The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is calling out the Biden administration for trying to force taxpayers to fund contraception drugs that can cause early abortions through a proposed rule change to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
The rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has not been implemented yet, but pro-life advocates believe the Biden administration likely will start enforcing it soon as part of its radical pro-abortion agenda.
According to the Catholic News Agency, the bishops said the rule would force most employers to cover abortion-causing drugs for free in their employee health plans – even if the employer is a pro-life organization.
Obamacare requires most employers to cover all forms of contraception, including types like the emergency contraceptive drug Ella, that can kill unborn babies in their earliest stage of life. However, the Trump administration created a rule that provides exemptions for employers who have moral or religious objections.
The Biden administration’s proposal would eliminate exemptions for employers with moral objections and, in the case of religious exemptions, foist the cost of the drugs onto American taxpayers instead through a special “accommodation,” according to CNA.
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Here’s more from the report:
The bishops have a significant concern with the new accommodation process as well.
“While some improvements that we’ve won in the past several years are likely to be kept in this new version (especially for religious organizations), it is still based on a harmful pro-contraception and anti-life philosophy that is bad for society,” the statement read. “Also, it leaves the door open to a so-called ‘accommodation’ process like the one the Little Sisters of the Poor fought against for so many years.”
The rule recently went through a required 60-day public comment process. The HHS must review the comments before implementing the rule.
For most pro-lifers, the problem with the HHS contraception mandate is not the contraception coverage. Instead, they object to the mandate that employers cover all forms of contraception, including types that can abort unborn babies early in pregnancy, in their employee health plans.
For example, the owners of the craft store chain Hobby Lobby only objected to covering four of the more than 20 forms of contraception required under the mandate because those four may abort unborn babies. The company sued the federal government and won at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014.
In a statement earlier this year, HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said one of the Biden administration’s major goals is to expand access to contraception in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned.
“If this rule is finalized, individuals who have health plans that would otherwise be subject to the ACA preventive services requirements but have not covered contraceptive services because of a moral or religious objection, would now have access,” Brooks-LaSure said.
The Biden administration and Democrat leaders have been working aggressively to expand the killing of unborn babies in abortions. Recently, Biden ended long-standing safety requirements for abortion drugs and began allowing pharmacies to sell them.
For nearly 50 years under Roe, abortions destroyed more than 64 million unborn babies in abortions. Only now that Roe has been overturned may states again protect the right to life for all human beings, born and unborn.
Two new polls show growing public support for legal protections for unborn babies. A Marist College poll found 69 percent of Americans support limiting or banning abortions, up from 62 percent in June. Another new poll from UMass Amherst found a 5-percent drop in those who say Congress should pass a law to make abortions legal nation-wide and a 6-percent increase in support for a national abortion ban, WCVB News reports.
