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The order is taking its case to the media—specifically, new media:
Little Sisters of the Poor are making their case to the public by launching a new website as they prepare to take their legal battle to the Supreme Court. The Little Sisters are a Catholic organization that provides housing and care for the elderly poor. In accordance to their religious beliefs, they do not provide contraceptives to their female employees, but this violates a regulation stemming from the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The new site aims to provide information to the public about their case and to counteract what they allege is government misinformation about it. The government’s brief says the Little Sisters need to just file a form stating they’re a religious non-profit that objects to providing coverage for contraceptive services on religious grounds, and all will be solved. But as Matt Bowman pointed out in National Review, that’s simply not the case: “The government deliberately added more language to the Little Sisters’ form. Because their plan is ‘self-insured,’ in addition to stating their religious objection, the government requires their form to also specifically tell their insurance administrator that he has ‘obligations’ to provide the abortifacient and contraceptive coverage himself.”
From the new website:
After promising that the Little Sisters’ religious beliefs would be protected, the government created a new regulation requiring the Little Sisters to change their healthcare plan to offer services that violate Catholic teaching. But 1 in 3 Americans do not have a plan that is subject to the mandate HHS is fighting so hard to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to follow. Exxon, Chevron, and Pepsi — as well as other large corporations — are exempt from the mandate, because they never changed their plans and are grandfathered. And the government is not even requiring our own US military to provide these services through their family insurance. The government is arguing that since it has offered to reimburse the costs of the services it wants the Little Sisters to provide, they should have no moral objection to offering them. The Little Sisters are saying this is not about money, but conscience, and whether they should be forced to change their healthcare plan to offer services they have a moral objection to when those services could be provided more effectively through the government’s healthcare exchange.
Photo: Little Sisters of the Poor