Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
In Burwell v. Hobby, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the contraceptive mandate in Obamacare violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Specifically, the court contended that closely held corporations cannot be required to provide contraception coverage. Until that point, only religious non-profits were exempt from the mandate.
Life News reports that despite the Hobby Lobby ruling, the Obama administration is still pushing religious businesses to offer coverage that includes drugs that might cause abortions. Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life President, spoke with Life News:
Defending the First Amendment conscience rights of Americans, Americans United for Life filed two amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) briefs today in the Fifth and Eighth Circuits challenging the Obama Administration’s anti-life edicts in Obamacare.
Yoest tells LifeNews that the Obama administration didn’t back down in the face of the Hobby Lobby decision. Instead, Obama officials doubled down by releasing new guidelines for how employers who object to the abortion mandate because of their religious views can supposedly opt out. The problem is that the new guidelines just repeat the previous ones and offer no accommodation for employers who don’t want to pay for abortion-causing drugs.
Last week, we blogged about the administration’s so-called accommodation to the mandate. Religious non-profits and companies may opt out. The problem is, as Yoest says, they must release their insurance providers’ name and contact information to the government. The government alerts the providers that they must offer and pay for drugs the non-profits and companies object to. But the objectors want nothing to do with the drugs, whether they pay for them or not.
What’s strange about this government coercion is that birth control is readily available and relatively inexpensive. Women can buy Plan B, the so-called morning after drug, from Amazon. Why should employers have to deal with any of this?
Women and men who want to avoid pregnancy can either refrain from sex or go to the drug store and buy condoms, spermicides, or the sponge, or women can get a cheap birth control prescription.
