Pro-Life Victory over Obamacare’s Abortion-Pill Mandate
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE August 31, 2015 |
CONTACT: Ryan Hughes Shirley & Banister Public Affairs 703-739-5920/800-536-5920 rhughes@sbpublicaffairs.com |
Court says Government can’t force organization to Act Contrary to Pro-Life Beliefs |
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| WASHINGTON – A federal court issued an order Monday in March for Life v. Burwell that permanently prohibits the Obama administration from enforcing its abortion-pill mandate on the pro-life organization, founded with the sole purpose of ending abortion. The order is the first one to be granted in favor of an organization opposed to the mandate for pro-life reasons based on science and moral convictions rather than religion.
March for Life, which holds its well-known pro-life march each year in Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit through the Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys in July 2014 and requested a permanent injunction against the mandate. The mandate forces employers, regardless of their moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and devices under threat of heavy financial penalties through the IRS. “We are delighted that the court has ruled in our favor on this crucially important case,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said of the ruling. “The government should not be allowed to force organizations like the March for Life to have health insurance with drugs and devices that can cause an abortion. We didn’t want to go to court but were backed into a corner and had no other options. As an American today I am grateful for the balance of powers. I am also deeply grateful for Alliance Defending Freedom and Matt Bowman working on our behalf this past year. ” “Pro-life organizations should not be forced into betraying the very values they were established to advance,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “This is especially true of March for Life, which was founded to uphold life, not to assist in taking it. The government has no right to demand that organizations provide health insurance plan options that explicitly contradict their mission.” “If the purpose of the religious employer exemption is, as HHS states, to respect the anti-abortifacient tenets of an employment relationship, then it makes no rational sense-indeed, no sense whatsoever to deny March for Life that same respect,” explains the decision. The March for Life in Washington, D.C., began as a small demonstration on January 22, 1974, the first anniversary of the now-infamous Supreme Court decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and rapidly grew to be the largest pro-life event in the world. The peaceful demonstration that has followed on this somber anniversary every year since is a witness to the truth concerning the greatest human rights violation of our time, abortion. Jeanne Mancini, President of March for Life Education and Defense Fund, is available for interviews. For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Ryan Hughes at RHughes@SBPublicAffairs.com or (703) 739-5920. ### |
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