Last week, Nancy Pelosi called a religious freedom rule that allows the Little Sisters of the Poor to be exempt from paying for abortions and contraception that may cause abortions through their employee health insurance plans, “despicable.”
Pelosi describes herself as Catholic, yet she ironically argues against the religious freedom rights of the Catholic order of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor.
The Little Sisters of the Poor have been forced to fight in court for the past six years to be exempt from the Obamacare contraception mandate.
Abortionists from California and Pennsylvania forced the Little Sisters of the Poor back to Court in January of last year to overturn the protections issued by the Trump administration.
In the summer of 2017, the White House began taking steps to roll back the Obamacare birth control mandate as a part of Trump’s campaign promise to protect religious employers. In June of 2017, President Trump instructed federal officials to draft a rule that would allow religious employers to opt out of the Mandate in their healthcare options offered to their employees.
The Mandate requiring that all employers offer abortion inducing contraceptives was one of the most controversial tenets of Obamacare that rose to national attention through challenges to mandate by organizations such as Hobby Lobby, and Little Sister’s of the Poor, who refused to offer their employees healthcare plans that included paying for contraceptives and abortifacients that ended life after conception. Hobby Lobby’s decision to stand for morality cost them millions in fines and threatened to put them out of business. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ended up striking down this key portion of Obamacare in 2014, siding with Hobby Lobby and ruling that businesses should not and cannot be required to offer contraceptive coverage to their employees if the contraceptives violate the business owner’s sincerely held religious beliefs. To do so would be a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
In November of 2018 the Trump administration released two final rules regarding businesses who have religious objections to purchasing healthcare options that cover their employees’ use of abortion inducing drugs. The exemption had two rules protecting entities and individuals with religious objections to the mandate, as well as nonprofit organizations, small businesses, and individuals with non-religious but moral opposition to such coverage.
In 2017, the attorneys general in California and Pennsylvania wanted to force Catholic nuns to violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, so the Little Sisters of the Poor headed back to court to defend their constitutional rights to operate their organization according to their consciences.
Josh Shapiro, attorney general for Pennsylvania and Xavier Becca, attorney general for California are so against religious liberty and conscience protections that they think attacking nuns is politically expedient.
Now the order of Catholic nuns is asking the United States Supreme Court to end their six-year legal battle and let them focus on their missions, e.g. serving the poor and elderly.
Like the Little Sisters of the Poor, Nancy Pelosi also identifies as a devout Catholic, however she consistently opposes teachings of the Catholic Church when it comes to the sanctity and dignity of human life.
