Last week, the United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases where for-profit businesses (Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood) are challenging the constitutionality of the Obama Administration’s mandate that forces nearly all employers to include coverage in their health plan for female sterilization, and all forms of contraception, including those that can cause early abortions (i.e. “abortifacients”).
The mandate provides an extremely narrow religious exemption that does not include most non-profit religious employers such as hospitals, schools, and social service agencies or any for-profit businesses. Consequently, to date, 94 lawsuits have been filed against the mandate—47 by non-profit employers and 47 by for-profit employers.
Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood are for-profit businesses owned by Christians who oppose the mandate because it includes abortifacient drugs. Hobby Lobby was granted preliminary relief from the mandate by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Conestoga Wood was denied preliminary relief by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. This split ruling by two Appellate Courts is a major reason why the Supreme Court took these cases.
According to those who were in the Courtroom, the predominant conclusion is that the outcome of the ruling hinges on Justice Anthony Kennedy. Observers on both sides of the case seem to think that Kennedy is likely to strike down the mandate. This is based on a conclusion Kennedy drew from the government’s defense of the mandate: if a for-profit business can be forced to pay for contraception, Kennedy suggested, it can also be forced to pay for abortion.
As history has demonstrated, however, just because oral arguments seem to favor one side does not necessarily mean the ruling will favor that side. Furthermore, regardless of how the Court rules, it will likely only address the mandate as it applies to for-profit employers.
The Supreme Court may also, at some point, have to rule on the mandate as it applies to non-profit employers. So far, among the 47 lawsuits that have been filed by non-profit employers, 21 have had rulings on the merits of the case. Among these, 20 have received preliminary relief from the mandate and only 1 has been denied such relief. This is hopeful news given that Courts typically don’t grant initial relief unless they think the lawsuit has a good chance of success.
The reaction to these lawsuits by birth control and abortion activists is nothing short of delusional. President Obama picked this fight by forcing employers to provide and pay for sterilization and birth control (including abortifacients) regardless of their religious or moral objections, thereby trampling over the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion.
Birth control and abortion activists, however, want Americans to think that it is employers and Catholic bishops who are trying to impose their religious beliefs on Americans (aka the phony “war on women”). On the day of last week’s Supreme Court hearing, “Catholics for Choice” ran a newspaper ad in the Washington Post that asked, “Who in their right mind would want a woman’s boss in charge of her birth control?”
The ad goes on to accuse the Catholic bishops of “trying to use the courts to impose teachings they have failed to enforce from the pulpit. The bishops would have us redefine religious liberty to allow them to impose their religious views on all Americans, Catholic or not.”
So in the bizarre world of Catholics for Choice, President Obama isn’t the one who is doing the imposing, even though he is using a governmental edict and crippling fines to force compliance with the HHS mandate. Catholics for Choice thinks the imposing is being done by the Catholic bishops, the Little Sisters of the Poor and others who don’t want to provide or pay for services that are contrary to their religious beliefs.
How prophetic was the voice of Pope Paul VI who predicted in his encyclical Humanae Vitae that social embrace of contraception would eventually lead to government imposition of contraception.
