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Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel

Leila Abolfazli is Counsel in the Health and Reproductive Rights Program at NWLC. She works on a range of issues involving the protection and expansion of reproductive rights at the federal level. Prior to joining the NWLC, Ms. Abolfazli was a Senior Associate at WilmerHale in Washington, DC. She is a graduate of Emory University and Georgetown University Law Center.

My Take

The “Freedom” for Bosses to Discriminate

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: October 11, 2012 at 12:36 pm

As you may have heard, Hobby Lobby is suing the federal government because its owner believes that the HHS rule requiring health insurance coverage of birth control violates his religious freedom. There have been a whole series of reactions to the lawsuit, including one led by pastors protesting Hobby Lobby’s decision to sue. Then there’s The Oklahoman newspaper’s reaction, in which its editorial board recently came out in support of the owners’ lawsuit, calling it a “powerful voice in fight against Obamacare mandate.”

In the editorial, the board dismissed a point I had made to an Oklahoman reporter, where I explained that it is a slippery slope to allow employers to opt out of generally applicable rules because of his or her own moral or religious objection to such rules. While people may balk at the requirement to cover the “oh-so-controversial” health care item known as birth control, how would people feel if an employer refused to cover children immunizations?

Well, the editorial board took my point and said it supported theirs. They theorized that because people have the right to refuse a vaccine, bosses should have the right to refuse to cover vaccines in their company’s health insurance. And here is the impasse we are facing.

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Great News: Court Holds Birth Control Rule Does Not Violate Religious Freedom

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: October 05, 2012 at 02:15 pm

Last Friday, District Court Judge Carol Jackson dismissed a case filed by O’Brien Industrial Holdings and Frank O’Brien (the owner) against the HHS rule requiring health insurance coverage of birth control with no co-pay. In a decision that is worthy of reading a couple of times over (PDF), Judge Jackson explained in careful detail why, in fact, the HHS rule does not violate the statutory or constitutional claims made by O’Brien and his for-profit mining company (in which he claimed that the rule violated the company’s and his religious liberty).

There are some great lines in the decision. One of my favorites is:

The rule does not "directly and inevitably prevent plaintiffs from acting in accordance with their religious beliefs. Frank O’Brien is not prevented from keeping the Sabbath, from providing a religious upbringing for his children, or from participating in a religious ritual such as communion. Instead, plaintiffs remain free to exercise their religion, by not using contraceptives and by discouraging employees from using contraceptives..."

Such a line says what we have been saying all along... the birth control rule does not violate religious freedom.

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Oh, if only the Susan B. Anthony List poll actually asked what it says it asked...

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: September 28, 2012 at 02:43 pm

A couple of days ago, I read the following unbelievable Politico headline: “Susan B. Anthony List, a group that opposes abortion rights, found that 69 percent of voters in swing states oppose the federal government requiring religious institutions to pay for insurance coverage of contraceptives ‘that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.’” I found the number perplexing as it was completely contrary to the other research we have seen on this issue (including the research done by the Law Center and Planned Parenthood). So I decided to actually read through the polling that SBA posted online, and – lo and behold – found just an itsy bitsy problem with this headline...

The poll did not ask about requiring religiously-affiliated institutions cover contraception! Instead, the poll asks about an HHS “regulation that forces faith-based institutions to provide health insurance coverage that pays for abortion-inducing drugs.” To say that both their question and their conclusions are blatantly misleading is an understatement.

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3 Bad Opinions: A Frustrating Week for Women’s Rights and Health

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: August 02, 2012 at 12:43 pm

Last Wednesday started off a week’s worth of bad court decisions in cases that directly affect women’s reproductive health.

It all started off with the 8th Circuit upholding a South Dakota law that requires doctors to tell a woman seeking an abortion that she would be subjected to “increased risk of suicide ideation or suicide” if she had an abortion. The court seemed unconcerned with the fact that a woman would likely interpret the disclosure as telling her that having an abortion would cause her to be at an increased risk of suicide (a link the scientific studies do not support). Making constrained arguments about relative risk and scientific “uncertainty,” the court rubberstamped a misleading disclosure that will only confuse women in South Dakota seeking abortion care. Decision outcome: it’s ok to mislead women? Check.

Second, a district court in Colorado temporarily stopped the health care law’s contraceptive coverage requirement from taking effect for a for-profit CO company, which specializes in heating and cooling systems, based on the claim that requiring coverage of birth control in a health insurance plan violated the company’s religious freedom. After the judge determined that questions like whether a for profit HVAC company can exercise religion “merit more deliberate investigation,” the court then decided that the government had failed to show it had a compelling interest in providing women access to contraceptive coverage and that there were less restrictive means for doing so. Decision outcome: it’s ok for your boss to make health care decisions for you? Check.

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The Judiciary Committee Approves a Cruel Abortion Ban Directed at Women Who Have No Voting Representation in Congress

Posted by Leila Abolfazli, Senior Counsel | Posted on: July 23, 2012 at 05:24 pm

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee marked up H.R. 3803, a bill that would ban most abortions at twenty weeks post-fertilization in the District of Columbia. This bill targets women in D.C., women who have no voting representation in Congress. The bill is blatantly unconstitutional as it bans abortions pre-viability and fails to provide any health exception pre- or post- viability. And it has no exception for rape or incest survivors. It’s a bill that basically says: no, we really don’t care about the women who would be affected by this bill.

As with the mark-up of CIANA, the mark-up of H.R. 3803 was incredibly frustrating to watch as the Judiciary Committee rejected common-sense amendments, including an exception to protect the woman’s health and an exception for women who have cancer and “need life-saving treatment incompatible with continuing the pregnancy.”

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