FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: February 18, 2016
Contact: Leslie Palma
347-286-7277
NEW YORK – Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, today commented on the Guttmacher Institute’s amicus brief filed in opposition to Priests for Life v. HHS, which is now challenging the HHS mandate in the Supreme Court.
“The Guttmacher Institute asserts that the religious freedom rights of Priests for Life and the dozens of other groups and individuals with cases now before the Supreme Court are subservient to the demands of government regulators,” said Fr. Pavone. “This may be what abortion advocates claim, but it’s not what the law states.”
The Guttmacher Institute has filed an amicus curiae brief in the consolidated Supreme Court case Zubik v. Burwell, in which the lawsuits of Priests for Life and six others seek the court’s protection from the Obama administration’s demand that religious non-profit groups participate in the distribution of abortion-causing drugs in violation of their faiths. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the matter on March 23.
“Contrary to what Guttmacher and the abortion lobby allege, the government could find any number of ways of making birth control available without forcing church groups to violate their own beliefs,” added Fr. Pavone.
“The abortion lobby likes to talk about the separation of church and state, but it now wants to weave the tentacles of government into religion, telling churches what they can and can’t believe. The hostility of abortionists and their supporters to people of faith and to faith itself has never been more apparent.”
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.