"Former vice president Joe Biden pledged on Wednesday to reinstate Obama-era policies that would require the Little Sisters of the Poor to ensure access to birth control and abortifacients for employees in violation of their religious beliefs."
The above claim was made by a right wing news site regarding Joe Biden. It is a lie. Let's take it apart point by point.
1. Little Sisters of the Poor were never required to do anything. The religious order was entirely exempt. The separately incorporated nursing homes that employ lay people of all faiths is also exempt as they have as their insurance provider Christian Brothers Services, a non-profit, Catholic insurance company. As a religious organization, Christian Brothers Services is exempt from the contraceptive mandate. The nursing homes were suing on the basis that at some point in the future they might dump their Catholic, non-profit health insurance company and contract with a secular, for-profit, pro-abortion company. Now why would these nice nuns ever do that?
The issue here is that the original lawsuit was called 'Zubrick vs. Burwell', Zubrick being the Roman Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh. The LSP Nursing Homes were a subsidiary litigant to the named litigant. Right wing polemicists starting improperly calling the case "Little Sisters..." for propaganda reasons.
2. Abortifacients are specifically excluded from the mandate. No employer is required to include any abortion causing drug.
3. The accommodation offered by the Obama Administration was more generous that what Catholic dioceses had agreed to when states passed similar legislation.
Bottom line, this is phony issue which Catholics should feel free to ignore.
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