Hobby Lobby Won't Offer Morning-After Pill

[bonnie]

Hobby Lobby Won't Offer Morning-After Pill

Dec. 27 7:12 PM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — An attorney for Hobby Lobby Stores said Thursday that the arts and crafts chain plans to defy a federal mandate requiring it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill, despite risking potential fines of up to $1.3 million per day.

Hobby Lobby and religious book-seller Mardel Inc., which are owned by the same conservative Christian family, are suing to block part of the federal health care law that requires employee health-care plans to provide insurance coverage for the morning-after pill and similar emergency contraception pills.

The companies claim the mandate violates the religious beliefs of their owners. They say the morning-after pill is tantamount to abortion because it can prevent a fertilized egg from becoming implanted in a woman's womb.

On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the companies' request for an injunction while their lawsuit is pending, saying the stores failed to satisfy the demanding legal standard for blocking the requirement on an emergency basis. She said the companies may still challenge the regulations in the lower courts.

Kyle Duncan, who is representing Hobby Lobby on behalf of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said in a statement posted on the group's website Thursday that Hobby Lobby doesn't intend to offer its employees insurance that would cover the drug while its lawsuit is pending.

"The company will continue to provide health insurance to all qualified employees," Duncan said. "To remain true to their faith, it is not their intention, as a company, to pay for abortion-inducing drugs."

In ruling against the companies last month, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton said churches and other religious organizations have been granted constitutional protection from the birth-control provisions but that "Hobby Lobby and Mardel are not religious organizations."

[OzarkWoman]

Business owners should just drop health insurance and then tell everyone that elections have consequences.

[Guest]

Sotomayor proved both that she is unqualified to sit on the Supreme Court and why she was chosen by Obama when she ruled that Hobby Lobby did not meet the legal definition for an exemption to the Obamacare mandate. That ruling foreshadows how she will argue if and when the case returns to the Supreme Court.

The D.C. Court of Appeals had ruled earlier, noting that the Administration had promised different regulations by August 2013 for companies whose owners had religious objections to the Obamacare mandate. The court ordered that the Administration should be held to its promise, so it’s possible

Hobby Lobby may still escape fines.

If that order does not hold, though, the company will be burning money while it fights Obama’s frontal assault on religious liberty.

Dozens of other companies, hospitals and universities have also challenged the Obama Administration’s effort. The Catholic bishops have led the fight and tried to create a church-wide uprising against the Obamacare mandate.

But the majority of American Catholics didn’t follow the bishops’ lead, probably due to the church’s previous support of Obama and many of the main principles of Obamacare. The church’s own liberalism has now come back to roost.

The bishops’ failure to rally their church leaves individual owners of companies like Hobby Lobby to lead the fight to preserve freedom for all Americans.

It’s been said that liberalism is itself a religion, and abortion is its sacrament.

If that’s so, it’s a faith of godlessness that the Man Who Would Be King is trying to establish as the state religion. Health care has become a wedge to split Christianity from public life.

http://godfatherpolitics.com/8755/hobby-.../#ixzz2GTDAlTEK