Liberals are obsessed with using their power in office to punish people dedicated to their faith. Take nuns, for example.
Last week, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, representing the Biden administration, filed an appeal that would force the Religious Sisters of Mercy and the Catholic Benefits Association, faith-based hospitals and their providers, to perform transgender surgeries without religious objections.
Becerra is appealing a February ruling wherein a federal court in North Dakota said HHS’s “interpretation of Section 1557 that requires the Catholic Plaintiffs to perform and provide insurance coverage for gender-transition procedures violates their sincerely held religious beliefs without satisfying strict scrutiny under the [Religious Freedom Restoration Act].”
Sound familiar? This is the second time Becerra has doggedly pursued Catholic nuns: The Little Sisters of the Poor battled his attempts to force it to provide contraceptives, a direct violation of its religious beliefs, for years, all the way to the Supreme Court. Becerra was obsessed with proving the Obama administration’s Affordable Healthcare Act’s contraceptive mandate applied even to the group.
Becerra became bedeviled by the idea that of all the places in America for women to receive contraception, they would need to go to nuns and that these women, who have set themselves apart from culture to live purely and to dedicate themselves to the poor and needy in society, would need to be forced to provide a product that contradicts their life’s mission. The concept is so asinine and the lawsuits so relentless, it became absurd. It still is.
Now, it’s happening all over again, this time with abortion. Late Friday, several orders of Catholic and Anglican nuns, Catholic dioceses, Christian churches, and faith-based social justice ministries petitioned the Supreme Court to hear their case against New York’s abortion mandate. This diverse group of religious organizations sued New York because its Department of Financial Services requires that all employers cover abortions in their health insurance plans.
This, too, reverts back to Barack Obama’s 2011 Health and Human Services contraceptive mandate. In 2017, New York created a similar mandate, but this requires abortion coverage. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represents the religious organizations, as it did the Little Sisters of the Poor. Eric Baxter, an attorney at Becket, explained:
These diverse religious organizations have deeply held religious beliefs on the sanctity of life. If the NY mandate is allowed to stand, they face crippling fines totaling millions of dollars per year for upholding their beliefs. https://t.co/tny7QTINxq
— Eric Baxter (@esbax) April 23, 2021
There should be a religious exemption in provisions like this. We should also make liberal politicians explain why they continually want to force religious people to bake the cake, provide the contraception, or cover the abortion. Schadenfreude is not good enough. Years of litigation and attorneys’ fees follow these lawsuits around; they are taxing and unconstitutional.
I have an inkling as to why progressives keep doing this, why they won’t, for the love of God, just leave nuns alone. What nuns represent is anathema to liberals’ worldview — other religious groups too, of course, but especially nuns, who have become representative of these lawsuits, a kind of mascot of pious fortitude and holy grit.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Whatever the reasoning, it’s unacceptable: It’s time Democrats leave nuns alone for good.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
