Can you put a price on conscience? The Obama administration is trying to. And you might be surprised what they think a conscience goes for these days.
In Colorado, the Newland family just got its bill. For 50 years, the family owned and operated Hercules, an HVAC manufacturing company based in Denver. The Newlands have built the company into a one of the biggest and most successful of its kind in the country, and they’ve done it in accordance with the values of their faith.
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Across those five decades, the Newlands have been, and remain, dedicated to providing their employees with excellent pay and generous benefits. But, in accordance with their faith — which puts a premium on the value of life from the moment of conception — those benefits have stopped short of providing any health insurance that would cover abortion pills, sterilization and contraceptives.
Which is what brought them into a recent, high-profile conflict with the abortion pill mandate issued by the Obama administration. Federal officials offered the Newlands a clear choice: Ignore your faith and provide the abortion benefits, or pay millions in federal fines.
How many millions? Enough to bring the company to its knees and perhaps put it out of business entirely. That would cost more than 250 employees their jobs at a time when job creation would seem a greater priority than imposing secularist morality on Catholics.
The good news is that a federal judge knew a violation of the Newlands’ freedom of religion and conscience when he saw it. He issued an injunction on July 27, temporarily preventing the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate from being enforced against them.
In legal terms, it’s only a temporary solution, of course. If the Newlands don’t ultimately prevail, the crippling fines will be back and could put them out of business. More than that, the family will be forced to violate the very values that have been a huge part of making its business a success.
That’s the main reason the Newlands felt compelled to challenge the mandate in court — and so far, the court agrees. It held that the administration’s alleged public interest “pales in comparison” with the violence done to this family’s religious freedom. And it noted that the government’s selective application of Obamacare to some groups and not others “completely undermines” its supposedly compelling interest to justify violating religious beliefs.
The Newlands, like many other business owners across the country, simply are not prepared to trade their souls in an effort to comply with a mandate they and millions of others view as an affront to liberty. They see no reason why the right to exercise their constitutionally protected freedom of conscience should come with a bill from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius attached.
That bill puts a price tag on freedom that this nation’s founders never would have imagined. Nor should we. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing the Newlands argue rightly that the abortion pill mandate does violence to both the success of their company and the convictions of its owners’ conscience — and that enforcing the abortion pill mandate will diminish the freedom of all individuals and business owners, regardless of their views.
Freedom never comes without cost. But that cost should be measured in personal sacrifice for the protection of liberty, not the imposition of huge fines to erase it.
Michael J. Norton is a former United States attorney who currently serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Hercules Industries in federal court.
