On August 22 — a Friday, of course — the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services issued a brand-new version of the Obamacare contraception mandate supposedly "accommodating" organizations with religious belief-based objections to providing such coverage.
The new version is a facile variant of the subterfuge the Obama administration failed to slide by the Court in the recent Hobby Lobby case. It now says that organizations which oppose providing their employees abortifacient contraceptive coverage can notify the government of their objections; previously, objectors informed their insurers. The government will then tell the insurance companies to pay any claims involved. Anyone can see that nothing has substantively changed, and that affected employers are still associating themselves with practices they believe are abhorrent. Nevertheless, CNBC's Dan ("Obama-who-cares") Mangan described the administration's move as a "compromise."
Well, Dan, it's such a "compromise" that the Obama administration has, as Steven Ertelt at Life News tells us, resumed its aggressive legal efforts to enforce the mandate on the Little Sisters of the Poor (links are in original; bolds are mine):
Obama Admin Renews Attempt to Force Little Sisters of the Poor to Obey HHS Mandate
The Obama administration has renewed its attempt to force a Catholic religious order, the Little Sisters of the Poor, to comply with the HHS abortion mandate. The mandate compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions.
The Obama administration announced today it will continue its legal battle against the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order of nuns dedicated to serving the neediest elderly in society. This comes despite the fact that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby and another company in their bid to stop the HHS mandate.
The government is still trying to force the nuns to either violate their deeply held religious convictions or pay crippling fines to the IRS.
“Religious ministries in these cases serve tens of thousands of Americans, helping the poor and homeless and healing the sick. The Little Sisters of the Poor alone serve more than ten thousand of the elderly poor. These charities want to continue following their faith. They want to focus on ministry—such as sharing their faith and serving the poor—without worrying about the threat of massive IRS penalties,” said Adele Keim, Counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the Little Sisters.
Keim told LifeNews: “The government has already exempted millions of Americans from this requirement for commercial or secular reasons, so it should certainly protect the Little Sisters for religious reasons.”
Keim said today’s developments at a federal appeals court in Denver are the latest stage in the government’s attempt to force the Little Sisters and other charities serving the needy to comply with the HHS Mandate. Although the Supreme Court previously required the Little Sisters to do nothing more than notify the government of their religious objection, the government issued new regulations last month in an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s order.
“Merely offering the Little Sisters a different way to violate their religion does not ease their conscience,” said Keim.
In late June, the Supreme Court ruled that the mandate's previous version violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1994, and that the government couldn't enforce it against privately held Hobby Lobby Corporation, whose owners had objected to the mandate because it violates their religious beliefs. But, as Matthew Clark at RedState wrote on August 22, "The Obama Administration is not one to let a mere Supreme Court decision get in the way of its radical pro-abortion agenda."
Not that anyone should be surprised, but Team Obama's attempt at legal despotism is not news at the Associated Press or the New York Times. It's not unreasonable to believe that both of these entities would prefer that the American people know as little as possible about the administration's continued defiant, in-your-face, lawless conduct.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
