We are all, I suppose, aware of the current controversy about the government mandate that religiously affiliated institutions provide birth control coverage:
Seven states asked a federal judge Thursday to block an Obama administration mandate that requires birth control coverage for employees of religious-affiliated hospitals, schools and outreach programs.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court of Nebraska, alleges that the new rule violates the First Amendment rights of groups that object to the use of contraceptives. It marks the first legal challenge filed by states.
I have a complex attitude to this issue, mostly because I don’t understand the logic of the Obama administration in the matter. We are talking not only about religious rights here but also about the rights of employers. And I can’t say that I find it easy to blame the Catholic employers in this situation. A non-Catholic employee has a choice not to work for a religious organization and seek employment elsewhere. Yes, we are in a recession and jobs are hard to come by. I get that. However, a Catholic bishop has absolutely no choice whatsoever in the issue. He cannot, by his nature, be in favor of contraception. I don’t share this belief, I find it egregiously wrong, but there are people who believe that contraception is evil. The government is placing them in a completely untenable position where their only choice is to stop employing altogether. Or sue. Which is what they are doing.
Now, I might be misunderstanding something but there is a variety of alternative solutions to the issue that the government is not even trying to explore. For instance, the very need for employers to provide birth control can be obviated by making contraceptives very cheap and easily obtainable. If the government believes (correctly) that contraception is something everybody should have access to, then it makes sense that the institution that holds this belief should start providing contraception to people instead of forcing institutions that don’t hold it to do so. Why should it necessarily be the reluctant employer and not the willing government?
That, of course, would entail making a hard and probably somewhat unpopular choice on the part of the administration. Why assume this risk when it’s so much easier to shift the burden of the decision onto the already unpopular Catholic leaders?
Nobody is a greater believer in the importance of easy access to good-quality contraception than I am. However, I keep getting the feeling that the current controversy is not really about contraception at all. At least not on the part of the Obama administration. The whole issue could have been resolved without involving the Catholics at all. I, for one, would really like to know why it wasn’t.
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My view of it is that regardless of what your employer’s beliefs are, they have no right to interfere with something as personal as your health based on their personal convictions: For example, if I lived in America and had a job where my boss was a Jehovah’s Witness, would that mean he had the right to tell me that my health insurance can’t cover something he doesn’t believe in, namely, blood transfusions? Does an employer have the right to tell Jaime that because they don’t believe that transexuality is what God “wants for us” (something I heard someone tell her before, with “us” referring to humanity) they won’t cover her prescription for oestrogen and sexual reassignment surgeries?
The bigger issue is, of course, that healthcare in the states is broken and really shouldn’t be micromanaged by employers in the first place, but that’s why I support the birth control mandate, especially since over 90% of Catholics have used some form of contraception, and over half of them use it regularly. Not to mention the fact that there are people who need it, not just for pregnancy prevention, but because of serious medical conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis, and I don’t like the idea of them having to disclose that to their employers in order to get it covered, especially since that’s illegal under HIPAA.
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I agree that contraception by those desiring it is a good thing and that abortion in the case of those desiring it can, in the circumstances indicated by Roe v. Wade and its progeny, be appropriate, necessary and permissible. Obviously, I disagree on this with doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church and of others.
However, the Constitution articulates no right to have either provided gratis at the expense of others. The U.S. Government and the states certainly can, but need not, provide either or both gratis> or subsidize them, as can those willing to do so voluntarily.
The First Amendment does guarantee our right to the free exercise of religion. That does not mean that churches and other worship facilities have to be subsidized or provided gratis by the government or by those who do not want to provide them. They may in the case of government (subject to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment) or may not, as they elect. Nor does it mean that all activities said to be encouraged or mandated by one’s religion are permissible, “honor killings,” for example. However, it does mean that the government cannot consistently with the Constitution mandate the positive performance of acts that contravene one’s religion and therefore prohibit the free exercise of that right.
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The point is: employers are providing health coverage as part of a compensation package, and the government is making sure these health packages are up to par. The constitution also doesn’t guarantee me a government or employer subsidized quadruple bypass operation. Yet my insurance policy would pay for one if it were needed, whether or not my employer thought it was icky, immoral, or whatever.
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It’s very easy: they accept federal money in the form of financial aid, federal funds for research, etc, therefore they are mandated to follow federal law. If they don’t want to follow federal law, they should reject federal money. Bob Jones University refused until a few years ago to allow interracial dating based on religious grounds (a very literal interpretation of the Bible), and were willing to accept the consequences of breaking federal law: they received no federal financial aid. It’s exactly the same.
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The question here should be why there is any federal funding at all going to such places.
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Research grants (with a certain percentage of “indirect costs” going to the institution and not the researcher), contracted services, Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement are all obvious direct federal payment for services rendered. Student loan guarantees, government or military tuition benefit payments are indirect sources of federal payment to universities. It is possible to run a “Great Books” college of arts without federal or state funding. It is not possible to run a sciences university, medical university, or hospital without federal or state funding.
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Well, the thing is, the White House DID give in and propose a pretty strong compromise–essentially, that the religious organization wouldn’t have to pay for the contraception, but that the insurance companies would. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/catholic-bishops-criticize-new-contraception-proposal.html) Now, obviously, that’s a giant semantic loophole, but consider: according to the Roman Catholic Church, if a woman has a tubal pregnancy, which has exactly zero chance of surviving to term and will pretty much kill the woman if it isn’t gotten out of there, it is NOT morally acceptable to abort the fetus; it IS acceptable, however, to go in and remove the woman’s fallopian tube with the fetus inside it, because they’re not directly killing the fetus, it just happens to die when the tube is removed. And by the way, you’ve also just halved the woman’s ability to conceive again. (No, I’m not making that up.) A church that can justify something through THAT level of maneuvering should have no trouble relieving itself of responsibility if someone else is going to pay for a kind of medical coverage they refuse to pay for their employees.
Until this compromise, I was right with you on kind of getting where the Church was coming from on this…but now that they’re spitting in its face, I have less sympathy.
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The really shocking thing here is that there are still crowds of women happily practicing this religion.
Well, it’s their fallopian tubes.
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Without masochism, what is religiosity?
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Do I make an impression of an especially masochistic person to you? 🙂
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“Why should it necessarily be the reluctant employer and not the willing government?”
Because this country doesn’t believe in government provided healthcare. There is a lot of over the counter contraception available already. People use prescription contraception for all sorts of things. And it is not contraception employers are being asked to provide, it is healthcare in general. Having to ask my boss, a non MD, for his approval of whatever health service I need is not appropriate.
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Isn’t the answer to this entire situation to remove the employer as an intermediary altogether?
There are certain medical procedures that I find to be completely repugnant. It’s a good thing that I don’t provide anybody with work or I’d end up being forced to participate in such medical procedures against my will and to the detriment of my own psychological health.
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Sure, but in the US we’ve rejected the idea of national health insurance.
Remember: employer arranged health insurance is part of compensation, not a gift. We have it because arranging for group insurance rates is cheaper than paying enough so that each person can buy their own policy as an individual (this would be quite wastefull all around).
So, my employer may not like the things my MD or MDs do,
but they may not like all the things I do with my salary, either.
They might not like the type of house I live in, the foods I
buy, etc.; my car may not be to their taste; but they don’t say
“they are paying for it.” However, they are in fact “paying for”
my housing, clothes, etc., as well as paying into my insurance and retirment plans.
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“Sure, but in the US we’ve rejected the idea of national health insurance.”
– At some point, many of this “we” also rejected the idea of a society without slavery. We are seeing right now the perfect example of why the employer-provided health insurance system is untenable. This should start a conversation on national health insurance because that is an important discussion that is still only waiting to happen. Instead, we are getting yet again into the quagmire of “those bad Catholics.” This really reminds me of my students who easily dismiss the atrocities committed by the Europeans in the New World by saying “Oh, but the people who did all that were Catholics.” It’s easy to obviate the issue by dumping on the bad, scary Catholics. The true problem, however, is that the healthcare system in this country is hugely messed up.
“employer arranged health insurance is part of compensation, not a gift. ”
– Shouldn’t employers have the right to decide what compensation they offer?
“So, my employer may not like the things my MD or MDs do,
but they may not like all the things I do with my salary, either.”
– This is not what we are discussing. We are discussing the employer’s right to decide what your compensation will initially be.
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“right to decide”
What? Compensation is negotiated, there are laws that apply, and where there’s public funding the government / law has yet a greater role.
And, if compensation is health care, then no, the employer doesn’t get to define that as faith healing, for instance. Some might, which is what
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… (sorry, continuing) government regulation is about.
On single payer health care, there have just been years of debate about that and it lost. I’m for it but I lost. Sure, those of us who put in time struggling for it can start again, but we’ll need the support of some of the rest of you. This is recent news.
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– Shouldn’t employers have the right to decide what compensation they offer?
“So, my employer may not like the things my MD or MDs do,
but they may not like all the things I do with my salary, either.”
– This is not what we are discussing. We are discussing the employer’s right to decide what your compensation will initially be.
I disagree – I’m suggesting it’s all the same. If there is no other affordable health coverage, then the health plan offered by your employer is what you’ve got to take (especially if it’s required). And it’s compensation not lagniappe.
My employer doesn’t get to pay me in quetzales, either, it’s got to be USDs; by the same token, the health coverage has to be actual health coverage.
Disapproving personally of what I do with it and blocking me from reasonable care *is* rather like having a vegan employer saying I cannot use my salary to buy meat!
The other point is that compensation, fair labor practices, etc. *aren’t* simply the decision of the employer – they’re negotiated, regulated, etc. The analogy is minimum wage. The idea that the employer should have 100% rights is straight outta the 19th century and has been discredited and abandoned with much struggle and for good reason.
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“Disapproving personally of what I do with it and blocking me from reasonable care”
– We all have a very different understanding of what’s reasonable.
“*is* rather like having a vegan employer saying I cannot use my salary to buy meat!””
– Are we talking about employers who pay out the salary and THEN somehow try to prevent employees from paying for whatever procedures? If we were talking about the pressure from the government to raise everybody’s salaries by the amount needed to cover contraception each month, I would not have a problem with that. This is yet another alternative that is not being explored.
Which is why I say yet again that this is not about contraception at all. This is about Obama preparing a response for the questions about his failed healthcare reform during the elections. “It isn’t me who failed, it’s the bad Bishops who stole the healthcare system.”
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From the outside, looking in, the whole shebang has looked to me like Obama trying, not for what he wants, or what he knows what his voters want but what he can possibly get. All the more (to my UK mind) sensible solutions that don’t involve employer insurance would have been killed off even faster. For instance, government subsidy for contraceptives etc. would go down like a lead balloon in the House, and I’d have been able to hear the howls from here if he’d attempted to interfere with that sacred cow of the market, pricing.
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