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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: January 8, 2014
Contact: Leslie Palma
347-286-7277
ATLANTA – Dr. Alveda King, full-time director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life, said “the 11th hour emergency injunction that temporarily relieves our ministry from the loathsome yoke of the contraception mandate contained in the Affordable Care Act was an answer to prayer.”
Likening the intervention to “a wakeup call akin to what my uncle Dr. King described in his A KNOCK AT MIDNIGHT experience,” Dr. King describes the urgently pressing need to resist the HHS Mandate.
Priests for Life learned at 5 p.m. Dec. 31, just hours before its new insurance policy was to take effect, that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit had granted the injunction, which will remain in place while the appeal of Priests for Life’s lawsuit against the mandate is heard.
Dr. King, along with Priests for Life National Director Father Frank Pavone and Executive Director Janet Morana, are named as plaintiffs in the suit.
“As a Catholic ministry, Priests for Life opposes the use of contraception, as well as ‘morning-after’ contraception that acts as an abortifacient, and sterilization,” she explained. While she is not Catholic, she also opposes these products and services because they are part of the “contraceptive mentality” that allows the destruction of more than a million unborn children a year, and because they are unhealthy for women.
“For many years we have been crying out for justice for the babies in the womb, for their mothers who are harmed by abortion, and their fathers and the whole community. To force us to participate in a mandate that is totally opposed to everything we believe in would be very egregious to me,” Dr. King said. “I was harmed by abortion. I have children who were killed by abortion and by harmful contraception. This injunctive relief is vital to our ministry, and couldn’t have come at a better time.”
Noting that 2014 marks the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, Dr. King said she believes this year will mark “a significant turning point for righteousness and justice.”
She is inviting all who will be in Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 22 March for Life, to join her at the 20th annual National Memorial for the Pre-Born and Their Mothers and Fathers.
“We will be praying for an end to the terrible scourge of abortion, and praying that the religious freedom guaranteed to every American is not stripped from us,” Dr. King said.
The National Memorial will take place from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 22 at the DAR Constitution Hall, 1776 D St. NW. For information, go to NationalPrayerService.com
Priests for Life is the nation’s largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.