The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on Friday in the case of California churches against the state’s abortion coverage mandate.
“This is an ongoing injury,” said Jeremiah Galus, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, on behalf of churches before a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit.
Galus said that “each day that passes is another day that the churches are required to cover something that violates their sincerely-held religious beliefs.”
Alliance Defending Freedom is representing three Christian churches which challenged a California state mandate that they cover abortions in employee health plans. The churches are Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch.
The California Department of Managed Health Care in 2014 required employers to cover abortions in health plans.
According to the alliance, internal emails between the California department and Planned Parenthood reveal that the organization pushed the state to require abortion coverage by churches and religious groups. The state’s health department had initially not included religious groups in the abortion coverage mandate.
Karli Eisenberg, arguing for the state Nov. 20, claimed that the the health department director “inadvertently approved plans” that include abortion coverage, but when she realized the discrepancy, “reminded those noncompliant plans of their obligation to comply with preexisting state law.” The state, she said, includes abortion coverage as part of basic health services.
Pro-life groups and the California Catholic Conference filed legal motions against the 2014 mandate, and appealed to the Obama administration under the Weldon Amendment, a 2005 law that bars federal funding of states and localities that force health care entities to provide abortions. The administration said that the law had not been violated.
In January, the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services ruled that the state had violated the law, and threatened to withhold federal funds to California unless the state stopped forcing groups to cover abortion against their conscientious beliefs. The Missionary Guadalupanas of the Holy Spirit were one of two groups to file complaints with HHS.
In response, the state’s attorney general Xavier Becerra refused to comply with the federal demand.
On Friday, Alliance Defending Freedom argued that the abortion coverage mandate was “an unnecessary and unprecedented infringement on religious beliefs” that “warrants strict scrutiny.”
The above comes from a Nov. 20 story on the website of the Catholic News Agency.
Those of you who voted for Obama and fake Catholic Xavier Becerra, this is on you! Pro-aborts will stop at nothing to force compliance with baby killing on everyone. They have no shame, do you?
FHU is right, and just today, the MA legislature passed an infanticide act which removes the requirement for preserving an abortion survivor’s life. Really sick, and lots of people who post here vote for these kinds of lawmakers. Really really sick.
Becerra and Harris are the ones who first prosecuted David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt for exposing the selling of body parts from aborted children. The two of them eat their own.
In an average week, how many Church employees are seeking abortion?
Not the point, fake Latin moniker. No Catholic institution should be subject to the legal bullying of the abortion lobby.
Can we agree that baby killing is a horrific thing that no Catholic can ever accept?
The question comes down to this: is the individual female forced to get an abortion, or can she choose otherwise? I take umbrage in the title: it implies abortions are forced. Please add the word coverage for proper reporting. If one has issue with Planned Parenthood advocating for the coverage, should they see fault when the Catholic Church is doing the same, but advocating against said coverage? Or is it only when a lobbyist works against the at which you want that said lobbying is deemed evil? As for accepting or not accepting abortion as horrific, Fresh Hell spoke for Catholics, but implied such a view must be inherent in working at any Catholic institution. Can a Catholic woman at said institute who gets an abortion, does she have to report it to her employer, or simply confess it in confessional? Can she be fired?
wow
i got to live long enuf to see
the Catholic Church in USA
become an underground church
just like in the “good” old daze
Xavier Becerra, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, etc. all should have been excommunicated long ago. Church leaders first should take care of their own flocks, and lead and guide them properly. Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clerics all need to form America into a country, once again, of a people of Biblically-based, Judeo-Christian beliefs, morality, and values. Our “unalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence are from God, not Man– we are “One Nation Under God.” No other type of counterfeit religious beliefs or “values system” belongs in America, as her core foundation– – Marxist, Communist, atheist, agnostic, irresponsible, anarchist hippies, Muslim, etc. Promiscuity is a sin, and Abortion is Murder! Organizations like Planned Parenthood should be illegal.
Yes, Michael, because the Church is not advocating for the right to kill another human being. It is evil. Thank God no one exercised that right for you.
Abp. Gregory of the Washington, D.C. Archdiocese– soon to be made a Cardinal– announced that in his Archdiocese, President-elect Biden will not be denied Holy Communion. The USCCB task force on Biden is obviously useless.