“The Pharisees”: Bishops Go Off The Deep End
Just as I was publishing my post about Catholic tribalism on Friday, predicting that the brilliant White House “accommodation” on contraception wouldn’t mollify the U.S. Conference of Bishops, the bishops released a statement that made them seem, well, mollified, at least a little. The new Health and Human Services regulations were “a step in the right direction,” their statement read, and so I softened an assertion that the bishops would continue to wage war against the compromise.
I needn’t have soft-pedaled. Only a few hours later the bishops came out, guns blazing, insisting the only solution they would accept would be for “HHS to rescind the mandate for those objectionable services.” By any employer, for any employee in the entire country — a country where the vast majority of voters, and of Catholics, support Obama’s stand. And at Sunday Mass, bishops and parish priests throughout the nation read aloud the stunningly political letters about the controversy they already had planned. Now, with the bishops’ blessing, Republican are hard at work on legislation that would force HHS to strip the contraceptive coverage requirement for all employers, not just religious employers. Sen. Roy Blunt would allow employers to decline to cover any service they deem objectionable; Sen. Marco Rubio would restrict the legislation to contraception coverage.
I have a couple of reactions to the bishops’ extremism. First of all, as someone raised Catholic, I wonder why they’ve never read letters about any of their social justice priorities: universal healthcare, increased protection for the poor, labor rights, or action to curb climate change? Why does this topic – not even the morally challenging issue of abortion, but the universally accepted practice of birth control – merit such a thundering reaction from the pulpit?
Second, as an American, I also wonder: How do they continue to demand tax-exempt status when they’re railing in their churches about blatantly political – and divisively partisan – public concerns? As the first writer on my remarkably sane Catholic tribalism letters thread remarked, their public support for the extremist GOP position makes me think they should register as a Republican political action committee rather than remain a tax-exempt religious institution outside the bounds of politics.
Even as the bishops became more shrill and extreme, the debate over contraception coverage became smarter and calmer last week. Major Catholic organizations supported Obama’s Friday move, including the Catholic Health Association, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities and Catholic Charities USA. Before the president’s announcement, famed attorney David Boies did the most to usher in the new tone by framing the HHS rules as a matter of labor law. Boies doesn’t believe, by the way, that HHS is in any way required to provide the exemption for churches it wrote into its regulations even before the compromise. If the church is employing people, whether co-religionists or not, it has a responsibility to comply with employment law. He proved that even the administration’s initial regulations, exempting churches, was a strong attempt at accommodating anti-contraceptive religious groups.
But maybe the best argument on behalf of the Obama administration’s position comes from a very unlikely source, as Jay Bookman points out: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In two different decisions, the conservative Catholic Scalia has sided with the court majority in finding that religious teachings can’t justify religious employers – or employees — failing to comply with labor law. In the 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision, regarding an employer’s ability to fire a Native American employee who used peyote, despite the employee’s claim that using the drug was a religious rite, Scalia wrote:
“We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition.” In an even more directly relevant 1982 decision holding that Amish employers must comply with Social Security and withholding taxes, though their faith bars participation in government support programs, Scalia wrote:
Respondents urge us to hold, quite simply, that when otherwise prohibitable conduct is accompanied by religious convictions, not only the convictions but the conduct itself must be free from governmental regulation. We have never held that, and decline to do so now.
I’ve written repeatedly that my inability to quit the Catholic Church entirely comes from the fact that its social teachings formed my social conscience, and to this day some of the people doing the most good for the poor and the excluded are devout Catholics. But the bishops are impossible to defend. Today, they are working on behalf of the Republican Party. “They have become the Pharisees,” says Andrew Sullivan, a conservative practicing Catholic. “And we need Jesus.”
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, February 13, 2012
“Outlawing Contraception”: Virginia House Passes Personhood Bill
Republican delegate Bob Marshall says critics are overstating things when it comes to the personhood bill he is sponsoring in Virginia. Opponents of his bill have argued that not only does the measure grant legal protections to all fetuses beginning at conception, but it could also be construed to outlaw birth control.
The bill is ostensibly less stringent than similar measures that came up in Colorado and Mississippi. As Marshall points out, it does not directly outlaw abortion, but would force the courts to include embryos in definitions of person. “I think I struck a middle ground,” says Marshall.
Try telling that to the bill’s opponents, who fear the bill’s consequences for women’s health. The House rejected an amendment by Democratic delegate Virginia Watts that would have specifically protected birth-control access.
Marshall called the amendment “a vehicle to entrap me,” arguing it would have hurt the bill in court. By specifically allowing birth control, Marshall says, the courts could interpret the bill as prohibiting anything not specifically allowed. “If I were to accept any one of these,” he said, the courts could say “here’s Mr. Marshall, acknowledging unintended consequences.”
But Watts argues the bill already has that problem because it specifically allows in-vitro fertilization. The last section of Marshall’s bill notes that “nothing in this section shall be interpreted as affecting lawfully assisted conception.” In other words, in-vitro is okay. Watts contends that because the bill specifically allows in vitro, it therefore disallows any other acts that would interfere with conception—like birth control. “You said it doesn’t pertain to one thing, therefore it does to everything else,” says Watts. “That’s why my amendment was so crucial … anything that keeps that from being implanted in the womb, kills a person under this bill.”
The bill is headed to the state Senate, where no one seems to know what will happen. While the House committee that dealt with Marshall’s bill was stacked in favor of the Republicans, the Senate’s committee is almost split: seven Republicans who vote pretty consistently with the pro-life advocates, seven Democrats who usually vote pro-choice. Then there’s Senator Harry Blevins, a Republican who’s record is less absolute. Without Blevins’ vote, the bill would probably not make it out of committee. Neither Marshall nor Watts had a clear idea which way Blevins was leaning and the senator was unavailable for comment this afternoon.
Watts is hopeful the debate over her amendment specifically allowing birth control will highlight what’s at stake. “I think that my amendment being so clearly before the body really underscores what’s there,” she said. “Up until then, you could just obfuscate all this with a lot of verbiage.”
Meanwhile Marshall’s busy painting an almost inverse portrait of his bill. “People who are otherwise intelligent keep bringing up these red herrings,” he said, noting that “when it comes to sex a lot of people can’t think straight.” At least that’s something both sides can likely agree on.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, February 14, 2012
“Beyond Pelvic Politics”: Choosing Between Bishops’ Sensibilities And Women’s Health
I may not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about banning contraceptives.
The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals. On the contrary, few areas have more impact on more people than birth control — and few are more central to efforts to chip away at poverty.
My well-heeled readers will be furrowing their brows at this point. Birth control is cheap, you’re thinking, and far less expensive than a baby (or an abortion). But for many Americans living on the edge, it’s a borderline luxury.
A 2009 study looked at sexually active American women of modest means, ages 18 to 34, whose economic circumstances had deteriorated. Three-quarters said that they could not afford a baby then. Yet 30 percent had put off a gynecological or family-planning visit to save money. More horrifying, of those using the pill, one-quarter said that they economized by not taking it every day. (My data is from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research organization on issues of sexual health.)
One-third of women in another survey said they would switch birth control methods if not for the cost. Nearly half of those women were relying on condoms, and others on nothing more than withdrawal.
The cost of birth control is one reason poor women are more than three times as likely to end up pregnant unintentionally as middle-class women.
In short, birth control is not a frill that can be lightly dropped to avoid offending bishops. Coverage for contraception should be a pillar of our public health policy — and, it seems to me, of any faith-based effort to be our brother’s keeper, or our sister’s.
To understand the centrality of birth control, consider that every dollar that the United States government spends on family planning reduces Medicaid expenditures by $3.74, according to Guttmacher. Likewise, the National Business Group on Health estimated that it costs employers at least an extra 15 percent if they don’t cover contraception in their health plans.
And of course birth control isn’t just a women’s issue: men can use contraceptives too, and unwanted pregnancies affect not only mothers but also fathers.
This is the backdrop for the uproar over President Obama’s requirement that Catholic universities and hospitals include birth control in their health insurance plans. On Friday, the White House backed off a bit — forging a compromise so that unwilling religious employers would not pay for contraception, while women would still get the coverage — but many administration critics weren’t mollified.
Look, there’s a genuine conflict here. Many religious believers were sincerely offended that Catholic institutions would have to provide coverage for health interventions that the church hierarchy opposed. That counts in my book: it’s best to avoid forcing people to do things that breach their ethical standards.
Then again, it’s not clear how many people actually are offended. A national survey found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives. Moreover, a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute reported that even among Catholics, 52 percent back the Obama policy: they believe that religiously affiliated universities and hospitals should be obliged to include birth control coverage in insurance plans.
So, does America’s national health policy really need to make a far-reaching exception for Catholic institutions when a majority of Catholics oppose that exception?
I wondered what other religiously affiliated organizations do in this situation. Christian Science traditionally opposed medical care. Does The Christian Science Monitor deny health insurance to employees?
“We offer a standard health insurance package,” John Yemma, the editor, told me.
That makes sense. After all, do we really want to make accommodations across the range of faith? What if organizations affiliated with Jehovah’s Witnesses insisted on health insurance that did not cover blood transfusions? What if ultraconservative Muslim or Jewish organizations objected to health care except at sex-segregated clinics?
The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious beliefs, and accommodate them where we can. But we ban polygamy, for example, even for the pious. Your freedom to believe does not always give you a freedom to act.
In this case, we should make a good-faith effort to avoid offending Catholic bishops who passionately oppose birth control. I’m glad that Obama sought a compromise. But let’s remember that there are also other interests at stake. If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population.
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 11, 2012
“Blessed Are The Tweakers”: The Battle Behind The Contraception Fight
It’s not really about birth control.
As you probably heard, President Obama changed the new rules on health care coverage to accommodate howls of outrage from the Catholic bishops, who didn’t want Catholic institutions paying for anything that provided women with free contraceptives.
Now, they can get a pass. But if their health policies don’t provide the coverage, their female employees will be able to get it anyway, directly from the insurance companies, which will pay the freight. Contraceptives are a win-win for them, since they’re much cheaper than paying for unintended pregnancies and deliveries.
Was it a cave, tweak or compromise? President Obama thinks of himself as a grand bargain kind of guy, but he really strikes me as the kind of person who will, when possible, go for the tweak.
Anyhow, it’s a good tweak. The women still get contraception coverage, the president has shown his respect for the bishops’ strong moral position.
Let’s skip over the flaws in the strong moral position position. Such as the fact that many states already require employers’ health care plans to cover contraception and that all over the United States there are Catholic universities and hospitals that comply.
Or that the bishops have totally failed to convince their own faithful that birth control is a moral evil and now appear to be trying to get the federal government to do the job for them. We’re rising above all that.
On Friday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called the tweak “a first step in the right direction,” which is certainly better than nothing. Sister Carol Keehan, the head of the 600-plus-member umbrella group for Catholic hospitals, applauded the change.
So far so good. Everybody happy?
No way.
Rick Santorum, Presidential Candidate On The Move, was unimpressed. At the White House, he said, they were still “trying to impose their values on somebody else.” Imposing your values on somebody else is definitely an area where Santorum is expert.
The leader of the Republican Study Committee, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, called the tweak a “fig leaf,” which he seemed to regard as a bad thing.
Representative Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican and leader of the House anti-abortion forces, said the latest announcement demonstrated that the president “will use force, coercion and ruinous fines that put faith-based charities, hospitals and schools at risk of closure, harming millions of kids, as well as the poor, sick and disabled that they serve, in order to force obedience to Obama’s will.”
I would take that to be a no.
Smith, however, seemed pretty mellow compared with Paul Rondeau of the American Life League, who took the president’s willingness to meet his critics halfway as proof of his unbendable will: “This man is totally addicted to abortion and totally addicted to the idea that not only is he the smartest man in the room, he is the smartest in the nation and taxpayers will fund his worldview whether they like it or not.”
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Potential Vice Presidential Candidate, expressed some vague appreciation for the president’s efforts, then rejected them totally. The whole thing, he said, “shows why we must fully repeal ObamaCare.”
And here we have the real issue, which goes way beyond contraception.
The bishops have made their point. Even if many of them had managed to avoid noticing the Catholic institutions in their own diocese that were already covering contraceptives to comply with state law, they are absolutely correct that Church doctrine holds that artificial methods of birth control are immoral. They’re not going to let the White House ignore that just because their own flocks do.
But Republican politicians have other fish to fry. They want to use the bishops and the birth control issue to get at health care reform. Right now in Congress, there are bills floating around that would allow employers to refuse to provide health care coverage for drugs or procedures they found immoral. You can’t have national health care coverage — even the patched-together system we’re working toward — with loopholes like that.
Which is the whole idea. National standards, national coverage — all of that offends the Tea Party ethos that wants to keep the federal government out of every aspect of American life that does not involve bombing another country.
But that shouldn’t be a Catholic goal. The church has always been vocal about its mission to aid the needy, and there’s nobody needier than a struggling family without health care coverage. The bishops have a chance to break the peculiar bond between social conservatives and the fiscal hard right that presumes if Jesus returned today, his first move would be to demand the repeal of the estate tax.
Let’s move on. Blessed are the tweakers.
By: Gail Collins, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 10, 2012
“A Moral Imperative”: Protecting Access To Birth Control Does Not Violate Religious Freedom
In many respects it is amazing that in 2012 there is a controversy over women’s access to birth control.
Let’s be clear, the current controversy over the Obama administration’s rules that require all employers who provide health insurance to provide birth control without a co-pay to its women employees, has nothing whatsoever to do with religious freedom.
It has everything to do with an attempt to take away women’s access to easy, affordable birth control, no matter where they work.
Birth control is not controversial. Surveys show that 99 percent of women and 98 percent of Catholic women have used birth control at some time in their lives.
No one is trying to require that anyone else use birth control if it violates their religious convictions. But the convictions of some religious leaders should not be allowed to trump the rights of women employees to have access to birth control.
The rule in question exempts 355,000 churches from this requirement since they presumably hire individuals who share the religious faith of the institutions in question. But it does not exempt universities and hospitals that may be owned by religious organizations, but serve — and employ — people of all faiths to engage in decidedly secular activities. These are not “religious institutions.” They are engaged in the normal flow of commerce, even though they are owned by religious organizations.
Some religious leaders argue that they should not be required to pay for birth control coverage for their employees if they have religious objections to birth control. This argument ignores the fact that health insurance coverage is not a voluntary gift to employees. It is a part of their compensation package. If someone opposed the minimum wage on religious grounds — say because they believed it “discouraged individual initiative” — that wouldn’t excuse them from having to pay the minimum wage.
If a Christian Science institution opposed invasive medical treatment on religious grounds, it would not be allowed to provide health care plans that fund only spiritual healing.
Many Americans opposed the Iraq War — some on religious grounds. That did not excuse them from paying taxes to the government.
The overwhelming majority of Americans oppose taking away the ability for women to have easy, affordable access to birth control. A Public Policy Polling survey released yesterday found that 56 percent of voters support the decision to require health plans to cover prescription birth control with no additional out-of-pocket fees, while only 37 percent opposed. Fifty-three percent of Catholic voters favor the benefit.
Fifty-seven percent of voters think that women employed by Catholic hospitals and universities should have the same rights to contraceptive coverage as other women.
No doubt these numbers would be vastly higher if the poll were limited to the employees of those hospitals and universities because eliminating the requirement of coverage would cost the average woman $600 to $1,200 per year in out-of-pocket costs.
But ironically, requiring birth control coverage generally costs nothing to the institution that provides it. That’s because by making birth control accessible, health plans cut down on the number of unwanted pregnancies that cost a great deal more. And of course they also cut down on the number of abortions.
That may help explain why many Catholic-owned universities already provide coverage for birth control. For instance, a Georgetown University spokesperson told ThinkProgress yesterday that employees “have access to health insurance plans offered and designed by national providers to a national pool. These plans include coverage for birth control.”
The University of San Francisco, the University of Scranton, DePaul University in Chicago, Boston College — all have health insurance plans that cover contraception.
And, finally, this is nothing new. Twenty-eight states already require organizations that offer prescription insurance to cover contraception.
Of course the shocking thing about this entire controversy is that there is a worldwide consensus that the use of birth control is one of society’s most important moral priorities. Far from being something that should be discouraged, or is controversial, the use of birth control is critical to the survival and success of humanity.
In 1968, the world’s population reached 3.5 billion people. On October 31, 2011, the United Nations Population Division reported that the world population had reached seven billion. It had doubled in 43 years.
It took 90,000 years of human development for the population to reach 1 billion. Over the last two centuries the population has grown by another six billion.
In fact, in the first 12 years of the 21st Century, we have already added a billion people to the planet.
It is simply not possible for this small planet to sustain that kind of exponential human population growth. If we do, the result will be poverty, war, the depletion of our natural resources and famine. Fundamentally, the Reverend Malthus was right — except that the result is not inevitable.
Population growth is not something that just happens to us. We can choose whether or not to reproduce and at what rates.
No force is required. The evidence shows that the population explosion stops where there is the availability of birth control and women have educational opportunity.
That’s why it is our moral imperative to act responsibly and encourage each other to use birth control. And it’s not a hard sell. Children are the greatest blessing you can have in life. But most people are eager to limit the number of children they have if they have access to contraception. We owe it to those children — to the next generation and the generation after that — to act responsibly and stabilize the size of the human population.
The moral thing to do is to make certain that every woman who wants it has access to birth control.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post, February 8, 2012
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