A federal rule was just published in the Federal Register. A single rule in a document that runs over 80,000 pages long may seem a small thing, but this particular rule marks the defeat of what many Americans perceive as an extended assault on religious freedom begun by the Obama administration six long years ago. It was in 2012 that then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius inserted a “mandate” into the Affordable Care Act requiring all employers, including family-owned companies and sweet little old nuns, to provide abortifacients and other types of antenatal drugs through their insurance plans. This Obamacare mandate, slipped in quietly as a kind of afterthought, had the effect of rousing a hitherto sleeping giant: Americans of faith. Six years later—six years of passionate protests, legal challenges going all the way to the Supreme Court, and a new administration that puts a premium on religious liberty—Obamacare’s assault on conscience rights is history. The Constitution’s “free exercise” protection (“Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise” of religion) has found respect in law again. This week, at long last, the federal government published a final rule expanding conscience protections for entities like The Little Sisters […]
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