Priests for Life Press Release Re: Federal Lawsuit
The Obama administration's mandate for employers to pay for coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization does not just affect Churches, religious groups, and health care institutions; it affects virtually all health care plans and all employers, across the board.
We at Priests for Life are opposing this mandate as employers, not as a religious group. Religious freedom is not a right just of religious groups; it's a right of every American.
Moreover, the exemption for this mandate is so narrow that we have been informed by legal counsel that we do not even qualify for it.
When the announcement was made last month that the government was neither changing the rule nor expanding the exemption for those who object, but rather merely giving a year's extension to those who qualify for the exemption, we knew we had to act immediately.
For our corporation, this mandate goes into effect for us this August of 2012, not next year.
Moreover, we don't need a year, nor do we need a moment, to determine what we are going to do, or to "adapt" to the rule. The rule is unjust. You don't adapt to injustice; you oppose it.
That's why we're launching a federal lawsuit against the Obama Administration to block the enforcement of this mandate on us, and to declare it unconstitutional.