Virginia Women Should “Thank’ John Adams for Donald Trump’s Discriminatory Executive Order Attacking Birth Control Access

From Progress Virginia:

Virginia Women Should “Thank’ John Adams for Donald Trump’s Discriminatory Executive Order Attacking Birth Control Access  

Washington, DC–Last week, President Trump signed  Executive Order #13798, providing more leeway for businesses to make healthcare decisions for their employees. Trump’s order builds on GOP Attorney General nominee John Adams work to put employers in charge of birth control access. The executive order would further limit women’s access to affordable birth control in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision. Adams was intimately involved in the legal fight at the high court to put your boss in charge of your birth control. he Supreme Court decision allowed employers to deny women access to birth control on religious grounds.

“Mr. Adams has spent his career working hard to deny women fundamental rights, including access to birth control. His work laid the groundwork for President Trump’s executive order today that puts employers in charge of personal and private decisions about birth control,” Anna Scholl, Executive Director of Progress Virginia, said. “We should trust women to make their own decisions about their bodies. No woman should have to check in with Mr. Adams or their boss regarding health care decisions. Virginia women should be wary of a candidate for Attorney General who laid the groundwork for Donald Trump’s attacks on women and families.”

In addition to making access to birth control harder, the executive order also paves the way for churches to endorse political candidates without fear of losing their tax-exempt status.

Background

Zubik v. Burwell “deals with whether the government would violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by using Obamacare to force religious organizations’ healthcare plans to provide contraceptive coverage.” John Adams said on his Internet site, “the amicus brief I filed in this case…contended the government should not be permitted to hijack nuns’ healthcare plans.” (John Adams, Press Release, 05/24/16)

He said the Obama administration wanted “to force health care plans to provide all FDA approved drugs at low cost. But many Americans do not want their healthcare plans offering low-cost contraception drugs and drugs that may abort fertilized eggs. The administrative state thus clashes with religious interests.

In Hobby Lobby in 2014, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that certain businesses could opt out. The Government cannot force religious organizations or private, closely-held businesses to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients as part of their employee healthcare plans. By one vote, the Court vindicated the religious objections to this aspect of Obamacare.” (John Adams, Press Release, 03/21/16)

“The Obama administration ignored the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when it crafted the Affordable Care Act’s provision requiring employer medical plans to include contraceptive coverage,” said “11 Republican lawmakers” who were represented in the Hobby Lobby case “by Andrew W. Lester and Carrie Vaughn of Lester Loving & Davies PC, John D. Adams and Matthew A. Fitzgerald of McGuireWoods LLP, Kevin C. Walsh of the University of Richmond’s T.C. Williams School of Law, and Brendan M. Walsh of Pashman Stein.”

“Nine…senators and two…House members filed an amicus brief in support of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. and Mardel Inc., which claim the ACA contraception rule violates their constitutional rights. The companies…[wanted] the Tenth Circuit to hear en banc their bid to halt enforcement of the rule, which a lower court had rejected.”

“Arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby and its affiliated Christian bookstore business Mardel railed against the mandate, claiming it violates their constitutional rights and religious beliefs by forcing them to offer insurance coverage for ‘abortion-inducing drugs and devices’ such as the morning-after pill.”

“The contraception mandate” was a mandate to require “employers’ group health plans to cover U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives and sterilization procedures.” (Law360, 02/20/13)