St. Joseph News-Press: Blunt lauds Supreme Court injunction of contraceptive mandate

News Article

By Ken Newton

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, long an advocate for religious exclusions to provisions of the Affordable Care Act, praised Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday for temporarily blocking the law's contraceptive mandate.

The justice granted a stay Tuesday night, a couple of hours before the health-reform law went into effect. She ordered the U.S. government to respond to the injunction by Friday.

Within a measure surrounded by controversy, the birth-control provision proved one of the most thorny aspects. Some groups said the law's insistence on insurance funding of contraceptives stood at odds with the religious convictions of faith-based groups required to follow the law.

Mr. Blunt, a Republican, hailed the decision, saying it blocked "this onerous government overreach" and denied Americans their constitutional rights.

"The Obama administration's (Health and Human Services) mandate is an egregious and blatant violation of the religious freedom that Americans have enjoyed for more than 220 years since the ratification of the First Amendment," the senator said in a New Year's Day statement.

"No American should be forced to surrender their religious freedom or abandon their deeply held religious beliefs."

The Missourian sponsored legislation in the Senate called the "Respect for Rights of Conscience Act." In it, Mr. Blunt cited the words of Thomas Jefferson that no provision of the U.S. Constitution should mean more to Americans than the one that "protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority."

But the measure, introduced in August 2011, gained no traction.

With the stay, the high court gave at least a temporary victory to the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged, a Colorado group of Catholic nuns. Ms. Sotomayor has oversight of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, which is why she handled the plea.

Other interested groups weighed in.

"The government has lots of ways to deliver contraceptives to people -- it doesn't need to force nuns to participate," said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

"It makes no sense for the Little Sisters to be singled out for fines and punishment before they can even finish their suit."

Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, provided a different view.

"Birth control is basic preventive health care for women," she said in a statement Wednesday. "The Affordable Care Act ensures that women can access birth control without co-pays no matter where they work, just like any other kind of preventive care."

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