Category: Law

Obamacare and religious liberty

 A corporate conscience?

The Economist

S.M.

WHEN the Citizens United decision came down in 2010, 80% of Americans were unhappy to learn that political speech by corporations was protected under the first amendment. Three years later an effort to undermine Obamacare by expanding the constitutional rights of corporations is quietly gaining ground in the courts. The campaign, summarised here, includes some 73 cases challenging the law’s requirement that health-insurance plans provided by large employers include coverage for birth control. (A limited exemption—which Republicans are trying to expand—applies to religious organisations.) This contraceptive mandate, detractors say, presents organisations owned by religious individuals opposed to certain forms of birth control with a dilemma: abandon their beliefs or pay a hefty fine of up to $100 per employee per day.

Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinet manufacturer with 950 employees in Pennsylvania, is one of the plaintiffs challenging the mandate. Conestoga is owned and run by the Hahns, a Mennonite family that considers two forms of birth control—the emergency contraceptives known as Plan B and ella—to be the sinful taking of embryonic life. The family has objected to Obamacare’s mandate on constitutional grounds and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a 1993 law requiring that “substantial burdens” on religious exercise be justified by a compelling state interest. . .[Read more]

Lost in Translation: The Failure of the International Reproductive Rights Norm

 Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

CFAM has posted a three part series based on a new paper just published in the Ave Maria Law Review.

Part One: A Norm is Born

NEW YORK, September 13 (C-FAM) For decades, powerful countries and wealthy foundations conducted a campaign to create a global standard for abortion rights. Despite their efforts, the phrase “reproductive health” has been adopted, but not an international norm of reproductive rights. [CFAM Part 1]

Part 2: Reproductive Health Doesn’t Include Abortion . . . But It
Does

NEW YORK, September 20 (C-FAM) The term “reproductive health” seeped without fanfare into UN language in 1972 when it was adopted by Jose Barzelatto, the inaugural head of WHO’s program on human reproduction.  Its first appearance in a UN document was a World Health Organization (WHO) report 20 years later by Barzelatto’s successor, Mahmoud Fathalla. His sprawling description of the term contained “fertility regulation,” which for WHO included “pregnancy interruption,” that is, abortion. [CFAM Part 2]

Part 3: No Norm, No Right

NEW YORK, September 27 (C-FAM) In 2006, the term “reproductive health” made it into a binding international law treaty for the first time, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While this was a victory for the reproductive rights movement, it produced mixed results.

Twenty-three nations opposed the term. After it was reluctantly included, fifteen made statements reminding the term’s proponents what they had assured them throughout the negotiations: that the term “reproductive health” did not include abortion or create any new rights. [CFAM-Part 3]

 

 

Philippines government demands referral by objecting physicians even if not “right”

In the closing hearings into the controversial Reproductive Health Law, judges of the Philippines Supreme Court questioned a provision in the law that makes it a crime to provide “incorrect information” about contraceptives.  When Senior State Solicitor Florin Hilbay explained that the Philippines Food and Drug Administration will determine what is “correct,” a judge pointed out that this would mean that no dissent from that would be allowed.  Another judge raised the possibility  of the imprisonment of physicians who disagree with the FDA about the safety of a drug.

Hilbay also claimed that objecting physicians have a “professional obligation” to facilitate the provision of the services to which they object by referral, asserting that refusal to refer makes a patient a “victim.” He insisted on this even though he admitted that referral might not be “right.” The court gave lawyers for both sides 60 days to submit memoranda concerning their arguments. [Manila Standard] [Philippine Daily Inquirer] [Inquirer.net]

North Carolina strengthens protection of conscience law

Parts of a new law passed in North Carolina strengthen the state’s protection of conscience law for health care workers.  The revisions extend protection against coerced participation in abortion to nurses and other health care workers and to health care institutions other than hospitals.  [CWN]