Why Americans should be concerned California is forcing churches to provide abortions

California is strong-arming churches into subsidizing elective abortions by requiring congregations to cover the practice in their health insurance plans. In light of the state mandate, three churches are suing the California Department of Managed Health Care for the requirement that forces religious institutions to violate federal conscience law and the First Amendment.

While the state has increased its assault on pro-lifers, more churches should be standing to oppose the state’s ever-increasing assault on religious freedom and pro-life values. Americans should be deeply concerned with California’s efforts to curb pro-life speech, bankroll abortion-on-demand, and single-handily punish individuals and institutions that do not comply with the government’s demands.

California is the nation’s greatest purchaser of abortion, using public funding under the state’s Medi-Cal program. While taxpayers are footing the bill for the destruction of human life, the state wants to further impose its pro-abortion ideology on institutions with sincerely held religious beliefs.

The mandate at its core is a flagrant disregard for the Constitution and for religious freedom. The requirement violates multiple aspects of the First Amendment, as noted by Alliance Defending Freedom, and imposes a substantial burden on Americans who simply wish to exercise their religious convictions. Since the Affordable Care Act requires health care coverage and the state mandate forces abortion coverage in health plans, churches are essentially gridlocked into insuring a practice that violates their most fundamental religious beliefs. The law is the entanglement of government at its worst, and it must be stopped.

In her video testimony, former StemExpress employee, Holly O’Donnell, fully coins the inhuman practices of the abortion industry that hard-working Americans —and now, religious institutions—are being forced to underwrite. O’Donnell, an ex-tissue procurement technician, admitted that workers carved the face of a baby boy in the late-term —still with a beating heart— in order to harvest its brain. She describes how she was directed to cut the face of the child open, starting from his chin upward, to procure an intact brain from this helpless victim of abortion. The video, released by The Center for Medical Progress, describes the horrific incident that took place inside a Planned Parenthood facility in San Jose, CA.

Dr. Deborah Nucatola, the Planned Parenthood abortionist caught in the first undercover video discussing how to “crush” preborn babies and alter abortion procedures, noted that California is a hub for fetal parts trafficking.

And, I think that- I don’t know anyone who would say no. Everyone’s been looking to do this for a year and a half, the affiliates in California have been very lucky, because in California there is no shortage of possibilities…

To mandate Americans to support these acts of barbarism is grievous and a assault on what America represents. No individual or entity should be forced to give a single cent to the abortion industry. The many horrific statements by Planned Parenthood officials and its long list of scandals should horrify every American— especially Californians, who foot the bill for the barbaric practices in their own backyards.

It is time for churches in the Golden State to rise up to the occasion and oppose this truly unlawful mandate.