‘The new rule is a victory for common sense’

HHS mandate rolled back, Little Sisters exempted, government overreach revealed

Sheila Liaugminas | Oct 9 2017 | comment

Last Friday, the Trump administration issued new HHS mandate interim rules, finally giving relief to the Little Sisters of the Poor and many other religious and faith-based groups and institutions burdened by the Obama era mandate to provide contraception in their health care plans, or to pay prohibitively heavy fines if they didn’t.

They have been in courts on all levels in many states and at the federal level for the past five years to secure protection from coercion to violate their consciences over a “contraception delivery scheme” made up under the guise of “women’s preventive health care”.

In fact, the only thing it prevented was a healthy woman’s natural reproductive cycle.

Becket Law has represented many or most of those cases, and provided “HHS Central” info updates for years. Friday’s new rule changes provided the latest welcomed victory in a string of many.

The rule aligns with the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling last year protecting the Little Sisters in Zubik v. Burwell protecting the Little Sisters, which says the government cannot fine the religious groups for following their faith. The contraceptive mandate issue went to the Supreme Court five times, and each time the Supreme Court ruled in favor of protecting religious groups.
“The new rule is a victory for common sense,” said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel with Becket. “The previous administration pursued a needless and divisive culture war. It was always ridiculous to claim you need nuns to give out contraceptives. This new rule shows that you don’t.”

That it took a government administrative rule to override a previous administrative rule to prove the obvious is a sign of how far the dictatorship of relativism has reached in its grasp of public consciousness, or at least the control of public opinion by government, media, social media and entertainment media, all of which work together often to advance based more on ideology than science and fact.

For facts, this link is the best one-stop-source I’ve found so far, but I’m a footnote reader and you have to read the footnotes to appreciate the scope of research it covers.

In brief, it counters everything the Obama administration claimed in the original “Federal fiat” known as the HHS mandate, based on nothing demonstrable.

1) The HHS Mandate is ineffective, even counterproductive.
2) HHS has no meaningful data to support its claims that free contraception causes
improved women’s health.
3) The mandate is unconstitutional.
4) The Mandate is misleading and irresponsible regarding women’s health.
5) The Mandate is demeaning to women…

Each of those points has sub-points, deeply grounded in footnoted source documents, so everyone has access to the full truth to engage in robust public debate.

Becket Senior Counsel Mark Rienzi declared:

“It should be easy for the courts to finalize this issue now that the government admits it broke the law. For months, we have been waiting for Department of Justice lawyers to honestly admit that fact, like the President did in the Rose Garden five months ago,” said Rienzi. “Now that the agencies admit the mandate was illegal, we expect the leadership of the Department of Justice will cooperate in getting a final court resolution so the Little Sisters can stop thinking about lawyers and mandates and return to spending all their energies caring for the elderly.”
With an interim rule now in place, the ongoing court battles between religious groups and the federal government may be resolved soon. The interim rule acknowledges that the earlier mandate violated the Little Sisters’ religious liberty and that there are many other ways to obtain contraceptives.

And that’s another statement of the obvious. The Little Sisters of the Poor, and all the other groups defending their rights to religious liberty guaranteed under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, have not intended, nor tried, to take birth control away from women nor keep women from obtaining it in the myriad ways available to them before the Obama HHS mandate was issued 2011. (The fact sheet tells the fuller background story.

That’s common sense. So is this comment from a woman following coverage I provided on radio Friday with a Becket Legal Counsel about the new HHS rules restoring religious freedom and conscience rights to the Little Sisters and others by exempting them from having to provide birth control and other potentially abortifacent drugs, under the guise of health care.

I’ll never understand why insurance companies want to pay for medication that is not used to treat a disease or disorder but is given to try to “fix” something that works perfectly! Most contraceptives are elective and should not be covered. Women take them because they want to, not because they are sick.

Another said this, echoing many such expressions over the past five to six years.

What about the struggling mother who needs blood pressure meds, antibiotics, or other medication? Why mandate free birth control and no other meds? It doesn’t treat illness, but is a carcinogen that thwarts nature. There were just two reasons for the HHS mandate: population control and the elimination of freedom of conscience.

As courts have ruled, and the administration has now agreed, government had no right to compel people, groups, organizations or institutions to provide those birth control and emergency birth control medications. And as Mark Rienzi echoed, the new interim rule was a victory for common sense.

Sheila Liaugminas writes from Chicago. She is a journalist, author and host of A Closer Look on Relevant Radio.

October 9, 2017

Following an exposé by the New York Times of his sexual predation on female employees, Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein has been forced out of the company he co-founded. Mr Weinstein was one of the most powerful men in Tinsel Town, with a number of highly-praised films to his credit, including Shakespeare in Love, The King's Speech and Pulp Fiction. The question now seems to be: who knew about this and why didn't they denounce him earlier?

Everyone is disgusted with Weinstein, now at least. But perhaps one reason why those around him kept mum was that they didn't think his sleazy antics were really a big deal. As Carolyn Moynihan points out in her feature about campus rape culture (see below), American college students live in a hook-up culture where casual sex is common and cheap. Why shouldn't their attitudes seep into the business world as well?