ADF defends Real Alternatives against Obamacare’s abortion pill mandate
The Obama administration’s abortion-pill mandate were at the center of the oral arguments in federal court between Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Bowman, representing Real Alternatives, challenging the mandates.
Real Alternatives provides life-affirming pregnancy and parenting support services throughout the nation. The non-profit group is challenging the mandate, which forces employers, regardless of their moral convictions, to provide insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception under threat of heavy financial penalties through the IRS.
Photo/Nodar Kherkheulidze via wikimedia commons
“Pro-life organizations should be free to operate according to the values they sincerely believe and practice,” said Bowman. “Real Alternatives was founded to provide real help and hope to pregnant women and to oppose the tragedy of abortion—the very thing the government is forcing the organization to provide through its health insurance plan. The government cannot selectively punish organizations that simply wish to abide by their deepest convictions.”
The non-religious organization’s sincere moral beliefs on abortion forbid it from furthering abortion through health insurance coverage it offers to its employees, including by hormonal birth-control items it believes can endanger early embryos. Real Alternatives claims that the government is acting irrationally by imposing its mandate on a pro-life organization and women who do not want it.
ADF attorneys representing Real Alternatives appealed to the 3rd Circuit after a district court ruled in favor of the Obama administration last year.
ADF attorneys and allied attorneys are also litigating numerous other lawsuits against the abortion-pill mandate, including a lawsuit filed by another pro-life organization, March for Life, which won its case in federal district court last year.
