By Dave Andrusko
Last Friday the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed an important 27-page brief with the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf ofseveral pro-life and religious medical associations contesting a Biden administration rule that strips Title X funding from recipients who do not counsel and refer for an abortion. Tennessee does not require referrals for abortions that are illegal in the state and is challenging the Biden administration to restore funding.
According to ADF Senior Counsel Chris Schandevel
“The rights of conscience are at the core of our constitutional freedoms, and forcing medical professionals to violate their beliefs and their Hippocratic oath to do no harm violates our most foundational freedoms. The Biden administration’s Title X rule forces doctors to refer for abortions to receive federal funding and ignores the reality that referring for an abortion is antithetical to the healing profession. The rule disregards rights of conscience and forces many healthcare professionals to make an impossible choice between violating their beliefs and forgoing generally available public benefits, potentially removing critical medical care for those in need. Indeed, the administration stripped Tennessee of all of its Title X funding because the state decided not to require referrals for abortions that are illegal in Tennessee. We urge the court to require the Biden administration to restore Tennessee’s funding.”
The friend-of-the-court brief ends
For these reasons, and those submitted by Tennessee on appeal, this Court should enjoin HHS from enforcing its illegal abortion-counseling-and-
referral mandate on Tennessee and from withholding Tennessee’s Title X grant disbursements—or else remand to the district court with instructions to enter that injunction.
The case is State of Tennessee v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.