(CNSNews.com) - The Department of Health and Human Services on Friday set the stage  for a massive showdown between the federal government of the United  States and American Christians who believe the government has no right to force them to act against their faith by mandating that they buy,  provide or facilitate health-care coverage that includes sterilizations, contraception, or  abortion-inducing drugs.

HHS released a new proposed regulation under the Obamacare law that  the department presented as an accommodation to religious  “organizations” that object to providing sterilizations, contraceptives  and abortion-inducing drugs in their health care plans. However, the  proposal does not truly expand the exceedingly narrow religious  exemption presented in the initial regulation, which was finalized last year, and continues  to offer no exemption at all to Christian individuals or business  owners.

“There really is no expansion of the religious  exemption,” said Leonard Leo, a Washington attorney, who is a board  member of The Catholic Association, a group of Catholic lay  persons dedicated to applying the teachings and principles of the church  to the issues of the day.

"The HHS mandate announcement today changes nothing, it is just  another accounting gimmick and the HHS mandate continues to be a  violation of civil rights, religious freedom and First Amendment  rights,” said Maureen Ferguson, senior policy advisor to The Catholic Association. “Catholic  institutions and other faith based organizations, including hospitals  and universities and private employers, still do not get their First Amendment rights back and are still being forced to either violate their  faith or pay crippling government fines for practicing their faith."

The original regulation, finalized by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in January 2012, said virtually all  health care plans in the United   States must provide all women of  child-bearing age with cost-free coverage for sterilizations,  contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

The Catholic Church holds that all three of these things are  intrinsically immoral and that Catholics cannot be involved in them.  Many Christians of other denominations object to the fact that the  regulation requires coverage for abortion-inducing drugs.

The original regulation provided an exemption that applied only to  houses of worship themselves and their immediate auxiliaries. To  qualify, an institution needed to meet four criteria:1) It needed to be  organized under the section of the Internal Revenue Code used by  churches per se, 2)  be primarily employed in the inculcation of  religious tenets, 3) employ primarily people of its own faith, and 4)  serve primarily people of its own faith.

This exemption did not extend to Catholic charities, hospitals and schools.

The original regulation also offered no conscience exemption at all  to individual employees or business owners. Thus, Catholics and other  Christians who objected to sterilizations, artificial contraception and abortion  would be forced by the government to buy and/or provide health care  plans that covered these things, paid for these things, and facilitated  these things.

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