Biden admin to require abortion, ‘sex change’ coverage on health plans, Catholic group warns by MattLamb for Life Site News
There would be no religious exemptions to the rule, and penalties may include imprisonment for noncomplying health care executives.
A legal group that assists Catholic employers said it fears President Joe Biden’s administration, through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), could issue new regulations this month that would require health plans to pay for abortion and procedures for gender-confused individuals.
The Catholic Benefits Association (CBA) said a leftist group called the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights has been working with the administration to craft regulations “to include surgical abortion, cross-sex hormones, gender-transition surgeries, gender-affirming cosmetic surgeries and voice modification — along with a host of expanded services dealing with fertility treatments, contraception, abortifacients and sterilizations,” Crux reported.
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“The memo prepared by the Leadership Conference provides the best forecast of what the new regulation will say,” attorney Martin Nussbaum, a legal advisor to CBA, told Crux for an April 5 article. “We don’t know for sure what the regulation will say but there is good reason to believe that it will be quite similar to the memo signed on by 30 sexual rights activist groups including Planned Parenthood.”
CBA first heard of the possibility of new regulations after due to a reference in a court filing last year.
There would be no religious exemptions to the rule. “The forthcoming (HHS) regulation presents an existential threat to Catholic health care because the penalties to noncompliance will likely include private enforcement, class-action lawsuits, ‘qui tam’ actions, which is where an individual can file a lawsuit as if he or she were the United States itself,” Nussbaum said. “The penalties may also include loss of Medicare and Medicaid funding and even imprisonment for noncomplying health care executives.”
This would not be the first time the Biden administration has sought to push so-called “gender-affirming care” as necessary healthcare.
