Kemper told LifeSite. “What we would like to see is for the American public – not only Christian, but all of us who believe in the Constitution – to stand up and tell the Obama administration this is not a dictatorship and we will not be ok with this in America.”

The protests, which will take place at noon outside federal buildings across the country, will include more than 15 bishops and hundreds of notable speakers.

Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fr. Benedict Groeschel, and Mother Mary Agnes Donovan, Superior General of the Sisters of Life, will be addressing the crowd at the New York City event.

Father Paul Schenck, Rev. Rob Schenck, the Family Research Council’s Cathy Ruse and her husband Austin Ruse, of C-FAM, will address the Rally outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

In addition to the Bishop David Choby, the Nashville Rally will feature Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) and Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Liberty Commission.

The Chicago Rally will feature Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL); Mary FioRito, Executive Assistant to the Archbishop, Archdiocese of Chicago; and Joe Morris, Past President of B’nai B’rith in the Midwest.

The San Francisco Rally will feature Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s Rights without Frontiers and Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ of Ignatius Press.

Scheidler told LifeSite there are two things that “really deeply offend” those anxious to speak out against the mandate.

“The one is that the HHS mandate treats motherhood like motherhood is a disease,” he said. “We have the federal government strong-arming the people to force employers to give them free abortifacient drugs, contraceptives, and sterilizations because they consider motherhood a disease.”

Second, he said, people were offended that the Obama administration “has taken it upon itself … to decide for religious institutions what constitutes their mission.”

“The federal government has decided that what they’re doing in answer to Christ’s command that we clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, et cetera, is no longer considered religious activity,” he said, referring to the extremely narrow religious exemption in the mandate, which applies only to places of worship, rather than all religious organizations.

In an effort to quell the uprising, the Obama administration announced yet another set of accounting gimmicks last Friday along with another 90 day comment period on the mandate to try to placate religious institutions, but nothing short of repeal will satisfy an angry public.

Click here to find the location of a rally near you, or to help organize a local rally.
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3 Response to “129 HHS Mandate Rallies Planned Nationwide

  1. It is very good to have these 130 rallies nationwide on Friday, but unfortunately it is too little too late I think. In case you may have missed it the administration recently have basically declared a form of martial law in the last couple of weeks. First by nationalizing everything (officially) through the different departments. Then the right to free speech and assembly is also being curtailed. Yes it is good to have the lawsuits and rallies are right and good and the lawsuits but unless there is a direct intervention from God in Heaven itself I am afraid it will be meaningless. Americans both Catholic and non-Catholic waited too long to wait until it affected them personally but after 4 years the damage is already done. They should have started with strong action back in 2009 at the very least.

  2. I was just listening to the Catholic Channel on Sirius and people who attended the rallies said that many 1000’s of people attended and they had people of every faith represented. Many of my friends are of different faiths and they are all offended by the attempt to take away Religious Freedom. They and I are looking to November to undo the damage already done. Many callers into the program were asking if we could rally again!?