"A direct attack on religious liberty."
Echoing the words of many Catholic authorities and their socially conservative allies, that's what Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, has said about a new rule announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
By Aug. 1 of this year, says the rule, all private health insurance plans must cover all FDA approved methods of birth control at no cost to the woman treated. Since Catholic organizations believe and teach that contraception is immoral, they insist that this new rule would force them to violate their religious beliefs. For this reason, they say, it attacks religious freedom.
On the contrary, the new rule simply aims to protect the health of American women. Not to serve their convenience, but to safeguard their health.
The rule is firmly based on a report issued by the Institute of Medicine, an independent group of doctors and researchers.
In the year 2008, this group found, about half of all pregnancies in the U.S. were unplanned, and about 42 percent of those ended in abortion. But birth control cuts the rate of unplanned pregnancies and thereby cuts the rate of abortion. In other words, birth control cuts abortion rates. Nothing else works so well against them.
Second, the report says, women with unplanned pregnancies are more likely to smoke, drink, and skip or skimp on pre-natal care, all of which endangers the fetus and increases the risk of premature birth and low birth weight.
Third, says the report, birth control pills can do many things besides preventing conception. These pills are used to treat menstrual problems, migraine headaches and pelvic pain, and they can also reduce the risk of endometrial cancer and several other diseases.
That crucial point has failed to dent the brain of Michael Galligan-Stierle, President of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, who recently declared that birth control cannot be considered a "preventive service" because "we do not happen to think pregnancy is disease."
Even if pregnancy were not something that every woman should be allowed to prevent for the sake of her health, Galligan-Stierle fails to realize that birth control pills may be urgently needed to treat what anyone would call disease. In a recent New York Times article on the HHS ruling, Denise Grady tells what happened to a law student at Georgetown University who was denied coverage for the birth control pills prescribed by her doctor. Even though the prescription plainly stated that the pills were meant for the treatment of polycystic ovarian syndrome, she was repeatedly denied coverage for the pills, which she then had to buy herself for $100 a month. When she could no longer afford them, she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be surgically removed -- along with her ovary. As a result, her capacity to bear children has been impaired for the rest of her life. Is this what we mean by religious liberty?
Let's get something straight: religious liberty is not absolute. Under our system of justice, there is no such thing as an absolute right to anything. You cannot legally shout "fire" in a crowded room if there is no fire. You cannot legally shoot a gun if I happen to be standing in front of it. You cannot legally advocate the violent overthrow of the U.S. government (no matter how badly you may want to bring it down). And regardless of your religious beliefs, you cannot legally deny care that is needed to preserve the health of someone whose health you are insuring, or for which you are in any way responsible.
This point has already become a matter of law. In refusing -- on religious grounds -- to cover a type of care that is plainly needed to safeguard the health of American women, Catholic institutions are acting like Christian Scientists. Because Christian Scientists do not believe in medical science, they generally do not accept medical care for themselves, and many do not allow it for their children. But their religious beliefs have recently run head on into the law. The California Penal Code holds that "any person who ... willfully causes or permits any child to suffer ... or permits that child to be placed in such a situation that its person or health is endangered, shall be punished by imprisonment." According to Caroline Fraser, the state of California has obtained criminal convictions against two sets of Christian Science parents who allowed their children to die without medical treatment.
I have no evidence that any woman has ever died as a direct result of being denied access to birth control. But we now know for certain that denying or impeding such access -- by making women pay for it -- endangers their health, raises the rate of unplanned pregnancies, and thereby raises the rate of abortion. Religious liberty means the freedom to worship and proclaim one's beliefs. It does not mean the freedom to deny medical care to anyone who needs it and who depends on her insurance plan to provide it.
To deny such care will soon be illegal under the new ruling. But quite apart from the new ruling, denying such care -- whatever one's religious beliefs -- is simply immoral.
Letter from Bishop Leonard Blair, religious, liberty, health - Local ...
KUHNER: Obama threatens religious liberty - Washington Times
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
Your entire article is based a flawed premise that the employee is somehow a victim in this case. If an employee, male or female, decides that free access to contraceptives is necessary for their well-being, they are free to seek employment at another institution or seek supplementary insurance. To my knowledge, these religious institutions do not hold employees in servitude against their will. The employees made the choice to work for an employer whose stance on contraceptives is well known in this country.
The cage that the NYT, and later you, cited about the student at Georgetown is an exception to the rule. Most institutions, including Georgetown, have guidelines to distinguish between medically necessary access to birth control and "preventative" access. There is probably more to this story, than the NYT cared to publish.
Likewise, you ignore the fact that children are a protected class of citizens under the law, because they lack the ability to make decisions for themselves. You will note that California's law does apply to adults. Therefore, your analogy of children in California to adult women who choose their place of employment does not hold up in the real world.
Next time I suggest that you stick to what you know, rather than rely on hearsay and poor parallelism.
Don't like the Federal government intruding on your responsibilities to abide by its mandates? Lose the Federal funding and the tax exemption and then we'll talk.
Assuming that your ambiguous "he" refers to Mr. Heffernan, then he is rarely on point in this article. Very little of the "facts" in this opinion piece are correct other than his summary of the IOM report. It is important to note that the IOM study conducted in 2010-2011, not 2008, was financed solely by the HHS. The members of the study recommended guidelines and further study in their respective areas of expertise. In other words, like most government, non-peer reviewed studies, this one fulfilled a self-serving bias.
The attempt to compare the right to free contraception to other rights is dubious at best. While two of the examples are based on legal tradition, I can in fact legally fire a gun if you standing in front of it. Context is important in this example, if you present yourself in threatening manner, the law defends my right to protect myself and my property. Likewise, context is important in discussing conscience clause versus the executive order. In 1809, Thomas Jefferson, not exactly known for his religious beliefs, wrote, "No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority."
The executive order has forced the Catholic Church to choose between providing charitiable services to all people in their with their teachings or to stick to their principles on the sanctity of life. Either way, the Catholic Church has to violate their long-held beliefs.
If an employer decides that it violates their conscience to treat employees in the same manner as every other employer in that field and they need to get out of that field. They're already allowed to impose their religious restrictions on anyone who works for their religious entities. Let them limit themselves to those fields. Hospitals are not churches nor are any of the other non-church related fields that they have their fingers in.
These are not exceptions to a rule, they are the norm and the standard, as is shown by the number of practicing Catholic women who use contraception. Punishing their female employees for violating a made up rule of their religion that even their followers don't accept is not allowed.
In the real world, when you choose not to work in a church, you're choosing not to be subject to their beliefs and restrictions. If the hospital where you are a nurse is acquired by the church OR it's the only hospital for miles then you're not making a choice to accept church dogma.
You might want to take your own advice.