Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Another Dems for Life Brief on the Abortifacient Aspect of the HHS Mandate
As I mentioned a while back, Democrats for Life and former Congressman Bart Stupak are filing amicus briefs in various lawsuits against the HHS mandate. The briefs, on which I am working, argue that the nation's distinctively strong tradition of protecting conscientious objections to facilitating abortions should extend to the objections to mandated insurance coverage of Ella and Plan B. The latest brief (here) is in Conestoga Wood Specialities v. Sebelius (Third Circuit), a case brought by devout Mennonites who run a business and object to abortion though not to contraception in general. The brief argues that the district court's denial of a preliminary injunction is
irreconcilable with our tradition of protecting health-care-related conscience in the commercial sphere—in particular the strong tradition, under federal and state laws, of protecting objections to abortion. Protections for objections to facilitating abortion have extended to multiple categories of for-profit entities and individuals engaged in commerce, and to many kinds of indirect facilitation, including mandatory coverage of abortion in insurance plans. When impositions are repeatedly prohibited under various conscience provisions, they cannot be dismissed as “insubstantial” burdens under RFRA.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2013/03/another-brief-on-the-abortifacient-aspect-of-the-hhs-mandate.html
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the
comment feed
for this post.
It's my understanding that even some pro-lifers have concluded that Plan B is not an "abortifacient." In making a claim for an exemption on religious grounds in a case like this, to what extent is the evidence for the claim relevant? If a religious organization providing insurance were to seek an exemption from providing antibiotics on the grounds that they are abortifacients, would the fact that nobody but the religious group in question actually believed them to be abortifacients be a consideration? Or would challenging a sincere (but scientifically unsupported) belief by the religious group be considered an infringement of the group's right to define its own beliefs?