Indeed. Conestoga is now one of the largest manufactur-
ers in the county, with a reputation not only for employing
outstanding craftsmen, but for paying them well and treat-
ing them fairly.
“They’ve been trying to live their lives so thoroughly
consistent with their religious faith,” says Randy Wenger,
Chief Counsel with the nearby Independence Law Center,
who knows the family as neighbors as well as clients. “The
way they live out their faith in trying to serve others … to
really be Christian light and truth, pervades everything, in
terms of the way they run their business.”
Wenger recalls encountering a group of Russian refugees
working in the Lancaster plant—only one of whom, it
turned out, understood any English. The Hahns had hired
all of them, knowing the group would be able to make a
better wage working together, at the factory, where only one
would have to speak the language.
“
“If the government can force the Hahns to
violate their sincerely held religious beliefs
just to engage in a livelihood … that sets
a dangerous precedent. If the government
can do that to them, it can certainly do
much worse to others.”
“I love the Hahns,” Wenger says. “Just the fact that they’re
real people, in everything they do. They do good work, and
they’ve got a lot of customers because they do good work.
God has blessed them in their business, and they’re looking
in every way that they can to build back into the Kingdom
of God.”
That same determination, though, now has the Hahns at
odds with their own government … and every effort they’ve
made to explain their actions and beliefs has been lost, so
far, in translation.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ 2012
abortion pill mandate stunned Christian business owners
across America, including the Hahns. The law dictates that
all employers must underwrite, as part of their employees’
insurance benefits, life-ending abortion drugs. Those who
34
decline to pay for their employees’ abortion pills risk fines
of $100 dollars a day … per employee. Few businesses of
any size can sustain a financial penalty of $36,500 a year, per
employee.
By refusing to grant them religious exemptions for the
mandate, then, the government is, in fact, ordering busi-
ness owners—whatever their personal views on the sanctity
of human life—to actively support abortion, or risk crip-
pling fines.
“I’m really disappointed,” Lemar says. “We’re Christians.
We don’t believe in taking life. And now … here we are.”
“This is a moral concern for us,” Anthony says. “We actu-
ally have a sanctity of life statement that we put together
that says we believe that life begins at the instant conception
takes place. Nobody has a right to take that life except God.
So we really don’t want to be in a business of providing drugs
to our employees that could potentially cause abortion.”
But standing for that conviction puts the Hahns on the
horns of another dilemma: confronting their very own
government.
“Mennonites don’t go to court,” says Wenger, whose Inde-
pendence Law Center was recruited by the family to defend
them. “Here, they needed to go to court to be able to protect
their rights.” Convincing the Hahns of that, he says, meant
reaching “I wouldn’t say a comfort level, but an understand-
ing, of what needed to be done. They want to be able to run
their business, serve their clients and their employees in a
way that honors God. So, ‘Okay, we need to go to court.’”
“It was soul-wrenching,” Anthony says. “We’re nonresis-
tant, peace-loving people. We’re not in the legal world, doing
a lot of lawsuits and things. So that was really troubling … to
stand up and make that stand. But we felt we needed to. We
just did not want to go against what we believe.”
“Norman Hahn was almost in tears, as he was speaking to
us about the moral dilemma that this was creating for them,”
says Wenger. “They want to live their lives according to their
faith. Now, for the first time in 300 years, the government
is telling them they can’t. Instead, they’re the enemy of the
state, and the enemy of the government’s new policy.”
“That just seems wrong, for the government to create
enemies … when these are people who only want to serve.
These are genuinely good people. And they only want to do
good. [Yet they’re] being treated like they’re doing some-
thing bad to society.”