Contraceptive Mandate

When the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) was passed in 2010, it included the highly contentious contraceptive mandate. This section of the law required companies that provide group health insurance to cover contraceptives (birth control medication and devices), which included abortifacients1 like Plan B and Ella (“the-day/week-after” pills).

Although churches were exempt, other private religious organizations were not. Through a slew of court cases, the Supreme Court has ruled the government cannot force religious and faith-based organizations to provide contraceptives if that organization objects based on their religious beliefs.

In response to widespread litigation and public outcry from faith-based organizations and leaders, Congress has now written a series of laws to ensure faith-based entities are protected in healthcare. The Department of Health and Human Services2 has also written and enforced rules that allow faith-based entities to opt-out of participating in services that violate their rights of conscience.

Importantly, the Supreme Court also determined that the government cannot force faith-based family businesses like Hobby Lobby3 to fund abortifacients either.

Read more about Religious Freedom in Business

Assisted Reproductive Technology

Assisted Reproductive Technology (known as ART) includes procedures such as egg and sperm donation, gamete storage, in vitro fertilization and surrogacy. ART was once only available to married couples unable to conceive naturally. Today, single people, transgender individuals and, especially, gay couples have created a surge in the modern use of assisted reproductive technology, which has grown into a wildly unregulated multi-billion-dollar industry.

Although some companies do provide fertility coverage as a part of their pregnancy-related health insurance clauses, many do not. Over the past several years, more and more states have attempted to pass laws that force companies who provide pregnancy-related insurance coverage to also provide coverage for fertility treatments for all employees. Ironically enough, no state public health insurance program — including in states attempting to force requirements on private companies — offers fertility coverage.

For many faith-based entities, fertility coverage can often violate their religious mission and beliefs for many reasons. For example, ART necessarily involves the destruction of human embryos, might violate a faith-based definition of a healthy and stable family, or might raise moral objections about the commodification of women, children and human embryos.

Since 2017, 15 states have proposed policies that would require insurers to cover fertility treatments. The LGBTQ+ lobby strongly supports these bills.

Transgenderism

Doctors, nurses, and health care entities are being sued for declining to provide gender-transition services, which include puberty-blocking hormones, cross-sex hormones, and “sex-change” operations. Many healthcare providers object to providing drastic medical interventions for what is a mental health disorder — in this case, Gender Dysphoria. Many of these treatments are experimental and not FDA-approved for treating gender-dysphoria. These treatment options result in drastic, irreversible, and permanently sterilizing changes to a patient’s body — changes many healthcare professionals believe are unethical to be performed upon anyone, but especially a child.

Most importantly, healthcare professionals know it is impossible to change one’s biological sex, and therefore their ethical duty is to ensure a patient’s thoughts align with reality. Treating an individual diagnosed with anorexia with a weight-loss surgery would be a gross violation of medical standards and the conscience of most medical professionals. The same is true of medical intervention for gender dysphoria. What is really needed is wholistic and comprehensive mental healthcare for people struggling with their gender identity.

In a significant move for protecting the rights of our medical health professionals, in June 2019 the Department of Health and Human Services, under the direction of President Trump, issued a final rule4 that would allow these doctors and healthcare entities to decline to provide gender-transition services without retribution.

Since 2017, 15 states have proposed policies that would require insurers to cover fertility treatments. The LGBTQ+ lobby strongly supports these bills.

Read more about Gender Dysphoria.

Therapy Bans

Therapy Bans are policies that prohibit a licensed therapist from providing basic talk therapy to help individuals, including minors, identify with their birth sex or resolve unwanted same-sex attraction. Instead, licensed health professionals can only give counsel in accordance with the state’s preferred view on sexuality, which affirms transgenderism and homosexuality, even if the counsel violates the therapist’s and/or patient’s religious and moral beliefs. As a result, therapy bans violate the freedoms of healthcare professionals and prevents them from providing therapy which they have determined is in the best interest of their patient’s health.

California was the first state to pass a therapy ban in 2012. Since that time, 17 more states have passed laws restricting the free speech of licensed health professionals.

Family Policy Alliance has fought against these bans in many states. Some Americans struggle with unwanted same-sex attraction, without identifying as gay, and want to have those feelings resolved. Some Americans also struggle with their gender identity, but do not identify as transgender. They want a licensed professional to help them learn to love their God-given bodies.

Family Policy Alliance advances the right of parents, their children, and their therapists to decide what is the best course of therapy — in line with their own moral and religious convictions.

Read more about Therapy Bans.