{"id":16173,"date":"2025-04-08T20:19:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T20:19:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16173"},"modified":"2025-04-08T21:56:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T21:56:49","slug":"church-fights-state-for-abortion-free-health-insurance-as-trump-turns-tables-on-abortion-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=16173","title":{"rendered":"Church Fights State for Abortion-Free Health Insurance as Trump Turns Tables on Abortion Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/thestarnewsnetwork.com\/2025\/04\/08\/church-fights-state-for-abortion-free-health-insurance-as-trump-turns-tables-on-abortion-funding\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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by Greg Piper<\/h5>\n

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A federal appeals court with a long reputation as the most liberal in America pulled the rug out from a Seattle-area church that wanted to exclude abortion from its health plan on religious grounds, first reinstating its lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0against Washington\u2019s no-exceptions abortion insurance mandate, then\u00a0tossing it nearly four years later<\/a>\u00a0after full legal discovery.<\/p>\n

Cedar Park Assembly of God wants its rug back.<\/p>\n

It asked the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to\u00a0rehear the case<\/a>\u00a0following a\u00a0divided three-judge panel\u2019s ruling<\/a>\u00a0last month that Cedar Park \u201cfailed to establish causation\u201d \u2013 that the law is responsible for its inability to get an abortion-free plan comparable to the one it had, and that striking it down as a free-exercise infringement would solve its problem.<\/p>\n

Unless the full appeals court overturns the Democratic nominees who ruled against Cedar Park \u2013 one of whom\u00a0upheld California\u2019s ban on religious gatherings<\/a>\u00a0during COVID-19 lockdowns as a district judge \u2013 \u201cthe courthouse doors are barred to churches that have no way of vindicating their constitutional rights,\u201d the petition for rehearing says.<\/p>\n

Their decision, over the dissent of Republican nominee Consuelo Callahan, is \u201cunprecedented and gravely wrong,\u201d violating nearly 30 rulings between the Supreme Court and 9th Circuit and creating a split on legal standing with three circuits, including the SCOTUS stepping-stone D.C. Circuit, according to the petition filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the Trump administration is pulling the rug out from abortion providers and stabilizing pro-life states that refuse to refer women for abortion.<\/p>\n

Last week it\u00a0reinstated Title X family planning funds<\/a>\u00a0to Oklahoma and Tennessee pulled by the Biden administration, which\u00a0sparked a Supreme Court challenge<\/a>\u00a0three months before President Trump\u2019s inauguration, and\u00a0\u201ctemporarily withheld\u201d tens of millions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0from Planned Parenthood affiliates for\u00a0promoting diversity, equity and inclusion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Neither pro-life states nor stateside conscientious objectors have it as bad as U.K. pro-lifers.<\/p>\n

Livia Tossici-Bolt<\/a>\u00a0was convicted of violating a\u00a0\u201cpublic spaces protection order<\/a>\u201d (PSPO) last week and ordered to pay \u00a320,000 for her own prosecution for refusing to pay a fine based on holding a sign near an abortion clinic that read \u201cHere to talk, if you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her lawyers at ADF International<\/a>\u00a0said the same judge forced client Adam Smith-Connor to pay \u00a39,000 in prosecution costs for silently praying for his aborted son near a clinic, which officers deemed \u201cacts of disapproval.\u201d Vice President\u00a0JD Vance invoked Smith-Connor\u2019s case<\/a>\u00a0in his February speech accusing Europe of acting like Soviet Russia.<\/p>\n

The State Department\u2019s\u00a0Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, & Labor said<\/a>\u00a0after the verdict that Senior Advisor Sam Samson recently met with Tossici-Bolt in the U.K. and it is \u201cmonitoring her case. It is important that the UK respect and protect freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n

The verdicts are out of whack with then-Home Secretary\u00a0Suella Braverman\u2019s public letter to police<\/a>\u00a0in September 2023 reminding them \u201csilent prayer, by itself, is not unlawful,\u201d and of a\u00a0court decision in February exonerating<\/a>\u00a0March for Life U.K. Director Isabel Vaughan-Spruce.<\/p>\n

Police twice\u00a0interrogated and fined Vaughan-Spruce<\/a>, in late 2023 and early 2024, for\u00a0silently praying outside an abortion clinic<\/a>\u00a0in a PSPO, telling her to pray for unborn children somewhere else. She told them about the exoneration and\u00a0police declined to prosecute her<\/a>\u00a0in September 2023 after a six-month investigation.<\/p>\n

Court not allowed to say \u2018beliefs are wrong\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cedar Park\u2019s\u00a0six-year-old case<\/a>\u00a0has already ping-ponged twice between federal district court, which\u00a0twice ruled against the church<\/a>, and the 9th Circuit, with the second panel\u2019s majority ruling that Cedar Park met its burden to \u201callege [legal] standing at the pleading stage\u201d in 2021 but not to \u201cdemonstrate standing at the summary judgment stage\u201d last week.<\/p>\n

At oral argument last summer<\/a>, Washington state heavily relied on the\u00a0Supreme Court\u2019s reversal of a preliminary injunction<\/a>\u00a0against several federal agencies and officials in June for \u201ccoerc[ing] or significantly encourag[ing]\u201d tech platforms to suppress content, as well as\u00a0SCOTUS refusing to block the Food and Drug Administration\u2019<\/a>s expansion of access to an abortion pill.<\/p>\n

Democratic nominees Susan Gruber and Lucy Koh repeated its claim that nothing in the Parity Act \u201cprevents any insurance company\u201d from offering a plan that \u201cexcludes direct coverage for abortion services\u201d and that \u201cWashington\u2019s statutes and implementing regulation enable insurance carriers to provide exactly the sort of coverage\u201d Cedar Park \u201crequires.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican nominee Callahan protested that the law makes it impossible to \u201cexclude\u201d abortion coverage from the church\u2019s \u201cplan\u201d because insurers must still pay for abortions and the insurance commissioner lets them \u201cpass along to employers the cost of abortion coverage mandated by the Parity Act,\u201d which the state conceded could implicate the church.<\/p>\n

The law forces it to \u201cfacilitate access to abortion coverage simply by entering into a contract with an insurer,\u201d and Cedar Park lost its abortion-free health plan from Kaiser Permanente due to the law and \u201ccannot procure a comparable replacement,\u201d Callahan wrote.<\/p>\n

Judges Gruber and Koh \u201cattempted to divide Cedar Park\u2019s conscience harms based on direct (injury) versus indirect (no injury) abortion coverage,\u201d when \u201cone<\/em>\u00a0is enough,\u201d and its \u201cfocus on theoretical injuries\u201d violates the same case law, the church\u2019s rehearing petition says.<\/p>\n

Its First Amendment conscience rights \u201cendured whether the abortion coverage came directly from the employer \u2026 or indirectly through an insurer\u201d under the\u00a0Hobby Lobby<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Zubik\u00a0<\/em>SCOTUS precedents,\u201d meaning \u201cthe majority\u2019s purported distinction is irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democratic nominees not only rejected \u201cspiritual harm\u201d as injury, which the First Amendment is \u201cprimarily aimed at protecting,\u201d but minimized the fact that \u201cCedar Park has been forced to pay for direct abortion coverage for over five years,\u201d the petition says.<\/p>\n

By claiming that its argument about facilitating abortion was \u201ctenuous\u201d or \u201cattenuated,\u201d the majority actually meant Cedar Park\u2019s \u201cbeliefs are wrong,\u201d explicitly violating\u00a0Hobby Lobby<\/em>, which limits courts to evaluating whether the objection \u201creflects an honest conviction,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n

Much like the censored doctors in the legal challenge to the Biden administration\u2019s unrelenting pressure on tech platforms to suppress disfavored narratives, Cedar Park argues insurers don\u2019t have a real choice on whether to offer abortion-free plans.<\/p>\n

Prior rulings make that \u201ccausation in third-party regulation cases depends \u2018on the predictable effect of Government action on the decisions of third parties,’\u201d but the Democratic nominees \u201cnever engaged this inquiry\u00a0<\/em>[sic],\u201d the church said. \u201cThis conflict is egregious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaiser did not make an \u201cindependent business decision\u201d but rather \u201cresponded to SB 6219\u2019s text\u201d and told the church that\u2019s why it was scrapping the abortion-free plan, the petition says.<\/p>\n

This is especially galling given that the law \u201callows exemptions for secular reasons, because the law\u2019s object and practical effect is to force religious holdouts (like Cedar Park and Seattle\u2019s Jesuit) to include abortion coverage in their health plans,\u201d the church said.<\/p>\n

\u2013 \u2013 \u2013<\/p>\n

Greg Piper is a reporter for Just the News.
\nPhoto \u201cCedar Park Church\u201d by Cedar Park Church.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Reprinted with permission from Just the News<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
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The post Church Fights State for Abortion-Free Health Insurance as Trump Turns Tables on Abortion Funding<\/a> first appeared on The Star News Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/thestarnewsnetwork.com\/2025\/04\/08\/church-fights-state-for-abortion-free-health-insurance-as-trump-turns-tables-on-abortion-funding\/ by Greg Piper \u00a0 A federal appeals court with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":16046,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-daily-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16174,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16173\/revisions\/16174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}