The HHS Mandate Goes into Effect

This day — August 1 — is a dark one for religious freedom in the United States. The Obama administration’s requirement that all insurance plans cover contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs — the HHS mandate — goes into effect today. This requirement is now binding on countless employers who have religious and moral objections to providing such insurance. This is not a dispute about contraception or abortion, but about our constitutional order: All Americans, regardless of whether they share those objections, should protest the Obama administration’s willful assault on religious liberty.

Six months ago, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that health-insurance plans offered by private employers would be required to cover all federally approved forms of contraception — including contraceptives that operate as abortifacients — as well as sterilization. The absurdly narrow exemption that HHS offered for certain “religious employers” — likely comprising only a small subset of churches — helped trigger a firestorm of opposition. Seeking political cover, the White House trotted out incoherent ideas about a proposed “accommodation,” supposedly to be implemented well after the coming elections. The very same day, the administration finalized the rule adopting the HHS mandate with no modification at all.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312809/hhs-mandate-goes-effect-editors