The contraceptive mandate in Obamacare, according to a brief filed with the Supreme Court, promotes chemicals with side effects such as "heart attack, stroke and cardiovascular complications," "increased bleeding or pain," "inflammatory disease and miscarriage," "serious thromboembolic events, including cases of pulmonary emboli (some fatal) and strokes" and "increased cancer risk."
So instead of "health" care, the provision should be known for its "death" care capabilities, the brief ccntends.
"It should be noted that more than a dozen drugs have been taken off the market since 1997 due to severe side effects, injuries or deaths," says the brief submitted in connection with Tuesday's oral arguments in the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood cases.
The companies' owners contend the requirement to pay for abortifacients violates their religious rights. The government, meanwhile, argued that abortifacients are part and parcel of the health care that women need in America.
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The Obama administration even claim that such care is a compelling government interest.
However, a brief submitted on behalf of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, Polycarp Research Institute, the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer and 286 members of Legatus insists otherwise.
"We contest the Obama administration's absurd claim that use of contraceptive steroids constitutes women's 'preventative' health care," said Karen Malec, president of the Coalition of Abortion/Breast Cancer.
"In 2005, the World Health Organization classified the birth control pill as a Group 1 cancer-causing substance for cancers of the breast, liver and cervix. Although WHO said the pill reduces risk for cancers of the endometrium and ovaries, the number of breast cancer cases every year in the U.S. is four times greater than the number of cases of ovarian and endometrial cancers combined."
The filing lists the complications that have been documented with the use of such contraceptives.
"Clearly, the Obama administration is doing what’s best for big business – Big Pharma and Big Abortion – despite the harm its mandate will inflict on women’s health," asserted Malec.
A decision in the case is expected by the U.S. Supreme Court sometime this summer.
The brief challenges the justices up front on the core issue, framing it as "whether the HHS mandate that violates the free exercise rights of individuals, business owners and their companies fails to 'further' the asserted compelling interest in promoting women's 'preventive' health care when the government selectively ignored widely accepted research showing that certain contraceptive drugs significantly increase risks of breast, cervical and liver cancer, as well as research showing significantly increased risks of other serious diseases, including HIV, stroke and heart attack."
The submission argues that the HHS mandate "substantially burdens the sincerely held religion beliefs of amici as well as the parties before this court because it forces them to purchase health plans that include contraceptive drugs and devices, some of which are capable of ending the life of a human being at the embryonic stage of development."
"Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the HHS mandate can survive only if it is 'in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest' – which the government asserts here is its interest in expanding access to 'preventive' health care to promote women's health," the brief says.
The organizations say the plaintiffs "demonstrate that the HHS mandate fails the 'furtherance' test of any purported interest in preventive medicine because it increases risk of cancer and other serious disease instead of decreasing it."
"The increased risks," the brief continues, "have been recognized by reputable national and international medical authorities, including the research arm of the World Health Organization which has classified combined oral contraceptives as 'Group 1: Carcinogenic to Humans.'"
The brief says the Supreme Court needs to know "how the HHS mandate coerces religious objectors to collaborate in the provision of drugs that not only violate their consciences, but that also increase the risk that women will suffer from cancer and other serious diseases."
"In truth, the contraceptive mandate requires coverage of 'synthetic, anabolic, carcinogenic, non-biodegradable sex steroid drugs' that endanger women's health, as well as environmental public health," the attorneys argue, basing their statements of "the robust body of peer-reviewed research studies that the government ... completely ignored."
The brief also points out "the fact that fertility and pregnancy are not disease states," so the Obama administration fails in its argument that such drugs are "in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest."