When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare on June 28, supporters immediately pronounced “game over” on the fight against President Obama’s abortion pill mandate as well. Their thinking was that since the overall health care act had been upheld, the mandates and rules proceeding from it had been upheld, too.
But such is not the case. The fight against the abortion pill mandate is a fight for religious freedom, whereas the ObamaCare case revolved primarily around the constitutionality of the health care legislation as a whole.
Freedom of conscience itself is at stake with the abortion pill mandate.
This means the door is still open for the challenges that have been brought against the mandate heretofore, and those challenges are proceeding as planned.
It is now clearer than ever that ObamaCare doesn’t just impose new taxes on the wallets of the American people, but new taxes on their consciences as well.
Therefore, Alliance Defending Freedom and others are fighting in court to stop the president’s mandate from being implemented. And we are confident that in a religious freedom case, where this conscience-binding mandate is on trial, the court will hold that the mandate—which forces even religious employers to provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception—violates the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
At present, Planned Parenthood and others are trying to win support in the public arena by using propaganda to misinform the people about what the court’s ruling did and didn’t mean—especially with regard to the ongoing opposition to the mandate. Planned Parenthood has hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake in this contest, perhaps even millions.
Remember, because the mandate forces employers to buy insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives—all things which Planned Parenthood will provide for a fee under the mandate—there is a tremendous amount of profit to be made if you’re the number one abortion provider in the land.
To put it plainly, Planned Parenthood is not only an ideological supporter of the mandate, but actually has a fortune to gain from its implementation.
So the fight goes on. And we believe that the very court that upheld ObamaCare will strike down the abortion pill mandate as unconstitutional.
Every American should see the mandate for what it is—a broadside against our first liberty. And if we allow that constitutionally guaranteed liberty to be tossed out by executive fiat, there is really no liberty at all.