When the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate went into effect in 2012, the Obama people wanted the vast majority of companies and private institutions to comply.
Even if you were an independent Christian hospital, orphanage, homeless shelter or another religious organization, you were not exempt from the rule that your employee health insurance plan had to cover the cost of contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.
Even the Little Sisters of the Poor were denied an exemption.
Founded in France in 1839, the Little Sisters of the Poor is a Catholic order of nuns that runs retirement and nursing homes for the elderly poor in more than 30 countries — with 27 residences in the United States.
The Sisters rely on private charity, not government funding.
They ask for nothing from the government but the freedom to celebrate their vows of poverty and service as they bathe the weak, clothe the forgotten and provide loving hospice care and prayer as their elderly residents draw their final breath.
The Sisters believe in the dignity of all life, including the unborn, and cannot in good conscience provide health insurance for their employees that covers contraceptives.
The Obama people told the Sisters not to worry — that they could avoid the plan’s crushing fines by signing an opt-out form.
The form relieved the Sisters of covering the cost of contraceptives for employees.
However, once signed, the form still required the Sisters’ insurer to provide contraception — with the insurer or the government covering the cost.
In the Sisters’ view, signing that form would be no different from authorizing contraception.
It would be like telling a nurse who believes euthanasia is a sin that she doesn’t have to give the injection — just fill the syringe with cyanide and hand it to the doctor.
In 2013, the Sisters sued.
It was David vs. Goliath — humble nuns vs. big government forcing them to violate their faith.
The Obama people acknowledged that religious freedom is guaranteed by the Constitution.
But they also treated access to contraception as a right that trumped the Sisters’ right to be excused from their Obamacare mandate.
The Sisters hunkered down for a long court battle.
In 2016, with the help of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, their case (Zubik v. Burwell) reached the Supreme Court, but it was sent back without a final decision.
But in 2020, the Sisters won a 7-2 Supreme Court decision that affirmed their right to an exemption.
That ruling also upheld the Trump administration’s broader regulations, which had codified a permanent exemption for religious nonprofits like the Sisters.
That should have ended the matter. But big government rarely takes no for an answer.
Earlier this month, a hairsplitting Obama-appointed federal judge ruled that the Trump-era religious exemption was “arbitrary and capricious” and therefore invalid.
The judge insisted her decision wasn’t about religious liberty at all — that her gripe was not with the substance of the Trump regulations, but with how they were drafted.
If you believe that, I have an Obamacare policy I’ll sell you that will save you thousands — and let you keep your doctor, too.
Up against endless government meddling, the Sisters fight on — not just for their freedom, but for ours.
God bless the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Find Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny YouTube videos of his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at Tom@TomPurcell.com.
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