![\"Obama](\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/Obama_Abortion_01_175px.jpg\" "\\"Obama_Abortion_01_175px\\"")
by Steven Ertelt –
\nIt\u2019s official. The concern pro-life organizations had about the ObamaCare legislation funding abortions has been confirmed, as the Obama administration has issued the final rules on abortion funding governing the controversial health care law.<\/p>\n
Nestled within the \u201cindividual mandate\u201d in the Obamacare act \u2014 that portion of the Act requiring every American to purchase government \u2014 approved insurance or pay a penalty \u2014 is an \u201cabortion premium mandate.\u201d This mandate requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion. As a result, many pro-life Americans will have to decide between a plan that violates their consciences by funding abortion, or a plan that may not meet their health needs.<\/p>\n
The Department of Health and Human Services has issued a final rule<\/a> regarding establishment of the state health care exchanges required under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. <\/p>\n As a knowledgeable pro-life source on Capitol Hill informed LifeNews, as authorized by Obamacare, \u201cthe final rule provides for taxpayer funding of insurance coverage that includes elective abortion\u201d and the change to longstanding law prohibiting virtually all direct taxpayer funding of abortions (the Hyde Amendment) is accomplished through an accounting arrangement described in the Affordable Care Act and reiterated in the final rule issued today.<\/p>\n \u201cTo comply with the accounting requirement, plans will collect a $1 abortion surcharge from each premium payer,\u201d the pro-life source informed LifeNews. \u201cThe enrollee will make two payments, $1 per month for abortion and another payment for the rest of the services covered. As described in the rule, the surcharge can only be disclosed to the enrollee at the time of enrollment.\u00a0 Furthermore, insurance plans may only advertise the total cost of the premiums without disclosing that enrollees will be charged a $1 per month fee to pay directly subsidize abortions.\u201d<\/p>\n The pro-life advocate told LifeNews that the final HHS rule mentions, but does not address concerns about abortion coverage in \u201cmulti-state\u201d plans administered by the Federal Government\u2019s Office of Personal Management (OPM).<\/p>\n \u201cThere is nothing in the Affordable Care Act to prevent some OPM (government administered) plans from covering elective abortion, and questions remain about whether OPM multi-state plans will include elective abortion,\u201d the pro-life source said. \u201cIf such plans do include abortion, there are concerns that the abortion coverage will even be offered in states that have prohibited abortion coverage in their state exchanges.\u201d<\/p>\n The final rule indicates \u201cSpecific standards for multi-state plans will be described in future rulemaking published by OPM\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Set to go into effect in 2014, the unconstitutional provisions found in Section 1303 of the Obamacare Act compel enrollees in certain health plans to pay a separate abortion premium from their own pocket, without the ability to decline abortion coverage based on religious or moral objection.<\/p>\n That provision was the subject of a legal document<\/a> Bioethics Defense Fund\u2019s Dorinda C. Bordlee, lead counsel for the group, submitted to the Supreme Court in February.<\/p>\n \u201cThis violates the Free Exercise Clause because religious exemptions are made for groups such as the Amish who morally object to purchasing any insurance, but no exemptions are made for Americans who have religious or moral objections to abortion,\u201d Bordlee said.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Obama\u2019s healthcare overhaul includes an \u2018abortion premium mandate\u2019 that blatantly violates the conscience rights and First Amendment religious rights of millions of Americans,\u201d AUL president Charmaine Yoest said. \u201cNowhere in the Constitution does it require Americans to violate their beliefs and pay for abortions.\u201d<\/p>\n ADF Senior Counsel Steven Aden says Americans should not be compelled to pay for other people\u2019s elective abortions.<\/p>\n \u201cNo one should be forced to violate their conscience by paying for abortions, but that\u2019s precisely what ObamaCare does,\u201d he explained. \u201cObamaCare requires that employees enrolled in certain health plans pay a separate insurance premium specifically to pay for other people\u2019s elective abortions and offers no opt-out for religious or moral reasons. Such a mandate cannot survive constitutional scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n BDF president and general counsel Nikolas Nikas said the individual mandate not only forces individuals into private purchases, it also effectively mandates personal payments for surgical abortion coverage, without exemption for individual\u2019s religious or moral objections.<\/p>\n He told LifeNews in an email, \u201cLike a Russian nesting doll, the individual mandate has nestled within it a hidden, but equally unconstitutional scheme that effectively imposes an \u2018abortion premium mandate\u2019 that violates the free exercise rights of millions of Americans who have religious objections to abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n HT: LifeNews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Steven Ertelt – It\u2019s official. The concern pro-life organizations had about the ObamaCare legislation funding abortions has been confirmed, as the Obama administration has issued the final rules on abortion funding governing the controversial health care law. Nestled within the \u201cindividual mandate\u201d in the Obamacare act \u2014 that portion of the Act requiring every … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113,142,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-persecution","category-leftist-tyranny","category-pro-abortion-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7407\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}