Charles A. “Chuck” Donovan

The issue of late-term abortion is among the most agonizing and controversial areas within the larger, contentious debate on the morality and legality of abortion.  To begin with, by the 20th week or fifth month of pregnancy, the fetus is clearly recognizable as a neonate and she is routinely described on professional medical websites in terms that stress her individuality and humanity; in addition, the methods used to terminate fetal life after five months are particularly grim and are often cited by abortion practitioners themselves in ways that indicate their ethical or aesthetic revulsion.

On Monday, December 22, Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) joined with Family Research Council (FRC) as cosignatories on comments filed by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) regarding new federal rules from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Personnel Management on transparency in health insurance coverage of abortion.  The comment covers two separate rulemakings, one of which concerns the general use of federal tax subsidies to purchase health insurance plans on the federal and state insurance exchanges, and another which addresses transparency with respect to certain multi-state plans (MSPs) managed by OPM under the Affordable Care Act.

The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) used last Friday evening to issue an important rule on abortion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  The rule, moreover, was parceled in a 350-page document that, like other issuances, invited only the most active readers.

Later this week the federal and state exchanges created under Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, will open for their second year of operation.  After last year’s rugged rollout, with extremely expensive web sites that functioned poorly, the Obama Administration has invested millions more in fixing the federal site, healthcare.gov, and is promising better performance.  It is far from clear that this improvement will happen, and in the area of abortion coverage nothing is clear at all.

Liberty can be explained in a handful of words; deprivations of liberty usually require thousands.  That is the case with the latest iteration of the accommodations permitted under the Obama Administration’s preventive services mandate, which was published on Friday, August 22.  The Obama Health and Human Services (HHS) Department issued its latest rulemakings designed to ensure that the employees of the vast majority of religious nonprofits, as well as those of businesses like Hobby Lobby, can obtain zero-cost contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilization via their employers’ insurance plans.

Charlotte Lozier Institute President Chuck Donovan was a recent guest on the Teresa Tomeo show on Ave Maria/EWTN Radio to discuss the Lozier Institute’s newest paper “Improving Joyful Lives: Society’s Response to Difference and Disability.”

On Tuesday of this week the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument in two cases to decide whether private companies can refuse to comply with a federal mandate to supply health insurance coverage for abortifacient drugs and contraceptives.  The cases, Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, will test the strength of religious protections afforded the American people under the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. 

From the beginning of the rollout of the federal and state websites displaying health insurance plans eligible for premium subsidies, the ability to identify key elements of the plans, compare and contrast them, and understand the scope of coverage and other issues has been limited at best.  In most cases, it was necessary at the outset of healthcare.gov (the federal exchange web site) on October 1, 2013 for an individual to register for a plan before finding out what it contained and what it excluded.  That situation prevailed even for the most controversial of coverage topics – elective abortion – despite the prominence of the abortion issue in the final passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Today the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will review two cases where the government is trying to force Christian-owned businesses to provide health care coverage that includes abortion-inducing drugs.

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued an order that allows a recently enacted Texas abortion regulation to take effect. The case is called Planned Parenthood v. Abbott and it was filed by several Planned Parenthood entities and similar organizations.