Letter to the Editor

The 'unintended consequences” of the Affordable Care Act that you cited in the July 4 editorial 'Beware ruling's unintended consequences” noted that it opens the floodgates to many more faith-based objections to various provisions of the act.

More comprehensively, a fundamental problem with Obamacare is the notion that conception, or lack of it, is part of health care. The conception of children is a social, not a health, issue. The prevention of that conception is a personal, moral or perhaps a religious decision to be made by the participants.

The Hobby Lobby decision involves as many as 20 separate methods of preventing or extinguishing conception. The notion that the government requires its citizens pay for the use of methods of preventing birth is religiously objectionable to some, an unnecessary mandate to many, a forced tax on all and an imprudent intervention into personal freedom of choice.

Dick Roggensack

Waukon