Who Pays for The Pill? (I)
LOCONTE, JOE
Who Pays for the Pill? (I) The clash between reproductive freedom and religious conscience. BY JOE LOCONTE AFTER an embittered and byzantine debate last July, the Washington, D.C., city council...
...The original D.C...
...It is a sign of things to come...
...Never mind that inexpensive birth control is available at the corner pharmacy...
...As the organization's "MergerWatch" director Lois Uttley warned in Redbook, "This is one of the most serious threats to women's reproductive health care today...
...Says Myers of Ave Maria Law School, "This stuff is creeping in through the back door...
...Michael O'Dea, executive director of the Christus Medicus Foundation, which helps Catholic archdioceses set up health insurance plans, agrees...
...These are conscience clauses without a conscience," says C. Ben Mitchell, of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention...
...bill, which allowed no exemptions, would have brought every Catholic organization under its purview...
...asked Gloria Feldt on a recent Crossfire...
...If mandates like this become universal, they will affect a staggering number of church-based institutions...
...Pro-life activists note growing demands on health insurers to cover abortion-inducing drugs such as the "morning after" pill, already available by prescription, and RU-486, still awaiting federal approval...
...On the contrary, insist pro-choice leaders, employers have no right to impose a religious restriction on their workers' health insurance...
...To that must be added countless doctors, pharmacists, and assorted individual employers who personally oppose birth control and abortifa-cients...
...Our people don't even think about it," admits Richard Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals...
...Many Catholic organizations don't really know what they're subsidizing...
...Pro-life groups, focusing on the fight against abortion, avoid the contraception debate...
...Says Sister Carol Keehan, president of D.C.'s Providence Hospital: "We're talking about profound issues that concern life, not what kind of pictures we can hang on the wall...
...It's routine now for insurance companies to cover contraception, sterilization, and abortion," he says...
...The 1968 Papal Encyclical "Humanae Vitae" reiterated the church's condemnation of artificial birth control, and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops has told Catholic health care agencies they may not "promote or condone contraceptive practices...
...Threats abound, to be sure, but not from organized religion...
...At the same time, frustration deepens with government tax policies that favor work-based insurance, making it burdensome for families to buy alternative plans that uphold their moral beliefs...
...The dogma of sexual liberation is quietly insinuating itself into the very definition of health insurance...
...Richard Myers, professor of law at Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, Mich., demurs: Requiring birth-control coverage "is an assault on religious institutions at their core...
...The bill earned a pocket veto from the mayor, but a version of it is expected to resurface this fall...
...Planned Parenthood, for example, has launched an effort to prevent mergers between Catholic and secular hospitals—even when they are the only means of keeping facilities open...
...Says Richard Doerflinger, of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, "It's as if we were just arms of the government...
...It is no whimsy to worry when people are forced to bankroll whatever reproductive practices are in vogue—today chemical abortion, tomorrow cloning...
...That probably limits protection to houses of worship...
...It's not about health care...
...Pro-choice activists claim a social concern to make health services available to women, particularly the poor...
...It took the unprecedented intervention of Cardinal Francis George of Chicago to persuade AMA delegates to defeat the measure...
...If successful, the suit could shake up the entire industry...
...The Catholic Church is at special risk...
...Oddly, both sides in this debate see themselves as defending freedom against heavy-handed social engineers...
...It takes away their ability to define themselves and the nature of their operations...
...Political pressures to universalize abortion coverage, however, could easily spark a backlash...
...Perhaps, but it's no foible to be troubled when deeply held beliefs are publicly disparaged...
...It's the idea that there is no such thing as private health care or private conscience...
...Last July, Planned Parenthood filed a discrimination lawsuit against the Bartell Drug Company for failing to include birth control in its employees' health plan...
...A noisy and litigious clash of values is inevitable: The right to reproductive freedom, minted during the sexual revolution, is on a collision course with the free exercise of religion, enshrined in the Bill of Rights as the capstone of American liberty...
...It's not about choice...
...Meanwhile, private entities ranging from colleges to health clinics are vulnerable to the regulations...
...Warns executive director Jim Rodgers, "The effect of this new legislation would be to secularize us...
...It's about making everyone collaborators with the culture of death...
...Yet they are alienating the very health care providers who do the most to reach the neediest—religious hospitals, clinics, charities, and shelters...
...So-called "conscience clause" exemptions are too narrowly written to offer much protection...
...The National Association of Evangelicals boasts a member list of over 5,000 religious nonprofits...
...In June, the American Medical Association considered a plan that would have required hospitals receiving federal money—virtually all hospitals— to offer "a full range" of reproductive services, including abortion...
...They don't fully realize the long-term agenda...
...In August, the National Institutes of Health approved federal funding for research on human embryos...
...Insurance companies decide who qualifies for an exemption, while state agencies monitor compliance by insurers and HMOs...
...Under California's law—a model for other states—only a "religious employer" can qualify, and only by meeting several criteria: It must (1) make the teaching of religious values its primary purpose, (2) employ primarily persons who share its religious beliefs, and (3) serve persons of the same religious background...
...The mask of choice is falling off," says Susan Orr, a policy expert with the Family Research Council...
...They demand these agencies offer services without discrimination, while they themselves discriminate against groups whose belief in God sustains their caregiving...
...At least a dozen more states are debating similar laws...
...Rank-and-file Catholics largely disregard church teaching on birth control, while evangelical Christians mostly fail to address the issue...
...As the Alan Guttmacher Institute, an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, frankly admits, "the goal is to craft as narrow an exemption as possible...
...sidize practices they find morally offensive...
...But they have received little help...
...They welcome religious duty as long as it serves their notion of the public good, even as they advance policies that confine faith to a private ghetto...
...BY JOE LOCONTE AFTER an embittered and byzantine debate last July, the Washington, D.C., city council unanimously approved a bill requiring health insurance plans sold in the District to cover contraceptives...
...Catholic Charities supports 165 diocesan agencies, while nearly The majority of states with mandates include protections for religious groups, but most of these are turning out to be a sham...
...For many pro-choicers, anything that reduces the convenience of contraception or abortion is a transgression against women...
...A little hyperbolic...
...Whose conscience counts...
...1,000 Catholic hospitals and nursing facilities provide about 16 percent of all hospital beds...
...It's a threat to every religious institution...
...Church institutions typically omit contraception coverage for employees...
...Critics argue this puts religious freedom at the mercy of bureaucrats...
...What about the conscience of the individual who feels that it's very important to plan and space having children until you're ready to take care of them...
...The contest can only intensify...
...In October 1998, Congress imposed a contraception mandate on the health insurance system for federal employees, the first and only time specific benefits have been required in the system's 40-year history...
...Planned Parenthood president Gloria Feldt calls opposition to contraception mandates "blatant sex discrimination against women...
...Every religious employer in the city—not exempting the National Conference of Catholic Bishops or even churches—would have been required to comply...
...Catholic Charities of Sacramento already has filed suit against the state of California...
...In the last two years, 13 states have begun requiring health policies that cover prescription drugs to add contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs and devices...
...Catholic leaders have fought the laws in state capitols and helped craft more expansive conscience clauses in places like Maryland and Connecticut...
...He sees widespread confusion and complacency about health care policies...
...Nationwide there are over 21,000 religious schools, plus hundreds of seminaries and religious colleges and universities...
...And tomorrow is fast approaching...
...The laws are forcing employers—such as religious hospitals, schools, and charities—to subJoe Loconte is the William E. Simon fellow in religion and a free society at the Heritage Foundation and a commentator on religion for National Public Radio...
...The majority of states with mandates include protections for religious groups, but most of these are turning out to be a sham...
...For anyone still serious about bedrock American notions of freedom, it would be foolhardy not to ask where all this leads...
Vol. 6 • October 2000 • No. 3
