ObamaCare Automatic Enrollment of Minors

• By Matt Bowman
• Posted Jun 1, 2012
• No Comments »

ObamaCare is not content with forcing coverage of abortion-inducing drugs against people’s consciences. Now the administration has made its attack on conscience even worse:  by forcing abortion-drug coverage onto children against their parents’ objection.

The Obama administration’s current public comment document declares that it will “accommodate” religious entities by forcing all their employees and their children, minors and college-aged, to get abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sex counseling with no cost-sharing.  The coverage is “automatic.” 77 Fed. Reg. at 16505.  It applies even if the parent doesn’t want to help her child get free sex counseling or cause her co-ed to get embryo-killing drugs.

This attack is worse than it was even a couple months ago, when the Obama administration said that employees at religious entities and their children would only be enrolled if they “desire it.”  77 Fed. Reg. at 8728. Now, under the abortion-drug mandate, coverage of objectionable items is not optional, even for the employee.  All employees and their “beneficiaries” are “automatically” enrolled.  It applies at non-religious entities too:  their “beneficiaries” are required to receive abortion-inducing drugs with no cost-sharing. 76 Fed. Reg. at 46624.

This means that an employee who doesn’t want the objectionable coverage is not only forced to get it, her children are forced to get it. A Christian employee might work at a religious entity in part so her children don’t get free abortion-inducing drugs.  But ObamaCare mandates that she can’t stop her own plan (to which she contributes) from paying for her own children to get mandated free sex counseling, birth control and abortion pills.

Kids will probably be able to go straight to Planned Parenthood for all three of these things that ObamaCare forces their parents to cover, since the Obama administration has gone around the country telling states they can’t stop Planned Parenthood from being a covered provider.

And because of patient confidentiality, parents might never know they helped pay for the promiscuity-counseling of their children, or the death of their own embryonic grandchildren.  The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute lobbied for this no-cost-sharing coverage precisely to result in “nonspouse dependents” (children) “obtaining confidential care” for “key reproductive health care services,” meaning parents won’t know because they won’t get billed for a co-pay.

ObamaCare’s first casualty was religious freedom.  Now its second casualty is parental rights and the well-being of children.  And ObamaCare’s mandates are just getting started.