More than 64,000 pro-life advocates joined more than 140 rallies across the nation in March to rally for religious freedom and against the controversial Obama HHS mandate that requires religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions.
Those rallies will return June 8 as tens of thousands of pro-life advocates keep the Obama administration’s disruption of religious freedom on the forefront of the 2012 election process.
“We must continue to be that public voice of protest—until this completely wrong and unjust government intrusion into the practice of religion and freedom of conscience is rescinded,” says Monica Miller, a pro-life activist from Michigan who was one of the coordinators of the rallies.
Miller says June is a perfect time to bring up the issues in Obamacare again — with the national lawsuits against the pro-abortion health care law ripening at the Supreme Court weeks later.
“As you probably know, the entire Obamacare law, with its oppressive mandates and countless abortion loopholes, is under review by the United States Supreme Court right now, with a decision expected from the high court at the end of June,” Miller said. “This means early June is the perfect time to continue our momentum in opposition to the HHS mandate and drive this issue back into the public square.”
“We must “prepare the ground” for the Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling,” Miller continued. “If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, the June 8th rally will set the agenda for future health care reform—that includes real respect for religious freedom as well as freedom of conscience. But if the Court leaves Obamacare intact, we will even more urgently need this June 8th Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally to make our case that the HHS mandate has got to go. Either way, June 8th is exactly the right time to hold the next nationwide Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally.”
The rally participants said “no” to the HHS mandate, which forces employers — including religious charities — to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans, for free.
Eric Scheidler, the director of the Pro-Life Action League and co-coordinator of the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies, said he was encouraged by both the number of participants and the high number of cities taking part in the event.
“When my Rally co-director Monica Miller and I originally conceived the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally, I was hoping for 50 cities to sign on. Monica, more optimistically, hoped for 100,” he said. “We launched the project with 30 cities, which quickly grew to 50, then 80, then 100. In the final week before the Rally, we topped 140, with cities coming on board up to the last minute. The final tally was 143 cities from Portland, Maine to Honolulu, Hawaii.”
“By that time the buzz surrounding the Rally was so great that I began to speculate that we just might top 10,000 participants across the country,” Scheidler, who was interviewed prominently on Fox News and other media outlets, added. “How little did I know what God had in store for this historic day.”
The Coalition to Stop the HHS Mandate, which is being coordinated by the Illinois-based Pro-Life Action League and includes multiple pro-life, social conservative, and religious groups, including Human Life International, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Alliance Defense Fund, and Priests for Life; have organized the “Stand Up For Religious Freedom” rallies “in defense of religious freedom and STAND UP against the Obama administration’s HHS mandate at federal building in cities across the country.”
Despite a vote in the Senate against overturning it, the nation’s Catholic bishops and leading pro-life groups vow to continue fighting the Obama mandate that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortion.
The mandate has already become the subject of several lawsuits.
Meanwhile, more than a dozen state attorneys general have signed onto a joint letter Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning started coordinating against the controversial Obama mandate requiring religious employers to cover birth control and drugs that can cause abortions
Bruning has contacted each of his colleagues in 49 states and has already been joined by a dozen, including South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. Together, the three lawmakers have co-signed a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebilius, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis over the Obama mandate.
Also, the largest Catholic pro-life group and Catholic television station have filed suit against the new Obama mandate that forces religious employers like them to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs in employee health insurance. The EWTN Global Catholic Network filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Alabama against the Department of Health & Human Services, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and other government agencies seeking to stop the imposition of the anti-conscience mandate as well as asking the court for a declaratory judgment that the mandate is unconstitutional.
Priests for Life, a New York based international pro-life organization of Catholic clergy and laity, filed a lawsuit against the Obama Administration in an effort to seek injunctive relief from impending regulations that would require the organization to pay for employee health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.
The Obama administration asked a federal court to dismiss yet another lawsuit filed against the Obama administration over its mandate.
This was its first opportunity to explain to the court and the country why the mandate is not illegal and unconstitutional. The Obama administration did not defend the constitutionality of the mandate, but said the lawsuit should be thrown out because the administration plans to revise the mandate to make it on insurance companies to pay for coverage rather than employers, who will still have to make referrals.
“Plaintiff’s challenge to the preventive services coverage regulations is not fit for judicial review because defendants [Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius] have indicated that they will propose and finalize changes to the regulations that are intended to accommodate plaintiff’s religious objections to providing contraception coverage,” the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrote in its brief to the Washington, D.C. District Court.
Obama officials claim the mandate does not put forth any “immediate injury” to religious groups.
Luke Goodrich, Deputy General Counsel of the Becket Fund, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic university, says he thinks the Obama administrations argument will not stand up in court.
“It doesn’t argue that the mandate is legal; it doesn’t argue that the mandate is constitutional,” Goodrich said. “Instead, it begs the court to ignore the lawsuit because the government plans to change the mandate at some unspecified date in the future.”
“Apparently, the administration has decided that the mandate, as written and finalized, is constitutionally indefensible,” said Hannah Smith, senior counsel at The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty “Its only hope is to ask the court to look the other way based on an empty promise to possibly change the rules in the future.”
The panel that put together the mandate has been condemned for only having pro-abortion members even though polling shows Americans are opposed to the mandate.
More than 50 members of Congress banded together at a press conference to demand legislation to stop the new mandate pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place forcing religious employers to pay for insurance coverage including birth control and abortion-inducing drugs.
Congressman Jeff Fortenberry held a press conference with supporters of the bipartisan, bicameral Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. His legislation would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Fortenberry bill currently has the support of approximately 220 Members of Congress and Senators, the most strongly-supported legislative remedy to the controversial HHS mandate. This measure would repeal the controversial mandate, amending the 2010 health care law to preserve conscience rights for religious institutions, health care providers, and small businesses who pay for health care coverage.
H.R. 1179 enjoys the endorsements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and other organizations. Numerous other organizations, including the Christian Medical Association and Family Research Council, have urged support of the bill.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a pro-life Missouri Republican, is putting forward the Blunt Amendment, #1520, again, and it is termed the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. According to information provided to LifeNews from pro-life sources on Capitol Hill, the Blunt Amendment will be the first amendment voted on when the Senate returns to the transportation bill. The amendment would allow employers to decline coverage of services in conflict with religious beliefs.
Republicans are moving swiftly with legislation, amendments, and potential hearings on the mandatethe Obama administration has put in place that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs for their employees.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying Obama’s revised mandate involves “needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions” and it urged Congress to overturn the rule and promised a potential lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates had been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the original mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.
Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.
The original mandate was so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”
The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.
The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.
The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.
