HHS mandate flouts religious freedom

There’s nothing more fundamental to American exceptionalism than our First Freedom — our freedom of religion. The Obama administration’s mandate that employers, including religious institutions, provide insurance coverage for abortion-producing drugs, sterilizations and contraception is a threat to this freedom.

This category of “preventive services” includes drugs that not only prevent conception but also those, like Plan B, that can destroy human life. Americans of different faiths, organizations as well as individuals, oppose some or all of these drugs and services on religious or moral grounds. Requiring that employers who have religious or moral objections pay for these services forces them to choose between their beliefs (and resulting penalties) and providing insurance coverage for employees.

Neither the Obama administration’s spin nor its smoke-and-mirrors revision can hide what is really going on here.

They first said that the original mandate would not apply to churches. The First Amendment, however, has no limitation. It applies to individuals as well as other religious organizations, which operate thousands of charities that help millions of vulnerable Americans and have the same constitutional right to religious liberty though they are not “churches.”

The Obama administration next said it would delay the mandate for nonchurch religious groups for one year — while still requiring them to refer employees for contraceptive services over that time. This is a double insult to religious liberty. It gives people of faith 12 months either to change or to violate their religious beliefs.

That choice is unacceptable. Religious beliefs that counsel against facilitating these services through insurance will hardly allow facilitating them by referral.

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