Religious Liberty

 

California Forces Catholic Universities to Cover All Abortion

By Wesley J. Smith

Pro-Abortion California Gov. Jerry Brown

I told you this was coming. Now, Jerry Brown has decided to force two Catholic universities to cover abortion in their health insurance. From the San Francisco Chronicle story:

Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration has reversed an earlier decision to allow two Catholic universities to eliminate coverage of most abortions for employees, saying state law requires health insurance plans to cover all abortions…

Urged by abortion-rights groups and university employees to reconsider the issue, Brown’s Department of Managed Health Care, in letters to be sent Friday to insurers for both universities, said the exclusions violate a 1975 state law that requires group health plans to cover all basic services – defined, by the law, as those that are “medically necessary.”

“Abortion is a basic health care service,” the department’s director, Michelle Rouillard, said in the letter.

Religious freedom means nothing to those who wish to use health care to impose their secularist world view on everyone.
One more point: Over at First Things, I have a piece about how “pro-choice” is fast becoming “pro-abortion.” Here is the conclusion, which I ask you to ponder in connection with the California authoritarianism:

“I expect that in the coming years abortion rights supporters will execute a tactical retreat that admits the humanity of the unborn, conjoined with a strong counter-offensive dismissing the moral relevance of that biological fact. What matters, advocates will increasingly assert, is the state’s guarantee that women’s reproductive desires are fulfilled—with abortion viewed as a positively good way of doing so.”

Can I call them, or can I call them?

What starts in California doesn’t stay in California. Forced abortion coverage will be the next front in the war against religious freedom.

Editor’s note. This appeared on Wesley’s great blog.

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