“Big Abortion is using Obamacare to coerce nearly all Americans into paying for deadly products,” said AUL’s Dr. Charmaine Yoest.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (03-06-13) – For the ninth time, the legal team at Americans United for Life is weighing in on the Constitutional failures of Obamacare. AUL President and CEO Dr. Charmaine Yoest announced that the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and AUL are both co-counsel and clients in an amicus curiae brief filed today in Liberty University v. Geithner, a broad challenge to the Affordable Care Act that the U.S. Supreme Court recently remanded to the Fourth Circuit for rehearing. Other clients in the case include Virginia Family Foundation, West Virginia Family Policy Council, Maryland Family Alliance, North Carolina Family Policy Council, and Palmetto Family Council.
“It is contrary to the founding principles of America to use the force of government to require people to violate their consciences and to punish citizens for acting on their beliefs,” said Dr. Yoest. “Obamacare is the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade. Big Abortion is using Obamacare to coerce nearly all Americans into paying for deadly products.”
Liberty University v. Geithner is a broad challenge to the Affordable Care Act. The University contends that the healthcare law violates First Amendment conscience rights through its funding of abortifacients and other practices. The University challenges the Employer Mandate, the HHS Mandate, and other oppressive mandates in the law. Central to the case is the inappropriate role HHS is playing in creating arbitrary and anti-faith regulations. And while the law exempts tens of millions from its coverage for many other reasons, HHS refuses to offer sufficient exemptions for reasons of freedom of conscience.
In the brief, ADF and AUL observe: “Yet, the HHS Mandate is but a symptom of the illness that is the Employer Mandate’s broad grant of power to HHS. So long as HHS holds this unprecedented power the threat to religious liberty will remain.”
Three times during hearings organized by the Institute of Medicine to create healthcare guidelines, AUL testified about possible violations of conscience rights that could occur through Obamacare.
AUL supports repeal of Obamacare because abortion is woven into the healthcare law at multiple levels, including:
- Failing to prohibit the use of federal tax dollars for abortion, abortion coverage, and abortion-inducing drugs and devices.
- Pretending that the Hyde Amendment protections were enough to prohibit direct payment for abortions.
- Permitting federally subsidized Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) to provide abortion coverage through the state insurance exchanges required in all 50 states.
- Failing to prohibit all multi-state qualified health plans from providing coverage for abortion.
- Including a “preventive care” mandate that is being used to force coverage of drugs and devices known to end life.
- Failing to provide comprehensive First Amendment conscience protections for individuals, employers, and insurance companies that have religious or moral objections to abortion.
Click here to read the brief.
