(CNSNews.com) -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is Catholic, indicated on Friday that she supports forcing St. Mary’s Medical Center, the oldest continuously operating hospital in her San Francisco-based congressional district, to provide health plans to its workers that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs free of charge even though the Catholic faith says this Catholic hospital may not do so because these things are intrinsically immoral.
"We are committed to furthering the healing ministry of Jesus," says the hospital's mission statement.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius--who, like Pelosi, is Catholic--issued the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate as a regulation under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare.
The Catholic bishops of the United States have repeatedly argued, including in numerous lawsuits, that the regulation violates the First-Amendment-guaranteed right to the free exercise of religion by Catholics and Catholic institutions.
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama touted the regulation in many stump speeches during the recent campaign, saying that health plans would now be required to provide women with cost-free contraception.
The Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously endorsed a statement in June declaring the regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate." Many of the bishops had letters read to parishioners at Sunday Masses saying of the regulation: "We cannot--we will not--comply with this unjust law."
Bill Cox, head of the health care alliance that oversees St. Mary's, said the mandate is an "egregious encroachment by the federal government on the constitutionally protected authority of the church."
At the Capitol on Friday, CNSNews.com asked Pelosi: “Should St. Mary’s hospital, which is a Catholic institution in San Francisco, should it be required by the administration to provide its workers with a health plan that covers sterilization and contraception and abortifacients and [other] things that it disagrees with?”
Pelosi said, “I support the action taken by the president--the compromise, I think, is a reasonable one.”
