THE PROBLEM: On October 1, 2013, the Exchanges for the Affordable Care Act opened with a large majority of health insurance policies containing direct or indirect funding for abortion. Citizens all across this nation suddenly find themselves in a devastating moral dilemma: Can I maintain my health insurance without sacrificing my moral convictions about abortion?
In some states, the answer is maybe. In many other states, the answer is no. The Affordable Care Act, through total neglect of the Constitution and bureaucratic deception, guarantees funding for abortion through everything from individual citizens to private businesses and non-profit organizations – with absolutely no regard to any religious liberty or conscientious objections.
HOW CAN WE RESPOND? Beginning immediately, pro-life citizens are invited to join national leaders like Joe Scheidler, Fr. Frank Pavone, Troy Newman and many others in signing the following: “A Pledge for the Preservation of Life and Liberty.”
This Pledge has been carefully crafted to stand as a ‘line in the sand’ regarding any scenario in which the ACA forces individuals to participate – whether directly or indirectly – in the destruction of human life. In short, the pro-life movement has chosen one answer to being forced to fund abortion through healthcare: We will not comply.
- Pledge for the Preservation of Life and Liberty
- Statement of Conscience: The Didache Declaration
- Sign the Pledge!
- Original Signers
- Resources: How will your policy fund abortion?
- Voices of Life & Liberty
WHEREAS, the founding documents of the United States and the principles espoused by our Founding Fathers affirm rights granted to the American citizenry based on freedom and human dignity; and
WHEREAS, the Declaration of Independence affirms that all humans receive the inalienable Right to Life from a Creator; and
WHEREAS, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees each citizen’s Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech; and
WHEREAS, the Constitution upholds the rights of citizens to live according to their conscience and moral dictates (1); and
WHEREAS, many religions (and denominations and sects thereof) believe and teach, as a bedrock principle of their faith, that life begins at conception, and that complicity with abortion is unquestionably sinful and/or immoral (2); and
WHEREAS, science, biology, and medicine confirm that, in sexual reproduction, each human being’s life begins at the beginning of fertilization, and
WHEREAS, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) the United States Government compels every citizen, regardless of religious belief and/or moral belief, to purchase an ACA qualified health insurance policy; and
WHEREAS, the ACA, in most cases, will force those same citizens to pay for surgical and medical abortions, whether directly or indirectly, including drugs and devices that can end preborn human life; and
WHEREAS, abortion, including drugs and/or devices that can end a preborn human life, is not healthcare; pregnancy is not a disease to be treated with abortion; and, abortion is an elective, life-ending procedure that kills an innocent human life;
THEREFORE, we declare that we will not comply with any regulation of the ACA wherein we are forced to pay for abortion or forced to willfully participate in the killing of innocent children.
In practicality, this means we will not choose an insurance policy that contains abortion funding, whether directly or indirectly, even to the point of choosing no insurance, at all. Furthermore, we support any citizen who chooses to act in peaceful protest, including non-violent civil disobedience, as the government has no authority to force us, as free citizens, to violate our conscience or forfeit our religious freedoms.
1. As noted by Thomas Jefferson who said, “No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority”; and
2. As one example, the Bible states that God is the author of Life, physically creating a unique human in His image at the moment of conception (Gen. 1:26a, Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:5).
From the very beginnings of the Church, the disciples of Christ distinguished themselves through the rejection of immoral practices common in the Greco-Roman world, namely as found in the early Christian document called The Didache, or, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Under this teaching, Christians were enjoined to “commit no murder…abortion or infanticide”—to embrace the “Way of Life” as opposed to the “Way of Death.”
Today, people of Faith, and those who believe that human life is sacred from the moment of conception to natural death, find themselves in a circumstance where they must choose between the “Way of Life” and the “Way of Death.” Certain recent U.S. government policies, as enacted through the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Health and Human Services (HHS) Mandate, are a coercion of conscience that forces American citizens to acquiesce in the facilitation of immoral practices, in particular the unjust and immoral practice of abortion.
In the case of the ACA, it requires that health insurance premiums include at least a monthly one dollar surcharge that will be used directly to underwrite abortions. This is not an indirect subsidizing of abortion through the payment of income tax; this is the payment of an insurance premium in which the insurer will pay a direct surcharge earmarked for the performance of abortions, constituting mortally sinful activity that every Christian has a duty before God to avoid. The HHS Mandate presents the same problem, requiring all non-exempt businesses and institutions—including religious institutions—to facilitate contraception, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs in their policies.
The Laws of God come before the laws of men. As the Apostles themselves proclaimed, “We must obey God rather than men.” For this, they gave their lives rather than compromise their faith and the dictates of Christian charity. We, the undersigned, are prepared to do the same and commit ourselves to the following actions:
a) Oppose the Affordable Care Act’s offering of abortion-on-demand as a paid benefit which denigrates the sanctity of life and will result in the killing of innocent preborn children.
b) Oppose the Health and Human Services Mandate, as it is an immoral government intrusion into the practice of religion and forces Americans to facilitate immoral and unjust practices through employee health insurance policies.
c) Civilly disobey the unjust and immoral requirements of the ACA; specifically, the payment of any abortion surcharge in one’s own health insurance.
d) Refuse to comply (both non-exempted companies and individuals) with the unjust and immoral HHS Mandate that requires the inclusion of contraception, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs facilitated through employee health insurance policies.
There is no greater political fight than that of refusing to directly contribute to killing a child. We, the undersigned, rather than ever willfully support the death of an innocent child, refuse compliance, choosing, instead, to suffer the consequences that will be imposed by the federal government under the ACA for non-compliance.
We understand – just as the great Christians before us understood – that, when the culture opposes God’s Way of Life, Christians must make hard and difficult decisions to honor His truth and stand upright.
If we are to be earnestly true to God’s Way of Life, and to our conviction that all human life is sacred, then we cannot cooperate with the facilitation of abortion as the ACA and the HHS requires. We call on all Christians, and all who believe that human life is sacred, to take account of the times in which we live, and to be prepared to suffer for the objective truths we hold.
Christ calls his followers to pick up their cross and follow him. As Christ Himself taught, so we must follow.
