A Christian group has filed a lawsuit today to stop a Biden mandate that forces Christian doctors to kill babies in abortions and do sex-change procedures.
Doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical workers soon may be forced to help abort unborn babies or lose their jobs as pro-abortion politicians work to get rid of conscience protection rights.
Last year, the Biden administration dropped a lawsuit against a hospital accused of tricking a pro-life nurse into aborting an unborn baby. That decision was only a foreshadowing of things to come.
Earlier this month, Christian medical leaders raised alarm a potential new pro-abortion mandate from the Biden administration that could shut down Christian health care throughout the U.S.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials confirmed to Politico a week ago that they plan to revoke a Trump administration rule that protected pro-life medical workers from being forced to kill unborn babies in elective abortions.
But today, Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys are representing the Christian Employers Alliance in a lawsuit challenging two Biden administration mandates. They have a hearing in federal district court Monday. They say the mandate forces religious nonprofit and for-profit employers to pay for and perform surgeries, procedures, counseling, and treatments that seek to alter one’s biological sex and to do abortions — actions that violate their religious beliefs.
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“All employers, including those in the Christian Employers Alliance, have the constitutional right to conduct their business in a manner consistent with their deeply held religious beliefs,” said ADF Legal Counsel Jacob Reed, who will be arguing before the court on behalf of CEA.
“The employers we represent believe that God purposefully created humans as either male or female, and so it would violate their religious beliefs to pay for or perform life-altering medical procedures or surgeries that seek to change one’s biological sex. We urge the court to immediately halt enforcement of these unlawful mandates that disrespect people of faith,” he added.
The lawsuit explains that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is misinterpreting and improperly enforcing discrimination based on sex in Title VII to force religious employers to pay for and provide health insurance coverage for such surgeries and procedures. Additionally, the lawsuit challenges the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ reinterpretation of “sex” in federal law to include gender identity, thereby forcing religious healthcare providers to physically perform or facilitate surgeries and procedures that conflict with their deeply held beliefs.
The HHS mandate also compels religious healthcare providers to speak positively about these procedures even if they disagree with them and prohibits them from sharing their medical opinions or objections. Neither the EEOC nor HHS provide religious exemptions to these mandates. If CEA members fail to comply with these mandates, they face loss of federal funds, the prospect of expensive and burdensome litigation, and in some cases fines, criminal penalties, and attorneys’ fees and costs.
Responding to the news, pro-life leaders criticized the Biden administration for wanting to force hardworking Americans to choose between exercising their beliefs and being able to feed their families.
“Doctors, nurses, and other medical providers should enjoy this same constitutional protection, free to live and work in a manner consistent with their faith,” Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Matt Bowman said in a statement. “Yet the Biden administration’s proposed rule would abandon health care professionals to being forced to perform medical procedures that directly violate their religious beliefs or risk losing their jobs.”
The rule that HHS wants to remove protected doctors, nurses and other health care workers from being forced to provide abortions and other medical procedures that violate their religious and ethical beliefs. Issued by the Trump administration, the rule added weight to conscience protection laws by allowing the federal government to revoke taxpayer funding from hospitals, universities and other healthcare providers that violate their employees’ conscience rights. However, abortion groups and Democrat leaders sued the Trump administration, and a federal judge blocked the rule.
Jacqueline Ayers, the senior vice president of policy, organizing and campaigns for Planned Parenthood, told Politico that they are excited about the new Biden administration rule. Twisting the issue, she slammed conscience protections as “discriminatory.”
“As state politicians continue to strip people of their sexual and reproductive rights and freedoms, it’s imperative that the Biden-Harris administration revoke this discriminatory policy and help ensure people can access the health care and information they need when they need it,” Ayers said. “We look forward to seeing the details of the new rule and are excited about this step forward.”
Forcing doctors and nurses to abort unborn babies or lose their jobs is the real discrimination, and pro-life advocates are urging the president to withdraw his plan.
“This is an illegal and gross overreach of executive power, and we urge the administration to withdraw this harmful proposal immediately,” Bowman said.
Meanwhile, Christian medical leaders are preparing for more attacks on conscience rights in the future. This year, five major Catholic organizations established the Catholic Health Care Leadership Alliance to defend religious freedom and Catholic health care in the U.S.
As Wesley J. Smith, a lawyer, award-winning author and a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism, wrote at First Things earlier this year:
The threats against religious freedom in the United States have become so acute that five major Catholic organizations have formed the Catholic Health Care Leadership Alliance (CHCLA), a nonprofit coalition dedicated to defending the right of Catholic hospitals, nursing homes, and other institutions—as well as Catholic doctors, nurses, and pharmacists—to provide care and treatment in accordance with the moral precepts of the Catholic Church. The primary mission of the CHCLA will be to act as a clearinghouse for threats to Catholic healthcare and coordinate an effective response through political and democratic engagement. The CHCLA will also work to evangelize, educate, and provide mutual support for patients and professionals.
Pro-life leaders feared President Joe Biden would work to dismantle religious freedom for pro-life medical workers after his administration dropped a lawsuit last year defending a pro-life nurse who allegedly was forced into aborting an unborn baby. The Vermont nurse said she was tricked into helping with an elective abortion even though the doctors knew her objections; she said they told her she would be helping with a miscarriage.
