California: Churches must cover abortions

Excerpted from "Churches forced to cover abortion file federal complaint against Calif. agency," Alliance Defending Freedom news release, October 09, 2014 - Life Legal Defense Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom filed a formal complaint Thursday with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over the California Department of Managed Health Care’s decision to force all employers, including churches, to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans. LLDF and ADF represent seven California churches that object to offering their employees insurance plans covering elective abortions and allege that DMHC’s coercion of abortion coverage violates federal law.

Last month, LLDF and ADF filed a separate complaint with HHS on behalf of employees at Loyola Marymount University that also do not want a health plan that covers abortions. In August, LLDF and ADF lodged a letter with DMHC itself warning it of its violation of federal law. DMHC responded by affirming its decision to force all plans to cover all abortions, without explaining how that decision squares with a federal law insisting otherwise.

Commentary

Alliance Defending Freedom Attorney Casey Mattox: “Forcing a church to be party to elective abortion is one of the utmost-imaginable assaults on our most fundamental American freedoms. California is flagrantly violating the federal law that protects employers from being forced into having abortion in their health insurance plans. No state can blatantly ignore federal law and think that it should continue to receive taxpayer money.” audio sound bite


Action
Use our easy, pre-written forms at our Freedom2Care legislative action website to contact your legislators on the following religious freedom bills:

1. Protect healthcare professionals from discrimination - S. 137 - Protect your choice of pro-life healthcare professionals - take action on the Abortion Non-Discrimination Act
2. Protect conscience freedom in healthcare: HR 940 - Preserve patient choice and protect pro-life professionals from discrimination for moral and ethical views.

Resources
Freedom2Care - CMDA's one-stop source for news, commentary and resources on freedom of faith, conscience and speech

Administration again tweaks Obamacare contraception mandate

Excerpted from "Administration offers new tweak to birth control rule," Washington Post, August 22, 2014 - The Obama administration, still facing legal challenges to its requirement that employer health plans provide no-cost birth control to female employees, outlined a new policy Friday to ensure that female workers at religiously-affiliated nonprofits can still receive contraception, even if their employers object. The administration also intends to offer a similar work-around to for-profit businesses after the Supreme Court's bitterly debated 5-4 decision in June that owners of closely held firms could refuse contraception coverage if it conflicts with their religious beliefs.

The new federal guidelines address a set of ongoing legal challenges to the contraceptive requirement raised by dozens of religious nonprofit groups, such as hospitals and charities, that could again put the contraception mandate before the Supreme Court. The religious nonprofits are challenging the administration's already existing opt-out, in which the groups can ask a third party to provide the contraception coverage to their employees. However, the nonprofits say that filling out the form notifying the third party violates their religious beliefs.

The nonprofits can now directly inform the Department of Health and Human Services of their religious objections. HHS and the Labor Department will then coordinate contraception coverage with insurers and third party administrators. The nonprofits still have the option to notify a third party directly.

The Becket Fund, a law firm that represents 126 nonprofit plaintiffs ranging from evangelical Wheaton College to Catholic University of Notre Dame, said Friday afternoon it hadn’t yet seen the full text of the rule and thus couldn’t comment on its specifics. Several of the country’s biggest faith groups on Friday said the revised rule was still problematic because it didn’t fully exempt organizations – for-profit or non-profit – with religious objections.

"Here we go again,” said Russell Moore, president of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination. “What we see here is another revised attempt to settle issues of religious conscience with accounting maneuvers. This new policy doesn't get at the primary problem.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said it's worried that the administration's proposal could limit which for-profit businesses can receive a religious exemption.

"By proposing to extend the 'accommodation' to the closely held for-profit employers that were wholly exempted by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Hobby Lobby, the proposed regulations would effectively reduce, rather than expand, the scope of religious freedom,” the group's statement read.

Commentary

Senior Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Lori Windham’s Statement: "This is latest step in the administration’s long retreat on the HHS Mandate. It is the eighth time in three years the government has retreated from its original, hardline stance that only 'houses of worship' that hire and serve fellow believers deserve religious freedom.

"The new rule holds implications for the 102 cases, including religious charities like Little Sisters of the Poor (see video), Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network (see video) and religious colleges like Colorado Christian University. Ninety percent of religious ministries challenging the mandate have received relief from the courts, and we are hopeful the administration’s new rule will reflect the robust protections that have always been given to religious individuals in this country.

"Religious ministries in these cases serve tens of thousands of Americans, helping the poor and homeless and healing the sick. The Little Sisters of the Poor alone serve more than ten thousand of the elderly poor. These charities want to continue following their faith. They want to focus on ministry—such as sharing their faith and serving the poor—without worrying about the threat of massive IRS penalties."

Action

1. Urge your U.S. senators to support (or thank your senator for already co-sponsoring) the Health Care Conscience Rights Act - S. 1204 , to protect religious liberty and preserve patient access by providing conscience protections for healthcare professionals. (Note: You will be provided with editable text based on your senator's sponsorship or non-sponsorship of this bill.)
2. Urge your U.S. Representative to support (or thank your Rep. for already co-sponsoring) the Health Care Conscience Rights Act - H.R. 940.

Resources
Read new HHS rule

CMDA's Freedom2Care website: Freedom of faith, conscience and speech
CMDA's Freedom2Care commentaries in national newspapers
CMDA Freedom of Faith and Conscience resources

Response to the Hobby Lobby ruling

Excerpted from “CMA doctors hail Supreme Court mandate ruling, decry ongoing targeting of faith community,” CMDA News Release. June 30, 2014 — The 15,000-member Christian Medical Association, the nation's largest and oldest faith-based doctors' organization, today praised the Supreme Court's ruling in two Health and Human Services (HHS) Obamacare mandate cases but noted "increasing attempts by the government to coerce the faith community." CMA had outlined the medical aspects underlying religious objections to the HHS Obamacare mandate in its friend of the court brief in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood v. Burwell.

CMA CEO Dr. David Stevens said in a statement, "We are very thankful that the Supreme Court acted to protect family businesses from government coercion and fines for simply honoring the tenets of their faith.

"This is a much-needed victory for faith freedoms, because this administration continues its assault on the values of the faith community. We are witnessing increasing attempts by the government to coerce the faith community to adopt the government's viewpoint in matters of conscience," noted Stevens.

CMA also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in another Supreme Court case this term, McCullen v. Coakley, to defend First Amendment free speech and assembly rights of pro-life advocates against a Massachusetts law that prohibited many citizens from entering a public street or sidewalk within 35 feet of an abortion facility.

"There seems to be growing intolerance of the faith community by some government officials who appear to want to extinguish the First Amendment freedoms that allow for a diversity of values," Stevens observed, "We are seeing this antagonism expressed in coercive government mandates enforced with harsh penalties and discriminatory practices that threaten to eliminate the faith community from the public square."

Commentary

CMDA CEO David Stevens, MD, MA (Ethics): “I’m appalled that the ruling was five to four. One vote and we would have lost religious freedom, perhaps forever, in this country. It would have impacted us as healthcare professionals most of all, as Judge Alito noted in his majority opinion. He wrote, ‘Under HHS’s view, RFRA (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) would permit the Government to require all employers to provide coverage for any medical procedure allowed by law in the jurisdiction in question—for instance, third-trimester abortions or assisted suicide.’

“We are already seeing the co-opting of the unwilling as a result of court rulings in the same-sex marriage issue. The courts are requiring participation by family-owned businesses in wedding ceremonies, despite their religious objections. The government is also forcing recognition of same-sex marriages as a condition for federal grants in this country and abroad.

“CMDA’s amicus brief, representing you, affected the decision. It scientifically established the potentially deadly effect of two ‘morning after pills’ and two types of IUDs on nascent life before implantation. That fact was accepted in the majority opinion.

“We won the battle, but the war is not over. We must continue to fight relentlessly locally and nationally to protect healthcare right of conscience. The stakes are just too great to do otherwise.”

Resources

Learn more about CMDA’s efforts to protect the right of conscience
CMDA’s amicus curiae brief

Supreme Court to announce ruling on conscience v. coercion

Excerpted from commentary by Jennifer Marshall,"HHS Mandate: Only the Beginning of Obamacare’s Conscience Problems," Daily Signal, June 17, 2014 - Any day now the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in the case of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties—family-owned businesses that have gone to court to challenge a provision under Obamacare that requires them and nearly all other employers to cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilization, regardless of their religious beliefs.

The suits, brought by the Green family, evangelicals who own Hobby Lobby, and the Hahn family, Mennonites who run Conestoga Wood, are among 49 filed by family-owned businesses challenging the Obamacare HHS mandate. The Obama administration has been unwilling to compromise. Meanwhile, 51 lawsuits have been joined by hundreds of non-profit religious organizations seeking to preserve their religious independence to set internal policy consistent with their faith. All told, 300 plaintiffs.

But it is important to remember that all this commotion is the result of one small aspect of one set of regulations concerning preventive care under Obamacare. And that means we’ve only just begun to see the potential conscience problems that could come from this massive overhaul of our health care system.

Handing the moral compass to remote bureaucrats to navigate this territory is a bad idea. The centralization of more decision-making about the benefits that health plans must provide means that such determinations are more likely to be made without respect for Americans’ differing beliefs on these issues.

That’s why we need patient-centered health care. Americans should be free to choose the health care plans that meet their needs and reflect their moral convictions. Individuals and families need to be able to direct their health care in accord with their conscience; that includes the benefits, treatments and procedures financed through their health insurance.

Commentary

CMA VP for Govt. Relations Jonathan Imbody: “My friend and colleague Jennifer Marshall realizes what our founders and the ancient philosophers knew--that left unchecked, Government will compete with God for the people's allegiance, replacing His universal standards with State ideology and mandating submission. Consider the following observations:

Plato: “[T]here exist divine moral laws, not easy to apprehend, but operating upon all mankind. God, not man, is the measure of all things.”ⁱ
Cicero: "True law is right reason in agreement with Nature; it is of universal application and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrong-doing by its prohibitions."ⁱⁱ
Augustine: "True justice has no existence save in that republic whose founder and ruler is Christ....ⁱⁱⁱ [T]there can be no people, and therefore no republic, where there is no justice."^iv
Thomas Jefferson: "[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God."^v
James Madison: "Religion, or the duty which we owe our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience."^vi
Charles Colson: "Both church and state assert standards and values in society; both seek authority; both compete for allegiance. As members of both the religious and the political spheres, the Christian is bound to face conflict."^vii

When Government replaces God and His universal standards, the only standard left is the sword of the State, which it wields with coercive power (fining Hobby Lobby $791 million dollars a year^viii) to enforce its own ideology. Take a stand with the Green and Hahn families as they fight in the courts for religious freedom. As Mordecai explained to a hesitant Queen Esther,^ix this edict also has you in its crosshairs.

Resources
CMA Supreme Court brief in Hobby Lobby religious freedom case
CMA’s Freedom2Care website on freedom of faith, conscience and speech
CMA commentaries

Action
Use our easy pre-written customizable message to support H.R. 940 - Healthcare Conscience Rights Act (House bill) and S. 1204 - Health Care Conscience Rights Act (Senate bill)

ⁱ Cited in Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1974), 81.
ⁱⁱ Charles Colson and Ellen Santilli, God and Government, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1987, updated 2007, Kindle location 4917.
ⁱⁱⁱ Colson, location 1482.
^iv Colson, location 14479.
^v Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), U.S. president. Notes on the State of Virginia (1787), Query 17, p. 159, ed. William Peden (1954).
^vi James Madison (1751–1836), U.S. president. Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1776. W.T. Hutchinson et al., The Papers of James Madison, vol. 1, p. 175, Chicago and Charlottesville, Virginia (1962-1991).
^vii Colson, Kindle location 2223.
^viii http://townhall.com/columnists/hankadler/2014/03/29/hobby-lobby--when-is-26-million-really-43-million-n1815062/page/full
^ix Esther 4:13.

CMA advises Supreme Court on embryo-ending drugs

Excerpted from "U.S. Supreme Court Takes Up Healthcare Law Again," AUL blog, Nov. 26, 2013 - “The U.S. Supreme Court again has the chance to defend the constitutional rights of all Americans, in considering the punishing mandates in a landmark, anti-life law,” commented Americans United for Life President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest, on hearing news that the court decided to review two cases challenging Obamacare’s HHS Mandate, Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Sebelius and Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores. “Punishing Americans for their moral objection to life-ending drugs and devices is abhorrently un-American.”

Conestoga Wood Specialties is owned by Christians and operated according to the owners’ Mennonite Christian beliefs. Hobby Lobby is an Oklahoma-based national arts and crafts retailer founded and run by David Green and his family. The Greens attribute God’s grace for Hobby Lobby’s success and over the course of four decades of expansion the Green family’s Christian faith has remained an integral part of the business. Both Conestoga Woods and Hobby Lobby do not oppose all contraception, but those drugs and devices that have been labeled as “contraception” by the FDA although they are known to have life-ending effects.

In our briefs, AUL demonstrates that the life of a new human being begins at fertilization (conception), that so-called “emergency contraception” has a post-fertilization effect that can prevent a new human being from implanting in the uterus, and that forcing employers to provide coverage for such drugs violates their constitutionally protected freedom of conscience.

The briefs were filed on behalf of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, Christian Medical Association, Catholic Medical Association, National Catholic Bioethics Center, Physicians for Life and National Association of Pro Life Nurses.

Commentary

CMDA Executive Vice President Gene Rudd, MD– “Some challenge the rights of these business owners because they do not agree with their understanding of the science—that they are protecting early human life. I remember the debate back in the 1970s among those who foresaw the backlash when the public eventually discovered that developing technologies would abort the development of early human life.

“The strategy since has been to diminish our understanding of the continuum of human life. The strategy includes verbal ploys such as ‘blob of tissue’ and ‘pre-embryo,’ all intended to disguise the truth. Has it worked? Yes, some are either deceived or they failed to value and protect life. But not these business owners. They want their business practices to honor life.

“They want to follow the words of Jesus, who said, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice” (Luke 8:21, NIV 2011).

“But the new warning from the government is that you should not expect to have a conviction and also think you can live by it. Our Administration would rather you live by its social agenda.

“Under the guise of promoting healthcare, the Administration seeks to force individuals and their businesses to provide reproductive services which the owners find morally objectionable. Some seek to refuse the owners’ rights because they do not share the same convictions. They would rather abandon 200 years of Constitutionally-protected ‘free exercise,’ forcing these owners to comply with and pay for their social views.

“Will our Supreme Court uphold the rights of these individuals to run their businesses by their convictions? Freedom of religion, freedom to live out your conviction, is at stake.”

Action

Use our Freedom2Care pre-written letters to urge your legislators to support conscience rights and religious freedom in healthcare:

Urge your senators to support conscience rights - S.1204
Urge your Rep. to protect conscience rights - HR 940

Resources
On Embryo-Killing “Contraceptives” from The National Review Online
Endowment for Human Development

Bill would ban discrimination for marriage convictions

Excerpted from "Archbishop: DOMA ruling, ENDA passage put marriage at 'critical point,'" Catholic News Agency, Nov. 15, 2013 - The Supreme Court's ruling that rendered the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, and the Senate's passage Nov. 7 of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act [ENDA] put the legal defense of marriage "at a critical point in this country," said the archbishop who heads the U.S. bishops' Subcommittee on the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. “The Supreme Court's DOMA decision is now being used to judicially challenge marriage laws in more than a dozen states that still recognize marriage as the union of one man and one woman," said Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco.

The effects of ENDA, Archbishop Cordileone said during a Nov. 11 presentation at the U.S. bishops' fall general meeting in Baltimore, "go much further" than preventing employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity to the point where "ENDA-like laws have contributed to the erosion and redefinition of marriage at the state level."

One remedy, he said, could come in the form of the Marriage and Religious Freedom Act, which would bar the federal government from discriminating against those who "act upon their religiously motivated belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage." The bill's scope would include protection for individuals and organizations, both non-profit and for-profit. Archbishop Cordileone pointed to a case in New Mexico where a unanimous state supreme court ruled that a photo studio must photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony "if they wish to remain in business."

Commentary

Jonathan Imbody, CMA VP for Govt. Relations:When professional photographers lose in court for simply declining to photograph a same-sex marriage, on the basis of conscience, it's not at all hard to imagine physicians losing in court for declining to provide IVF services or abortion counseling or for simply discussing the health risks of sex outside of heterosexual marriage. Physicians will remember that in November 2007, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists moved to minimize conscience rights by stating that regardless of convictions, physicians were required ethically to either perform abortions or refer patients for abortions. The healthcare professionals' conscience protection federal regulation that we helped advance during the Bush administration, in response to the ACOG threat, fell prey to the much more restrictive view of religious liberty of the Obama administration, which gutted the reg.

As demonstrated by the current HHS contraceptive mandate, a move to restrict faith-based organizations' hiring rights through a Supreme Court case (Hosanna-Tabor) and other actions (see www.Freedom2Care.org), the administration frames religious liberty as merely the freedom to believe or to worship--not to live out your faith-based conscience convictions on moral issues like abortion, marriage and medical ethics.

Some see this trend and simply shake their heads and wonder what the world is coming to. Better to stand up and have a say in what the world is coming to. We still live in a democratic republic, so your voice can still make a difference. Please consider taking a moment to complete the simple and quick legislative action step below. Thank you.

Resources

CMA Letter Opposing ENDA
Letter Opposing WA HB 1515

Action

Use our Freedom2Care pre-written form to tell your lawmakers to protect you from discrimination because of your convictions on marriage.

Lawsuits challenge contraceptives mandate

Excerpted from "Critics of contraception mandate vow Supreme Court appeal," The Hill, Aug. 14, 2013 - Critics of the contraception mandate in President Obama’s healthcare law said they will appeal to the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court declined to re-hear their case Wednesday.
Alliance for Defending Freedom, one of the organizations challenging the contraception mandate in the courts, said it will ask the Supreme Court to consider whether the mandate is unconstitutional.

“Every American, including family business owners, should be free to live and do business according to their faith," Alliance for Defending Freedom said in a statement vowing to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Resources

Visit the CMDA Freedom2Care website for news, resources, legal analysis and commentary.

Take Action:
Before taking action in professional situations involving conscientious objection, contact one of the conscience rights specialist attorneys we work with. They typically provide their services on a pro bono basis, working for non-profit organizations dedicated to preserving religious liberty and advancing respect for life. Visit our Freedom2Care webpage on discrimination to learn more.

Urge your senators to support conscience rights - S.1204

Urge your Rep. to protect conscience rights - HR 940

Opt-out of contraception

Excerpted from "Obama proposal would let religious groups opt-out of contraception mandate," CNN, by Dan Merica. February 1, 2013--The Obama administration proposed updated guidelines on February 1 that would allow religious-affiliated organizations opposing contraception to opt out of a federal mandate requiring that they provide their employees with insurance coverage for birth control. The draft rule would give women at non-profit, religious-based organizations, like certain hospitals and universities, the ability to receive contraception through separate health policies at no charge.

As part of the new initiative, groups that are insured -- such as student health plans at religious colleges -- would be required to let their insurer know that certain participants would like contraception coverage. "The insurer would then notify enrollees that it is providing them with no-cost contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies," the HHS statement said. Although the agency has not estimated final costs of the plan, it said that offering free coverage would actually lower expenses over the long term, partly due to improvement in women's health and fewer childbirths. Because the insurer would be covering the costs, the changes would allow religious organizations morally opposed to contraception to avoid paying for it.

An original mandate on providing contraception was part of the new federal healthcare law spearheaded by Obama, the Affordable Care Act. It required that insurers provide, at no cost to those insured, all forms of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Houses of worship were exempt immediately and the administration widened those exemptions last year to include other religiously affiliated organizations, like universities and hospitals. That still left groups across a wide spectrum of faiths, many of which teach that contraception is morally wrong, covered by the mandate. They denounced it as an infringement of religious liberty. A group of 43 Catholic organizations challenged the rules in federal court in May.

Not all groups characterized it as a compromise, however. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, a group that launched a federal lawsuit against the mandate last year, said he was far from happy with the update and welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback. "We at Priests for Life remind the administration that religious liberty does not just belong to religious groups and individuals; it belongs to all Americans," Pavone said. "We see only one acceptable change regarding the mandate: rescind it completely." The Family Research Council, a conservative pro-life group, released a similar statement. "The proposal does not expand religious freedom to all organizations and does nothing to change the current policy that forces religious entities to pay for insurance plans that include abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations and contraception," said Anna Higgins, director of the group's Center for Human Dignity. Full story can be found here.

Commentary

CMDA CEO David Stevens, MD, MA (Ethics): “In CMDA’s news release on the new 'accommodation,' I said, 'This latest version of the contraceptives and sterilization mandate remains unacceptable. Since when does the government get to pick and choose which groups will get to enjoy First Amendment protections?'

"The amended regulations give no conscience exemption to businesses run by people of faith including Hobby Lobby and Tyndale House. It gives no exemption to individuals having to buy insurance that pays for abortifacients like Ella.

"For non-profit religious organizations, this is only smoke and mirrors as the administration employs verbal engineering to make sure every woman in the country has free so-called 'contraceptives.' HHS will require every insurance company to issue a separate policy that provides 'free' contraceptives and sterilization. Using its own government staff as 'experts,' it claims that there is no net cost to insurance companies in that mandate. That is a very debatable point, but this new process is just a smoke screen to obscure the moral complicity it imposes.

"Imagine this. You are required to put bottles containing lethal prescriptions on a shelf in your break room for your employees who may take the drugs if they decide their lives are not worth living. Co-pays or deductibles are not a hindrance as the medicines are a 'free benefit' provided by your health insurance provider by order of the government. They say it will save healthcare costs.

"Are you morally complicit? Of course you are. If you hadn’t bought the insurance, they would not have had this 'lethal benefit.'

"Religious freedom advocates are not fooled by this phony accommodation. The lawsuits brought against the government—more than 40 in total—will continue to go forward. So far, the government has lost cases 10 to 4, but it is clear that the Supreme Court will make the final decision.

"Why is this important to you and me? Our religious freedom that our forefathers fought and died for is under broad attack and this is just one of the battlefronts. We dare not lose this battle or our freedom of religion will become merely a freedom to worship behind church doors. Woe to anyone who then tries to carry their conscience into the pubic square where government is god.

"And woe to us if we fail to stand up in these perilous times. With God’s help, CMDA will fight to maintain our religious freedom in the courtroom, in Congress, before the administration and in the halls of public opinion. You have my commitment on that—because we dare not do less."

HHS mandate bypasses parents on contraceptives for children

Excerpted from "HHS mandate allows minors free contraception, sterilization," Catholic News Agency, Sep 25, 2012--Minor children on their parents’ health care plans will have free coverage of sterilization and contraception, including abortion-causing drugs, under the controversial HHS mandate – and depending on the state, they can obtain access without parental consent.

Matt Bowman, senior counsel for the religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, said the mandate “tramples parental rights” because it requires them to “pay for and sponsor coverage of abortifacients, sterilization, contraception and education in favor of the same for their own children.”

The Department of Health and Human Services ruled in January 2012 that most employers who have 50 or more employees must provide the coverage as “preventive care” for “all women with reproductive capacity.” The mandate also requires the coverage for beneficiaries, including minors, on the affected health plans, Bowman told CNA Sept. 20. That means that a minor on her parents’ plan could be sterilized if she finds a doctor willing to perform the procedure.

“She can be sterilized at no cost,” Bowman stated. “Whether her parents will know and/or consent might differ by state. But the Guttmacher Institute and other abortion advocates explicitly advocated for this mandated coverage of minors so that access without parental involvement might be able to increase.”
The Guttmacher Institute, in a Sept. 1 briefing on state policies, said that an increase in minors’ access to reproductive health care over the last 30 years shows a broader recognition that “while parental involvement in minors’ health care decisions is desirable, many minors will not avail themselves of important services if they are forced to involve their parents.” The institute, the former research arm of abortion provider Planned Parenthood, said that 26 states and the District of Columbia allow all minors 12 years and older to consent to contraceptive services. At least one state, Oregon, allows 15-year-olds to consent to sterilization.

There are presently 30 lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate in federal court on religious freedom grounds.

Commentary

CMDA Executive Vice President Gene Rudd, MD: “'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.'
"Sadly, in today’s society, we as parents have to warn our children to avoid adults who try to lure them into doing things that might be dangerous, even deadly. Stereotypically, it is the shady character on the street corner who invites your child to pet his dog or enjoy his candy.

"But what do we do when it is the government or an agency operating with government funds doing this? They also have an agenda, and they wish to entreat our children to take part in that agenda even when we as parents do not approve. And worse, our laws have morphed to make it legal! Yes, there are some differences between their agenda and that of a pedophile, but the outcomes can be just as destructive to the wellbeing of the child and the family.

"So now we must warn our children that adults serving in public positions, those with an element of authority over their lives, might also lure them into behavior contrary to their moral training and dangerous to their health. And as a more definitive step, we must take steps to reverse this social engineering.

"I realize there is an argument to be made for providing care for children in exceptional circumstances, but allowance for the exception has become the rule for all. We must now require our government leaders to scrap the onerous rule that allows for this (included in the Affordable Care Act) and replace it with healthcare reforms that do not undermine the family."