As reported by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, eight states have picked up where Obama left off.
“While some large for-profit companies like Exxon and Pepsi were exempt from the HHS contraceptive mandate requiring employers to cover free drugs and services that can destroy human embryos, the previous administration [Obama administration] refused to honor the request of faith-based nonprofits which objected both to the mandate and the accounting gimmicks imposed through regulations supposedly granting an ‘accommodation.'”
As Perkins asked, “Why should Catholic nuns be forced to cover contraceptive or embryo destroying drugs in their health plans?” However, President Obama’s insistence that they do so led to years of ongoing expensive litigation after the Little Sisters of the Poor stood their ground.
However, last May, President Donald Trump issued an executive order protecting religious freedom of faith-based groups from the unfair HHS mandate.
This last October, Trump’s administration issued new rules exempting the Little Sisters of the Poor and others from the mandate.
However, five states – California, Delaware, Maryland, New York, and Virginia – decided to pick up where President Obama left off, in denying the Little Sisters of the Poor their religious freedom, by filing a suit to force those who object, based on religious principles, to provide healthcare insurance covering for free abortifacient drugs and sterilization. Washington, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts are pursuing their own litigation. Another example of these pro-abortion politicians using state resources to persecute those who do not hold their immoral positions.
“The issue apparently is not a provision of contraceptives but rather preempting the choice of religious organizations like the Little Sisters from being able to choose healthcare plans and policies that reflect their religious beliefs,” states Perkins.
THE VIOLENCE OF RAPE IS NOT “CURED” BY ABORTION
A Trump administration official, Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), issued a memo stating that assisting an unaccompanied illegal immigrant minor in aborting her child was not in the girl’s best interests and that he could not authorize it. He stated: “Abortion does not here cure the reality that she is the victim of an assault,” reported lifesitenews.com.
The memo was filed in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU over whether HHS had the responsibility to assist and to pay for an abortion for an unaccompanied illegal immigrant minor in its care. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) pays the cost of abortion in cases of rape or incest. Last October the ACLU had obtained a court order requiring the Trump administration to pay for an abortion of a 17-year-old pregnant illegal immigrant, resulting in a 16-week-old unborn baby being destroyed.
In the memo, Lloyd stated he could not authorize the refugee settlement program to participate in the abortion request even in this most difficult case, stating: “I am mindful that abortion is offered by some as a solution to a rape. In fact, some would suggest that, by declining to assist in the abortion, we are in some way engaging in a form of violence against the mother, as in the notion that ORR is forcing her to carry her pregnancy to term.
“I disagree,” Lloyd said. “Implicit here are the dubious notions that it is possible to cure violence with further violence, and that the destruction of an unborn child’s life can in some instances be acceptable as a means to an end. To decline to assist in an abortion here is to decline to participate in violence against an innocent life.”
In response to the argument that abortion is justified as a form of self-defense, Lloyd concluded: “But this gets it wrong again. The child – the one who is destroyed – is not an aggressor. The aggressor, again, was the rapist.
“At bottom, this is a question of what is in the interest of the young woman and her child. Here there is no medical reason for abortion, it will not undo or erase the memory of the violence committed against her, and it may further traumatize her.
“In this request, we are being asked to participate in killing a human being in our care. I cannot direct the program to proceed in this manner. We cannot be a place of refuge while we are at the same time a place of violence. We have to choose, and we ought to choose to protect life rather than to destroy it.”
