Posted on 01/03/2014 9:09:40 AM PST by NYer
On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued an order preventing the government from enforcing the Obamacare contraceptive mandate on the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Sotomayor’s decision to delay the contraceptive portion of the law was joined by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which also issued an emergency stay for Catholic-affiliated groups challenging the contraceptive provision, including the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., and Catholic University.
Separately, Lawyer Noel J. Francisco had said in appeals to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan that the mandate would “expose numerous Catholic organizations to draconian fines unless they abandon their religious convictions and take actions that facilitate access to abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization for their employees and students.”
In December of 2012, I reported that the Little Sisters of the Poor saw the very real threat of having to leave their apostolate in the United States if they could not gain an exemption from the HHS mandates on contraception and abortion coverage through the Affordable Care Act.
This morning, Matt Bowman brought to light the moral dilemma facing the Little Sisters of the Poor, and the reason why they can’t simply sign the required form designating a third party administrator to do, for lack of any other way of putting it, the dirty work for them:
Obamacare says that when an entity is in a self-insured plan, like the Little Sisters are, they must file a certification form. But it’s not like other certification forms that the rule requires. It does not merely express their religious objections. The form also, specifically and additionally, “designates” their “third party administrator” to go get the abortifacient and birth control payments. As I explained at Mirror of Justice, in a message posted by Prof. Marc DeGirolami:
The final regulation even points out that this added language is legally operative: the designation words themselves are what cause the TPA’s obligation to go get the coverage. Without the designation telling the TPA to go get that coverage, the TPA wouldn’t have any duty to be involved. … So it’s important to observe that for self-insured religious non-profits, there’s a “certification,” but there’s also a “designation”…. The designation is, by definition, an act of contracting and arranging for the coverage.
The government even conceded, in Cardinal Wuerl’s lawsuit, that “in the self-insured case, technically, the contraceptive coverage is part of the plan.” It’s not separate.
And yet today, the Associated Press is reporting that the Justice Department is now pressuring Justice Sotomayor to dissolve her stay. They are, it appears, using the same arguments:
The Justice Department Friday called on Justice Sonia Sotomayor to dissolve her stay on the contraceptive coverage requirement of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
The government says religious nonprofit groups can certify that they don’t want to provide contraceptive coverage. A group of Catholic nuns who run nursing homes sued, saying even signing that form violates their beliefs.
Government lawyers say the nuns’ insurance is a “church plan” that is not required to provide contraception coverage and has decided not to, so they have no legal basis to complain.
This relentless pursuit by the administration to gain acquiescence from religious institutions which morally object to the mandate is nothing short of religious persecution. It would be remarkable that the most progressive administration in US history is also the most intolerant, if history didn’t show us where the progressive path leads those nations that choose to follow it.
It is not difficult to believe that the NSA had, and used, the goods on John Roberts.
thanks for clearing it up....
Do not also forget about Roberts all thought HE was a constitutionalist
juror and look what happened! Do not also forget the Catholic Church
was totally behind this health care law UNTIL THEY got bitten by the
fleas from the dog they laid down with! I believe Sotomayor is probably
a Catholic first, Catholic church BELIEVES in social justice, just not
birth control! I am Catholic and have many ill feeling where the church is
concerned!
OBAMACARE IS ANOTHER OF OBAMA’S HIDEOUS MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE POLICY ON ABORTION.
“Obama, the man who is carrying out the slaughter of the innocents with the same enthusiasm as Herod and Pharaoh calls for us to find a way to live together as one human family. “
THE BLOWBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Exclusive: Joseph Farah flays Obama
for lecturing Catholics about abortion
May 18, 2009
By Joseph Farah
________________________________________
As if to rub salt in the wound opened by Notre Dame’s invitation to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree yesterday, Barack Obama lectured Catholics about abortion.
He said it’s time for common ground on the issue and an approach to the life-and-death debate with “open hearts, open minds and fair-minded words.”
I suppose that’s understandable.
If I were presiding over a public policy that called for the murder of unborn babies for any reason or no reason at all, that provided mandatory public funding of those procedures both domestically and in foreign countries, that required doctors and nurses to perform abortions even if they were conscientiously opposed, that permitted experimentations on living human embryos, that promoted even partial-birth abortions outside the womb and that called for the extermination of infants who somehow defied all the odds and managed to survive efforts to kill them before birth, I guess I would want to frame the debate in such a way as to diminish the hideous monstrousness of my morally indefensible.
He doesn’t really want people who recognize what abortion is to approach the debate with “open hearts.” He wants us to harden our hearts.
We won’t do that.
The only hearts and minds being opened in this debate and the hearts and minds of little innocents – sliced open surgically in the most barbaric fashion because of activist judges exceeding their authority and morally bankrupt politicians like Obama and his cohorts in the Congress.
These are the most “fair-minded words” I can muster to describe Obama’s efforts at soft-pedaling his own bloody and extremist policies on abortion.
Obama said: “Each side will continue to makes its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.”
Let me translate this for you.
“Now that my side in this debate is in control of all the levers of power and is enforcing its will on the other side, it’s time for a nice civil dialogue on abortion.”
That’s what Obama would like.
Let me be the first to say, “No way, buster!”
You want to kill babies? You’re going to have to accept the consequences of righteous moral indignation. You’re going to have to accept being called out for what you are doing. You’re going to have to accept the conviction that comes with the abomination of child sacrifice. Your going to have to accept being labeled for what you are.
Obama even acknowledged he knows what this debate is all about – characterizing abortion as a “heart-wrenching” decision for any woman.
Why is abortion a “heart-wrenching” decision for a mother?
Because it’s a decision to kill one’s child – materialistic reasons, for reasons of convenience.
It should be “heart-wrenching” to decide to kill one’s child.
Obama’s policies are meant to remove the guilt, remove the consequences of irresponsible decisions, remove the issue of right and wrong, remove even the “choice” of those who disagree with him not to participate in any way in the slaughter at the altar of Baal.
“We must find a way to live together as one human family,” he said in closing.
That’s quite a statement.
The man who is carrying out the slaughter of the innocents with the same enthusiasm as Herod and Pharaoh calls for us to find a way to live together as one human family.
How do we learn to live together as one human family when our offspring are being sacrificed to false gods and man-made religions?
How do we learn to live together as one human family when it means accepting coercion into active participation in the worst kind of evil perversion?
How does one live with oneself if it means tolerance of the intolerable?
No, I won’t play that game.
No, I won’t play by Obama’s rules.
The Judicial Branch has become Legislative and totally ignore the Constitution in their rulings. The Executive Branch has become Legislative. The Legislative Branch only seem to care about status quo and their "phony baloney jobs". The States and the People try rein in the madness only to get overturned by Federal Courts. The endgame is here. What will it be?
And Amish I believe are exempt.
If they are really pressuring her it would not turn up in this article.
She’d be getting dead fish in the mail, or a menacing visit from a man in a trenchcoat in the parking lot, or whatever they did to John Roberts.
Then why did the nuns waste their time and effort to sue if they were told they didn't have to provide the coverage? Can all church organizations go to a "church plan" and forgo the contraceptive coverage?
The Obama administration is not set up for compromise. In light of the Catholic church’s focus on “social justice” and it’s support of Obamacare until their own oxen were gored, one would expect the Catholic hierarchy to resume full-throated endorsement of Obamacare if only they could exempt themselves from providing abortions.
And yet the Obama administration treats the Catholixs as it does all other non-Islamic religions.
Thank you. You’d think if all those sects are exempted for their religious beliefs Christians can be, too.
Obama can’t tell Sotomayor what to say or do.
Three branches of government totally separate:
Judicial
Legislative
Executive
I read on another thread that if even one sentence is changed it all needs to go back to Congress and get voted on again........supposedly.
Dershowitz: ‘Brilliant’ Case Led to Obamacare Contraception Delay
The case brought before the Supreme Court that led Justice Sonia Sotomayor to delay the Obamacare contraception mandate for religious groups was “brilliant,” Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz said on Thursday.
“The lawyers picked a brilliant, brilliant case to bring in front of Justice Sotomayor ... What could be more sympathetic to anybody, whether you’re Catholic or not Catholic?” Dershowitz asked on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV.
“Justice Sotomayor grew up basically in the shadow of that kind of teaching — and these are nuns, who say they can’t violate their own religious principles,” he said.
Thank you for the posted link and ping. Obamacare should have been struck down by the Supreme Court .. period! The fact that we have selfless nuns begging for an exemption from the HHS mandate while Muslims are exempted because they believe that health insurance is “haraam” (forbidden), makes absolutely no sense. The Little Sisters of the Poor are just that ... poor! They visit parishes, begging for the funds needed to care for the poorest of the poor. Perhaps Obama views their work as competitive. The big difference is that they do this out of love for Christ vs the government who does it for votes.
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