Blog Post

HHS Approves Contraception Mandates

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Ryan Colby 202-349-7219 media@becketlaw.org

The Department of Health and Human Services released regulations on August 1 that require all health insurance policies in the country to include contraceptive coverage, which in HHS parlance also includes drugs that many religious people object to as abortifacients (e.g. the “Ella” drug). The regulations include an extremely narrow exemption for a limited class of religious employers. Becket Fund Founder Seamus Hasson stated:

“The Obama administration once again seems to be completely at sea when it comes to questions of religion and conscience. In crafting ‘protections’ for conscientious objectors from their new Obamacare regulations, they are limiting those who qualify to the narrowest class of institutions possible. And, even more incredibly they seem to think that only institutions and not individuals have consciences worth protecting. If you asked them whether Vietnam-era conscientious objectors from military service had to belong to recognized ‘peace churches’ to be exempt from the draft, the Obama-ites would surely get the answer right (“hell no, they didn’t go”). But just give the Obama-ites an example more foreign to their ethos—religion and contraception or abortion—and they get it all wrong.”