Tuesday, February 14, 2012: Today, Life Legal Defense Foundation and four other pro-life law firms filed a friend of the court brief in the United States Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACT) on Free Exercise and First Amendment grounds. The brief, written by attorneys with the Bioethics Defense Fund, was filed on behalf of several religious and pro-life medical associations, such as the Christian Medical and Dental Association and Physicians for Life.
Some of the primary arguments in today’s filing with the Supreme Court are as follow:
- The ACT contains a hidden “Abortion Premium Mandate” that compels enrollees in certain health plans to pay a separate abortion premium from their own pocket, while denying enrollees the ability to decline abortion coverage based on moral objection.
- The ACT and its individual mandate violate the Free Exercise Clause by imposing this “Abortion Premium Mandate” without regard to religious objection.
- Our nation has a long and deeply-rooted history of respecting and protecting the conscience rights of individuals to not be forced into the practice or funding of elective abortions.
Our founders’ protection of individual liberty, including religious liberty, is directly undermined by the ACT’s transgression of the constitutional limits on congressional power.
“This ACT and President Obama want citizens to have their choices impermissibly limited by being forced to choose between their conscience and a health insurance plan that requires an abortion premium,” said Cody. “How could Congress allow for this ACT to make pro-life individuals pay for a pro-abortion agenda?”
Arguments on the constitutionality of the Act will be heard at the Supreme Court in March.
Read the Amicus Curiae Brief.