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California Compels Church To Cover Abortions

Ben Smith Contributor
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The state of California is compelling churches to cover abortions, despite religious objections, or face the consequences from California’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC).

This new mandate comes in the face of the Supreme Court’s “Hobby Lobby” ruling, which argued that religious employers are exempt from providing several types of abortifacients to their employees. After this ruling, many on the left were enraged because of their belief that Hobby Lobby was a business, not a church, and wrong on the science, according to The Federalist.

Politicians on the left have long said churches would not be subject to these laws.

In a letter to the one of the churches involved, obtained by The Federalist, California’s DMHC argues that surgical abortion is “a medically necessary basic health care service for which all health care services plans must provide coverage under the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act.”

The letter goes on to state that, while the department recognized the religious exemptions at first, they are “now is requiring health care service plans to provide coverage of all terminations of pregnancies, effective immediately.”

Several churches involved are fighting back.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and the Life Legal Defense League filed a suit on behalf of seven churches across California. On the lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services, ADF senior counsel Casey Mattox claimed that, “California is flagrantly violating the federal law that protects employers from being forced into having abortion in their health insurance plans,” according to World Magazine.

In addition to this, Mattox argues that California is violating the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions with taxpayer money. “No state can blatantly ignore federal law and think that it should continue to receive taxpayer money,” Mattox continued.

The new regulations force the churches to cover surgical abortions, not chemical.