Monday's fair treatment of Obama's controversial contraception edict ("US Catholic Bishops oppose Obama birth-control plan") needs just a few clarifications. First, the context: the US government is, for the first time in its history, making a list of services that must be included in every health insurance policy. The Obama administration's list mandates 100% coverage for birth control methods and "Plan B" and "ella" drugs, which cause newly-conceived children to be expelled from the womb. As these drugs cause abortions, it's no wonder the Catholic Church does not provide them to employees. The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is a very serious sin. It also teaches that it is a very serious sin to assist in an abortion. Obama's ruling insists that religious institutions provide a "service" that the church believes puts the user and the provider in danger of damnation. Moreover, many non-Catholic Americans perceive Obama's move as trampling Constitutionally-protected religious freedom-a freedom defining American civil life since its founding. Even if Obama did exempt religious organizations from his edict, nothing protects the conscience rights of business owners who object to supplying abortion-causing drugs to their employees via health care coverage.
Second, the article says "his compromise [means] religious employers would not have to offer free contraceptives for workers, shifting the responsibility to insurers." But in fact, insurers are business people; they do not provide goods or services for free. They will, as any good business would, respond to Obama's demand to provide "free" contraceptives by raising the fees those religious employers pay to the insurer for coverage. Congressman Chris Smith explained Obama's "compromise" this way: "It states, for example, that religious employers 'will not' have to pay for abortion pills, sterilization, and contraception, but their 'insurance companies' will. Who pays for the insurance policy? The religious employer."
The end of the article says "The regulation at the center of the controversy requires religious-affiliated groups such as charities, hospitals and universities, not churches themselves, to provide employees with coverage for birth control as other health insurance providers must do." One must assume that the author meant that religiously affiliated groups must provide the same coverage as other EMPLOYERS must, since religious-affiliated groups are employers but not health insurance companies.
Throughout the world, church-affiliated hospitals and clinics on university campuses offer health care services as part of their ministries. Many churches, including the Catholic Church, believe their health-care outreaches are a way of extending Christ's healing hands to the sick, injured, and poor. Catholic hospitals and university clinics wish to retain this healing outreach. Forcing Catholic institutions to provide life-denying and sometimes killing drugs opposes this Christ-like outreach.
Americans have traditionally insisted that the Federal Government keep its hands off of religious charities so that charities can serve people while following the dictates of their consciences. We don't know the outcome of this battle, but let us hope that freedom and tolerance prevail.
Rudy Poglitsh
more letters at www.letterstotheTOS.blogspot.com
