Are You OK With the Obama Law Requiring a $1 Abortion Per Month Subsidy,From Every Insured American?

The controversial “individual mandate” in the ObamaCare health diktat, which requires Americans to buy health insurance or face a hefty fine, also requires something else: The insured party, thanks to a finalized version of the mandate, must pay a $1 premium to fund abortions.

That fee will be the heart of one key argument against the law from the Bioethics Defense Fund, which has joined the fight against the Mephistophelian law with anamicus curiae brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in February. The high court will hear the case against the law on May 27.

An amicus curiae brief is a pleading filed by a party that is not involved in a lawsuit to help the court decide the matter.

You’ll Pay for Abortions, Like It or Not

The heart of the BDF’s brief is this: Requiring an insured person to pay a $1 premium to subsidize abortions trespasses the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom to practice, within limits, one’s religion as one chooses.

According to the brief, “Like a Russian doll, the individual mandate has nestled within it a hidden, but equally unconstitutional, scheme that effectively imposes an ‘abortion premium mandate’ that violates the free exercise rights of millions of Americans who have religious objections to abortion. The individual mandate found in Section 1501 of the Act provides that, beginning in 2014, Americans must either purchase federally approved health insurance or pay a monetary penalty.”

The violation of religious rights occurs, BDF argues, because the individual mandate requires one to buy insurance and because the law requires the $1 abortion subsidy. Like it or not, the insured is paying for an abortion. “The infringing provisions impose inescapable requirements upon millions of Americans who will be, even unwittingly, enrolled in employer or individual health plans that happen to include elective abortion coverage,” the brief argues.

The Act effectively imposes an “Abortion Premium Mandate” that compels 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.

The “individual mandate” that compels Americans by threat of penalty to purchase only federally approved health insurance plans results in the imposition of another unconstitutional mandate that will impact millions of Americans.

The brief says the Obama administration’s original attempt to force insurance plans to include elective abortions is an historical first, but “due to the public uproar, the drafters devised a scheme to avoid the direct federal funding of abortion.” That scheme simply involved shifting the responsibility to those the government forces to buy insurance against their will, meaning the insured parties are dragooned not only into buying insurance but also subsidizing the murder of unborn children.

This goal of avoiding the use of tax-payer subsidies for abortion coverage was unfortunately achieved by a means that violates the First Amendment; namely, by compelling the taxpayer to personally pay a separate abortion premium.

The unconstitutional scheme can be found in Section 1303, which provides that the issuer of a federally subsidized plan that covers elective abortions “shall” obtain a separate and private payment from every enrollee, without exception, to be used by the insurer solely for the payment of other people’s elective abortions.

Under Section 1303 of the Act, all individuals who, even unwittingly, are enrolled in a plan — either on their own or by their employer — that happens to include elective abortion coverage are compelled by the Act to pay a separate premium from their own pocket to the insurer’s actuarial fund designated solely for the purpose of paying for other people’s elective abortions. As explained below, the Act denies enrollees the ability to decline abortion coverage based on religious or moral objection.

Section 1303(b)(1)(B)(i) of the Act refers to elective abortions as “Abortions For Which Public Funding is Prohibited” (“elective abortions”). The Act then provides that the issuer “shall estimate the basic per enrollee, per month cost, determined on an average actuarial basis, for including coverage under a qualified health plan of the services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i) [i.e., elective abortions].” Section 1303(b)(1)(D)(ii) mandates that the abortion premium mandate shall not be estimated “at less than $1 per enrollee, per month.”

The enrollee must separately pay the abortion premium from his or her own private funds by virtue of the Act’s provision stating that in plans covering elective abortion, “the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to” either tax credits or “cost-sharing reductions” for “the purposes of paying for [elective abortion] services.”

Frighteningly, the conscience-stricken Christian has no escape. He or she may not refuse to cough up the abortion subsidy, the brief argues. “Once some Americans find themselves, for whatever reason, in plans with abortion coverage, the Act denies such enrollees the ability to decline payment for such coverage.”

Read more : http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/11181-obama...