Last week the Obama Administration issued a set of rules and regulations it said would alleviate concerns Christians and others have about the mandate that employers–including many religious employers–pay for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs under the new healthcare law. The new rules, however, change little.
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has announced a federal appeals court granted an emergency motion for an injunction putting the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contraception mandate on hold, preventing it from being enforced against an Illinois business and its owners.
In a little over a year, many religious institutions will be forced to buy health insurance policies for their employees. Those policies are required, under a Department of Health and Human Services mandate, to include coverage for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs. Many institutions and individuals paying for these policies have sincere religious convictions against such things. The federal government, however, is planning to force them to purchase these insurance policies anyway. There is one significant problem with this decision by the government: A person’s right of conscience is an unalienable right, and our government can only stifle such rights in extremely specific circumstances.