Supreme Court Upholds Pro-Abortion Obamacare 7-2, Rules Texas Can’t Overturn It

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jun 17, 2021   |   10:37AM   |   Washington, DC

The Supreme Court has upheld Obamacare for a third time — ruling 7-2 today that the state of Texas did not have standing to overturn the national health care program that pays for abortions.

The court found that Texas, joined by former President Donald Trump did not have standing to challenge the law because it could not show “a past or future injury fairly traceable to defendants’ conduct enforcing the specific statutory provision they attack as unconstitutional.”

Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the majority opinion for the 7-2 decision. Justice Clarence Thomas concurred. Meanwhile, Justice Neil Gorsuch dissented, joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

Here’s more on the decision:

During arguments, which took place about a week after the presidential election, the Trump administration argued that because Congress in 2017 set the individual mandate to zero, meaning people were no longer required to pay a minimum tax for health insurance, the entire law’s legitimacy is in question. Trump’s team made this case in tandem with a Texas-led coalition of 20 states.

Trump’s argument rested on the idea that the individual mandate is not severable from the rest of the act, meaning that if it is unconstitutional, then so is the rest of Obamacare.

Several justices signaled during arguments that if they found fault with the individual mandate, they would simply cut it out and leave the rest of the act in place.

“This is a straightforward case for severability under our precedents,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh told a lawyer defending Obamacare, “meaning that we would excise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place.”

The court previously upheld the individual mandate in the 2012 case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, arguing that its power and, by extension, the legitimacy of the entire act, lay in Congress’s taxing power. In Texas’s view, this means that with no tax, the rest of the act must fall, too.

When it comes to abortion funding, Obamacare already paid to kill babies in abortions and Joe Biden signed a COVID relief bill to greatly expand abortion funding. The bill vastly expands Obamacare’s premium tax credits and cost sharing reduction payments, which subsidizes plans that cover abortion. The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates these subsidies to cost $45.624 billion.

A December report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Family Research Council and The Heritage Foundation found that 69 percent of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, health plans in 24 states and Washington, D.C. cover elective abortions.

More specifically, in seven of those states and D.C., pro-lifers have no options; all of the plans offered on the Obamacare exchange cover elective abortions, according to the report. They are: Alaska, California, D.C., Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont.

These plans are subsidized by taxpayers nation-wide, meaning that even in states that prohibited abortion coverage in Obamacare plans, taxpayers still are paying for abortions in the states that are, according to the report.

In addition, President Donald Trump issued a pro-life rule that will protect pro-life Americans and help save babies from abortion. His administration implemented a rule to block the effects of a dangerous Obamacare provision that could be used to compel doctors to participate in abortions.

Last month, Joe Biden reversed it.

During the trump administration, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule that revises 2016 provisions of the Obamacare section 1557 rule that had redefined discrimination “on the basis of sex” to include “pregnancy termination.” The new rule protected doctors, nurses and medical professionals from being compelled to assist abortions.

Biden’s decision overturns the Trump rule, which had defined “sex” as gender assigned at birth and clarified that sex discrimination does not include abortion when it comes to health care and coverage.