Last week, to the surprise of conservatives and the chagrin of Obamacare fanatics, the Trump administration announced several broad exemptions to the Department of Health and Human Services mandate, one of the most controversial aspects of healthcare set in place during the Obama administration. Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate forced businesses, churches, and other non-profit organizations to provide contraception for their female employees, though it meant violating their religious beliefs. This case is unique because it addresses facets of religious liberty, healthcare, and government responsibilities.
This new HHS mandate, which is only an interim rule, provides an exemption for religious groups, including the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious charities, while maintaining the existing federal contraceptive mandate for most employers. This decision follows with the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Zubik v. Burwell, one of the most well known religious liberty cases of the last decade, which sprang from this mandate.
Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket (a non-profit religious liberty law firm) and lead attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor said of this interim rule: “HHS has issued a balanced rule that respects all sides — it keeps the contraceptive mandate in place for most employers and now provides a religious exemption. The Little Sisters still need to get final relief in court, which should be easy now that the government admits it broke the law.”
Several other non-profit organizations were thrilled with the ruling, particularly pro-life organizations, which oppose contraception. In a joint statement, March for Life President Jeanne Mancini and Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Gregory S. Baylor said:
Although organizations that filed civil rights lawsuits will still need final relief from the courts, it is encouraging to see the Trump Administration affirm the principle that all Americans should be free to peacefully live and work according to their faith and conscience without threat of government punishment. Access to contraception and other drugs and devices will continue to be as widely and readily available as it always has been for those who want these items. We commend the president for his commitment to freedom and restoring the choice of religious and pro-life employers and their female employees to work at organizations consistent with their convictions. We expect that the Department of Justice will work with us to quickly resolve these cases in a manner that fully and permanently protects the freedom of conscience of our clients.
The fact that this interim ruling or the lawsuit, Zubik v. Burwell, even had to be implemented at all demonstrates how absurd the HHS mandate was from the start. For the government to demand that companies provide healthcare to their employees seems overreach enough. To further demand they provide contraception, as if it were a human right, was not altruistic but authoritarian.
The HHS mandate provided insight into a true liberal mindset: The government acquiesces on individual rights (the right to abort) but only to a point; then it inserts itself appropriately (implementing a contraceptive mandate). If conservatives believe one person’s freedom ends where another’s nose begins, liberals believe one person’s freedom ends when, where, and how the government’s freedom decides to encroach.
Only a liberal would demand she could do whatever she wants with her body, including abort the unborn baby growing within her womb, even as she must succumb to the government’s demand to provide contraception to female employees without question or hesitation. She can’t see how fragile her rights are because she is too busy lobbying the government for healthcare provisions that will actually infringe on her freedoms.
Rolling back a slice of this HHS mandate is not only the most constitutional thing the Trump administration can do right now, but demonstrative of how liberals will take every freedom they can when they’re in power. It’s a blow to the Obama administration because the mandate was a blow to religious liberty — and it never should have existed.
Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award.
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