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Kavanaugh Tells Senate That Government Can’t Force Christian Groups to Pay for Abortions
LIFE NEWS ^ | September 6, 2018 | Steven Ertelt

Posted on 09/06/2018 7:36:08 PM PDT by Morgana

During questioning today by pro-abortion Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono, Judge Brett Kavanaugh defended his decision in a key case ruling against the Obama HHS mandate that forced Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters of the Poor and other Christian-run businesses and organizations to fund abortion drugs in their employee health care plans.

Priests for Life, a pro-life organization, was one of many that filed suit against the mandate and Kavanaugh ultimately sided with Priests for Life in its case against the HHS abortion mandate.The appeals court judge indicated the mandate was a substantial burden against the pro-life group’s religious views because it would have fined the pro-life group thousands upon thousands of dollars for failing to pay for abortion drugs.

“When the Government forces someone to take an action contrary to his or her sincere religious belief (here, submitting the form) or else suffer a financial penalty (which here is huge), the Government has substantially burdened the individual’s exercise of religion. So it is in this case,” Kavanaugh wrote.

During her questioning, Sen. Hirono complained that his ruling put Kavanaugh in the position of elevating religions rights ahead of the so-called unlimited right to an abortion.

Doesn’t the ruling assert that “the freedom of religion clause supersedes other rights?” Hirono asked.

“I made it clear in the decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act has a two-part test,” he said about how the Obama HHS mandate violated federal laws protecting religious liberty.

Kavanaugh added, “I concluded that penalizing someone thousands and thousands of dollars for failing to fill out a form because of their religious beliefs was wrong.”

SIGN THE PETITION: Vote to Confirm Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh

During previous questioning, Kavanaugh made it clear that the pro-life businesses and groups in question were opposed to being forced to pay for “abortion-inducing drugs.”

Kavanaugh replied to pro-life Senator Ted Cruz: “In that case, they said filling out the form would make them complicit in the provision of the abortion-inducing drugs that they were, as a religious matter, objected to.”

Observers of the hearing on Twitter noticed the exchange:

Father Frank Pavone, National Director; Janet Morana, Executive Director, and Alveda King (niece of Martin Luther King, Jr.), full-time director of Civil Rights for the Unborn for Priests for Life, were named plaintiffs in the case. All of them informed LifeNews after his nomination that they support Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.

“Judge Kavanaugh understands the importance of religious liberty to all Americans,” Father Pavone said in comments to Lifenews. “That was clear in his dissenting opinion in our case, Priests for Life vs. HHS, which eventually made it to the Supreme Court. He’s exactly the kind of justice we need on the Supreme Court at this point in time.”

Sarah Pitlyk, a former law clerk to Judge Kavanaugh and special counsel for the Thomas More Society, which is a leading pro-life legal group, says Kavanaugh has an excellent record and perhaps the best record of any of the finalists president Trump is considering. As she writes about the Priests for Life case:

During the Obama administration, he voted in Priests for Life v. HHS to invalidate the so-called accommodation to the contraceptive mandate, which required religious organizations to sign a form facilitating access to contraceptives for their employees. Judge Kavanaugh was one of few federal judges (Neil Gorsuch was another) to hold that the law imposed a “substantial burden” on the organizations’ exercise of religious liberty, and one of even fewer to conclude that the contraceptive-mandate accommodation violated the law. The Supreme Court later vindicated his position by vacating decisions that upheld the contraceptive-mandate accommodation.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Front Page News; Government; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: abortion; brettkavanaugh; christians; kavanaugh; maga; prolife; scotus
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1 posted on 09/06/2018 7:36:08 PM PDT by Morgana
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To: Morgana

There is no so-called unlimited right to anything. In the comstitution or anywhere else.

Perhaps he should have countered her incorrect premise directly.


2 posted on 09/06/2018 7:39:25 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man ( Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Morgana

We need that man! He fights.

I wonder the Rats are spooked.


3 posted on 09/06/2018 7:43:40 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)
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To: Morgana
Here's the solution. Add a check box to the 1040 form, similar rules as the campaign donation check box.

You want some of your taxes to fund abortions? Check the box. If enough people check the box abortions are funded by them for the whole year, not by the people who think it's murder.

If not, only part of the year is funded. You think abortions are wonderful? YOU pay for them. If they are wonderful enough people will pay for them, out of their own taxes.

4 posted on 09/06/2018 7:53:37 PM PDT by null and void (McCain is dead but his ego lives on.)
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To: Liz

ping


5 posted on 09/06/2018 8:47:16 PM PDT by ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas (Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe)
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To: Morgana

Must be because the Government can’t force Christian Groups to pay for Abortions.


6 posted on 09/06/2018 8:49:07 PM PDT by Kickass Conservative (THEY LIVE, and we're the only ones wearing the Sunglasses.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

Why is there no “unlimited” right? Who can place restrictions? Can we trust that person or organization with placing those restrictions?


7 posted on 09/06/2018 9:19:30 PM PDT by wastedyears (The left would kill every single one of us and our families if they knew they could get away with it)
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To: goldstategop

Satan is spooked. Hence the circus horror show he’s throwing before the viewing public. The reversal of Roe v. Wade is something the forces of hell DREAD.


8 posted on 09/06/2018 9:29:44 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
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Some would say “honor killings” are a religious act. Will there come a time when they are justified?


9 posted on 09/06/2018 9:31:30 PM PDT by hoosiermama (When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.DJT)
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To: wastedyears

No one has unlimited rights to anything.

Constitution, or no constitution.

No one has an unlimited right to life, for example. You murder someone, you could be executed. IYou have o rigt to force anyone to save you from a potentially deadly situation you find yourself stuck in.

No one, not a single person, has unlimited rights to anything. Al rights have restrictions on them. All rights have limits of some kind attached to them.


10 posted on 09/06/2018 9:51:21 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man ( Gone Galt; Not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Morgana

If Mazie Hirono had her way, she would imprison Christians for refusing to pay for abortions, this I have no doubt about.

Later on down the line, her Satanic leftist henchmen would put bullets in the heads of the said Christians.


11 posted on 09/06/2018 10:03:15 PM PDT by bkopto
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To: Secret Agent Man

All I know is that my rights end where your nose begins

That is how it has always worked


12 posted on 09/06/2018 10:16:16 PM PDT by Trump.Deplorable
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To: All

Sen Mazie Hirono is confused, again?

SHE AND THE JUDICIAL COMMITTEE’S DEMOCRAT MINORITY ARE VERY CONCERNED THAT WOMENS’
“ABORTION RIGHTS” MIGHT BE WEAKENED BY JUDGE KAVANAUGH’S ASCENSION TO THE USSC:

Perhaps Judiciary Chair Sen Grassley might poll Sens Hirono, Feinstein, Booker, Harris, Durbin, Whitehouse,
and the rest, to determine which abortion-related right the Democrats are most concerned about:

<><> the right to have her aborted baby’s body part sold off for research?

<><> a women’s right to partial birth abortions whereby half-born babies are suctioned out, their brains and skulls crushed?

<><> a woman might lose the right to have the neck of her aborted baby born alive twisted off to make the body parts saleable?

<><> women might lose the right to the Gosnell technique—sticking a scissor in the neck of an aborted baby born alive to kill it?

<><> the right to have a late term abortion, baby born alive, be abandoned, and left to die all alone in a filthy garbage can?

<><> a woman’s right to have her unborn baby’s remains burned up in “large ovens”?

<><> a woman’s right to have her aborted baby hauled away in a cardboard box to a landfill?


Contact Sen Grassley-——Phone: (202) 224 - 3744. Fax: (202) 224-6020.

Call President Trump: Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414

US CONGRESS SWITCHBOARD: (202) 224-3121

U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

Comment Line: 202-353-1555
Switchboard: 202-514-2000


13 posted on 09/06/2018 10:31:31 PM PDT by Liz ( Our side has 8 trillion bullets; the other side doesn't know which bathroom to use.)
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To: Kickass Conservative

Don’t worry...
The 9th Circuit will rule against the Supreme Court.


14 posted on 09/06/2018 11:08:03 PM PDT by tcrlaf (They told me it could never happen in America. And then it did....)
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To: tcrlaf

Dilution is the solution for the sour taste at the 9th.


15 posted on 09/06/2018 11:39:19 PM PDT by ptsal
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To: Morgana

“Sen. Hirono complained that his ruling put Kavanaugh in the position of elevating religions rights ahead of the so-called unlimited right to an abortion”

Bizarro world.


16 posted on 09/07/2018 1:14:22 AM PDT by Eleutheria5 (“If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.)
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To: Secret Agent Man

And here I thought you were in favor of hate speech laws.


17 posted on 09/07/2018 2:22:38 AM PDT by wastedyears (The left would kill every single one of us and our families if they knew they could get away with it)
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To: bkopto
If Mazie Hirono had her way, she would imprison Christians for refusing to pay for abortions, this I have no doubt about.

Many of these demonic tyrants want compulsory abortions/birth control etc to address climate change.

18 posted on 09/07/2018 2:41:48 AM PDT by Theophilus (Repent)
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To: Theophilus

...If Mazie Hirono had her way, she would imprison Christians for refusing to pay for abortions, this I have no doubt about...

Democrats already want to put man made climate change deniers in prison. You must not and cannot disagree with liberals. When you do, there is a price to pay.


19 posted on 09/07/2018 4:17:45 AM PDT by Sasparilla ( I'm Not Tired of Winning)
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To: Secret Agent Man

:: All rights have limits of some kind attached to them. ::

Those limits are called “personal responsibility”.


20 posted on 09/07/2018 4:37:36 AM PDT by Cletus.D.Yokel (Catastrophic, Anthropogenic Climate Alterations: The acronym explains the science.)
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