(intro music)
- When you give to a local church or charity,
how do you expect they'll use your donation?
I think it's safe to assume that they'll use your gift
to serve their state admission, right?
So if you give to your local food pantry,
your dollar is helping feed needy neighbors.
If you give to your local animal shelter,
you know you're supporting its goals too.
- The same goes for a gift or offering to your local church.
Sandy and I met at Cedar Park Assembly of God
when we were just three years old.
Today, we currently serve as pastors
for this church where we grew up.
At Cedar Park we believe and teach that every human life,
whether born or not, is valuable, precious,
and worthy of full protection.
- Our church lives that commitment out in many ways.
We partner with a local pro-life pregnancy center
and foster care providers,
we host an annual camp for children in foster care,
we run a K through 12 school with over 1000 students.
We host an annual service to pray
for couples struggling with infertility.
We launched a ministry for infertile couples
to adopt frozen embryos leftover
from In vitro fertilization, giving the gift of life
to unborn children who otherwise would have been destroyed.
We even operate a state licensed funeral home
on our church campus.
- Our commitment to valuing each human life at every stage
isn't just based on doctrine that's written into our bylaws,
it's a core piece of who we are. In fact,
a big part of our story has to do
with being pro-life because we faced a teen pregnancy
but even then our church had a built-in culture of welcoming
and celebrating every new life.
Rather than judging or shaming us,
our church helped us become the parents
we really weren't ready to be at the time.
- With all that said, can you imagine what it meant for us
when we found out that our home state
of Washington was forcing our church to pay
for abortions through our health care plans?
- [Man] According to a new state law cooked up in Tandem
with Planned Parenthood and Abortion Advocacy Group NARAL,
any insurance plan that offers maternity care coverage
must also pay for elective abortions.
Abortion and maternity care are not the same thing.
Maternity health insurance is meant to support a mother,
welcoming a new life into the world,
not end that life through abortion.
While the sinister, heartbreaking irony
of the state's demands sets in on you,
I'll also add one more detail.
Even though the law includes a lot of exemptions,
none adequately protect churches
or any other nonmedical religious organizations.
- [Sandy] Between our church, school, funeral home,
and other ministries
that include a professional counseling program
and a university level ministry program,
Cedar Park has over 180 employees
who are eligible for health insurance coverage.
Each of these employees share
in our commitment to protecting life.
It's important to us that each of these team members
and their families have access to quality healthcare
but the State of Washington's new law made that impossible
to do without violating our deepest convictions
about the value of every human life.
- We were even more shocked to learn
of the penalties that lawmakers want
to impose on those who protect life.
The State could possibly find churches who don't comply
with the mandate and potentially even throw pastors in jail.
Can you imagine forcing churches to use tithe money
to pay for abortion, and then to pay for fines
for refusing to participate in the taking of life
or trying to bully pastors into violating their conscience
by threatening them with jail?
This should never happen in America.
It clearly violates our God-given religious freedom
protected by the First Amendment.
So we reached out to Alliance Defending Freedom
and filed a lawsuit, challenging the state's unjust demands.
No church should be forced to fund abortions.
It's amazing we need to say a thing like that
but the message still hasn't gotten
through to Washington lawmakers or to those in states
with similar laws, like California.
- Churches should be free to operate according
to their faith without being threatened by the government
and that freedom doesn't just belong
to those of us in church leadership but to every American.
To follow our case and to find out more
about how you can stand for freedom,
visit ADFlegal.org/standforfreedom.