Religious liberty has taken another agonizing hit, this time in California (and eventually other states?), following another hostile ruling from the Obama administration. On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services used an utterly atrocious argument to rule that churches in the state aren’t exempt from insurance policies that fund abortions. LifeNews.com has the details:

> The troubling situation began in 2014 when the California Department of Managed Health Care reclassified abortion as a “basic health service” under the Affordable Care Act and ordered all insurance plans in the state to begin covering surgical abortions immediately. Even churches are not exempt from funding abortions. The churches filed a lawsuit against the regulation last October, and it has been moving through the courts. They also asked the Obama administration to uphold the Weldon Amendment — federal law that protects conscience rights. But, [this week], the HHS Office of Civil Rights released the results of its investigation into the California abortion mandate, stating it found no violation and is closing its investigation of the complaints without further action. … They argue that the Weldon amendment only protects health insurance plans, and not the purchasers of such plans, and state that the insurance companies have not complained. … Furthermore, OCR states that the insurance companies do not hold a religious or moral objection to covering abortion.

As Gary Bauer writes, “It is hard to imagine a more outrageous and blatantly anti-First Amendment order than this. If the government can force churches to pay for abortions, it’s not far from ordering pastors to perform same-sex marriages.”

The Obama administration clearly has a knack for forcing consciously objectionable practices on religious institutions, despite the pledges of protections made by Democrats when ObamaCare was shoved down our throats in 2010. Catholic nuns were forced to fight their own battle — which they won, at least in the interim — because HHS’s “accommodation” on funding abortifacients was anything but accommodating. Leftists are forcing Christian bakers to bake the cake. Now the Obama administration is forcing churches to fund the abortion.

In January’s “Presidential Proclamation: Religious Freedom Day, 2016,” Barack Obama said, “The First Amendment prohibits Government from establishing religion, and it protects the free exercise of every faith. … The United States stands for the protection of equal rights for all people to practice their faith freely, without fear or coercion.” That is, unless you’re a Christian.