Concern for Religious Freedom or Preaching Political Messages?

I am not sure this issue is not a issue being driven just by the leaders of the Catholic Religion and republican conservatives taking advantage of the opportunity to grab on to something since the jobs report.

Seeking to allay the concerns of Catholic leaders, the White House is planning to adjust its health care rule requiring religious employers to provide women access to contraception, a senior administration official said.

President Obama is scheduled to announce the change during an appearance before reporters in the White House at 12:15 p.m. He is trying to head off a growing political problem, after angering Catholic church officials with his decision Jan. 20 to grant only a narrow exemption to the health-care rule.

No information was available about the details of the new accommodation, which was first reported by ABC News. But a senior administration official cautioned that the White House will stick to the principle of guaranteeing free contraception coverage for women. 

The current rule, proposed last summer and confirmed last month as part of Obama’s health-care overhaul law, requires employers to provide female employees the full range of contraceptive coverage, including birth control, the “morning-after pill” and sterilization services.

The measure exempts churches but covers religiously affiliated schools, charities, colleges and hospitals, meaning that many Catholic-run institutions would have to offer insurance plans that church leaders say violate their teachings.

FACT SHEET: Women’s Preventive Services and Religious Institutions
(The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, February 10, 2012)

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, most health insurance plans will cover women’s preventive services, including contraception, without charging a co-pay or deductible beginning in August, 2012. This new law will save money for millions of Americans and ensure Americans nationwide get the high-quality care they need to stay healthy.

Today, President Obama will announce that his Administration will implement a policy that accommodates religious liberty while protecting the health of women. Today, nearly 99 percent of all women have used contraception at some point in their lives, but more than half of all women between the ages of 18-34 struggle to afford it.

Under the new policy to be announced today, women will have free preventive care that includes contraceptive services no matter where she works. The policy also ensures that if a woman works for religious employers with objections to providing contraceptive services as part of its health plan, the religious employer will not be required to provide, pay for or refer for contraception coverage, but her insurance company will be required to directly offer her contraceptive care free of charge.

The new policy ensures women can get contraception without paying a co-pay and fully accomodates important concerns raised by religious groups by ensuring that objecting non-profit religious employers will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer women to organizations that provide contraception. Background on this policy is included below:

• Under Section 2713 of the Affordable Care Act, the Administration adopted new guidelines that will require most private health plans to cover preventive services for women without charging a co-pay starting on August 1, 2012. These preventive services include well women visits, domestic violence screening, and contraception, and all were recommended to the Secretary of Health and Human Services by the independent Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science.

• Today, the Obama Administration will publish final rules in the Federal Register that:

o Exempts churches, other houses of worship, and similar organizations from covering contraception on the basis of their religious objections.

o Establishes a one-year transition period for religious organizations while this policy is being implemented.

• The President will also announce that his Administration will propose and finalize a new regulation during this transition year to address the religious objections of the non-exempted non-profit religious organizations. The new regulation will require insurance companies to cover contraception if the religious organization chooses not to. Under the policy:

o Religious organizations will not have to provide contraceptive coverage or refer their employees to organizations that provide contraception.

o Religious organizations will not be required to subsidize the cost of contraception.

o Contraception coverage will be offered to women by their employers’ insurance companies directly, with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.

o Insurance companies will be required to provide contraception coverage to these women free of charge.

o The new policy does not affect existing state requirements concerning contraception coverage.

Covering contraception is cost neutral since it saves money by keeping women healthy and preventing spending on other health services. For example, there was no increase in premiums when contraception was added to the Federal Employees Health Benefit System and required of non-religious employers in Hawaii. One study found that covering contraception saved employers $97 per year, per employee.

Reaction to Obama's birth control compromise
(February 10, 2012 by The Associated Press)

--"It's absolutely unacceptable. It's just an economic shell game because it, for religious employers, requires indirect funding of contraception and abortifacients. For Liberty University and other self-insured, it does not change anything from the previous directive and directly collides with our religious, free-exercise beliefs." -- Mathew Staver, vice president of Liberty University, a Christian school in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, with more than 6,000 employees.

--The changes are a "first step in the right direction." -- Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, head of the nation's Roman Catholic bishops.

--"The widespread concerns expressed by Catholics and people from other faiths have led today to a welcome step toward recognizing the freedom of religious institutions to abide by the principles that define their respective missions. We applaud the willingness of the administration to work with religious organizations to find a solution acceptable to all parties." -- The Rev. John I. Jenkins, president of the University of Notre Dame.

--"I appreciate the president's unifying approach as we work to ensure that the American people continue to receive the benefits of health care reform." -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

--"As far as I can see, the compromise is not acceptable ... What he offered was really a distinction without a difference."-- Michael McClean, president of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif.

--"The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed." -- Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association.

--"We believe the compliance mechanism does not compromise a woman's ability to access these critical birth control benefits." -- Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood.

--"This is very significant. Many of us have been hoping that there would be a way to find a compromise that would respect freedom of conscience and religious beliefs without imposing anything in any direction. At first glance, this looks very promising." -- William Hynes, president of Holy Names University, a Catholic school in Oakland, Calif.

--"We are grateful that today President Obama announced a revised rule that fully respects the conscience rights and religious liberty of Catholic institutions and also respects constitutionally mandated rights of women. This resolution demonstrates that when issues are approached in a thoughtful manner we can rise above politics and find solutions to the challenges that face all members of our pluralistic society." -- The Rev. Gerald Coleman, vice president for ethics for the Daughters of Charity Health System, a California health care chain of six hospitals that employs 7,500 people.

--"It's kind of silly to think that insurance companies are going to give away these drugs for free. My anticipation is that we are going to end up paying for it." -- Steve Miller, university counsel for Colorado Christian University in Denver. The interdenominational school filed a lawsuit in December challenging the birth control requirement.

--"While we still think it's a bad social policy, we believe that this is a sincere attempt to honor the religious convictions of those who disagree and we appreciate that." -- Monsignor Stuart Swetland, vice president of Catholic identity for Mount St. Mary's University.

Will contraception-rule change relieve religious conscience?
(By Brian J. Buchanan, FirstAmendmentCenter.org, February 10, 2012)

An Obama administration rule that under the new health-care law church-affiliated institutions must cover birth control in their health-insurance plans riled Catholics and other religious people who called it an assault on religious freedom. Today the president revised that rule — to make contraceptive coverage available not through religious employers, but directly from insurance companies.

A government order that religious-affiliated organizations provide coverage of procedures that violate their beliefs would seem on its face to violate the First Amendment. “Congress shall make no law … prohibiting the free exercise” of religion, the amendment says.

“Free exercise” means people of religious faith cannot be told how to worship or what to believe, what to hold in their consciences, how to act according to their consciences, what to preach or teach about their religion — or how to organize and run their religious institutions.

The Catholic Church teaches that contraception and abortion are against God’s will. So how could the government compel a church-run hospital, university or other institution to provide insurance coverage for birth control, including abortion-inducing “morning after” pills? Will changing the mechanism to keep religious hospitals and universities clear of having to administer such coverage really do the trick?

Initial reaction from some is that it might.

“The framework developed has responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed,” said Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, in an Associated Press report.

Melissa Rogers, director of the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest University Divinity School, said in a statement, “The plan rightly recognizes that the government should not force religious communities to pay for or provide services forbidden by their faith.”

Not so fast, said Catholic League President Bill Donohue. The long-time critic of the administration rejected the new approach.

“If the insurance plan of a Catholic institution must cover services it deems immoral, then such a health-care plan is offensive, plain and simple,” he said. The Catholic League’s insurance provider, Christian Brothers, would be forced to provide free coverage of abortion-inducing drugs if an employee demanded it, Donohue said.

“Then the rest of us would, in effect, be subsidizing her abortion. This is outrageous and will not stand judicial scrutiny,” he said. “When it comes to the First Amendment, there is no such thing as a half loaf. We want now, and in the future, the same rights we have enjoyed since the beginning of the republic.”

Courts have held that religious beliefs can be restricted only under certain narrow circumstances. The Obama administration has said that its original rule, devised as part of the executive branch’s effort to carry out the Affordable Care Act passed by Congress, was modeled on similar approaches in 28 states. Courts have upheld those approaches.

But those states, AP reported, “appear to have differing exemptions for religious employers.” And in California, which according to the San Francisco Chronicle has had a similar contraception requirement in place since 2001, some Catholic institutions are expressing concern at the federal mandate.

Even if courts would give a further green light to a federal a contraception mandate in health plans offered by religious-affiliated entities, however the paperwork is handled, we’ve seen that courts don’t always consider religious freedom on a par with other values that society says it wants. A free-exercise court challenge isn’t likely to succeed under Supreme Court rulings. That does not mean there’s no free-exercise issue at stake. There is.

It has been observed that because religious-affiliated entities take government money, they should comply with government mandates. But religious institutions use federal funds to provide services in which they believe, which are part of their religious mission.

Further, accommodating religious belief and practice should have been on the front end of the White House interpretation of the health law, not an after-the-fact scramble in response to furious objections and vows by Catholic bishops to disobey the law.

As First Amendment Center Senior Scholar Charles C. Haynes told the Chronicle yesterday, the United States has a tradition of respecting and protecting, as far as possible, “the rights of people to do what they must do, according to the highest authority in their eyes.”

Government-imposed contraception rules for religiously affiliated organizations offer “a cruel choice,” Haynes told the newspaper. “You could either serve the public … or you follow what God requires.”

Whether today’s adjusted plan will satisfy most Catholic organizations remains to be seen. But this issue needn’t have been an issue in the first place. In light of the First Amendment, government can and should make every effort — in advance — to accommodate religious concerns wherever possible.

That would be a good thing for everyone’s conscience. But the question remains whether today’s effort at accommodation adequately protect the religious freedom of Catholic-affiliated institutions and those of other faiths.

The Fox News Channel has featured a stream of right-thinking pundits blasting the Obama administration for infringing on “religious liberty,” but Fox’s own national poll finds top-heavy public support for offering birth control coverage in health plans.

By a 61-34 percent margin, those surveyed this week approve of the Obama administration requiring all employee health plans to provide birth control coverage as part of health care for women.

Sixty-seven percent of women surveyed, and 65 percent of Catholic women, supported the contraception/birth control requirement. Fifty-three percent of men surveyed endorsed birth control coverage.

The Catholic hierarchy has relentlessly opposed the birth control requirement. Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain has addressed the issue in a March for Life sermon, a statement earlier this week and an article. All warned about threats to religious liberties.

But the flock isn’t buying it. The Fox poll 58 percent of Catholics endorsing birth control coverage. It tracks almost exactly with a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute released earlier this week. It, too, found that 58 percent of Catholics were in approval.

Why the bishops will never be satisfied
(by Jamie L Manson, National Catholic Reporter, Feb. 13, 2012)

When Archbishop Timothy Dolan's initial reaction to President Barack Obama's compromise on the contraception mandate was "It's a step in the right direction," I knew it was too good to be true.

I knew this because, the night before the compromise was announced, I had listened carefully to Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the USCCB, imply that the bishops were seeking conscience exemptions for far more entities than Catholic institutions. As he said on PBS's "Newshour," the exemptions should cover "both religious employers and employers with religious people running them or other people of conviction who are running them."

I also listened carefully to Luke Goodrich, general counsel for the highly conservative Becket Fund, who spoke to CNN immediately after Obama announced his compromise. Goodrich shared Picarello's concern, saying, "A lot of religious individuals who own small business are not covered by this supposed compromise and they are going to be forced to violate their religious beliefs, too."

Although the bishops did not mention their desire to cover the rights of secular employers and small business owners in their formal statement, an internal, bishops-only briefing memo obtained by Whispers in the Loggia's Rocco Palmo, confirms this as one of their goals:
"It seems clear there is no exemption for Catholic and other individuals who work for secular employers; for such individuals who own or operate a business; or for employers who have a moral (not religious) objection ... This presents a grave moral problem that must be addressed."

These statements demonstrate how disingenuous the bishops have been in their cries about Obama's attack on the Catholic church and in their claims of concern over the fate of Catholic hospitals, universities and charities.

Their goals go far beyond Catholic entities. What they really seek is to enable secular employers to impose their religious ideologies on the lives of their employees.

We have heard the bishops talk a lot about the First Amendment over the last week. The First Amendment text about religion reads, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

How does this amendment defend the right of secular employers to use their religious beliefs to burden the civil rights of their employees? To allow secular employees or small business owners this kind of conscience exemption from U.S. law would be a gross violation of the separation of church and state.

All U.S. citizens are forced to pay for practices that violate their consciences: wars, executions, a broken prison system, the mistreatment of immigrants, the salaries of elected officials who do not represent our ideas and convictions. We may not like it, but this is the price of living and working in a democracy.

But the bishops do not seem interested living in a democratic nation founded principally to protect its citizens' rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They seem more interested developing a bizarre form of theocracy in which personal religious ideology can trump civil law.

The Obama compromise showed that some members of his administration were wise to the fact that the bishops had a much broader agenda behind the contraception battle. Why members of liberal Catholic groups and the liberal Catholic media couldn't see this remains a mystery. It isn't hard to figure out their agenda if one reads Archbishop Dolan's announcement of the creation of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, dated Sept. 29, 2011.

In this letter, Dolan lays out examples of "grave" challenges to religious freedom. He appointed the ad hoc committee to look at these six issues in particular:
--The HHS-mandated coverage of contraception and sterilizations
--The HHS requirement that the USCCB's office of Migration and Refugee Services offer reproductive services to victims of sex trafficking
--USAID's increasing requirement to provide HIV prevention services (including condoms) in certain international relief and development programs
--The Department of Justice's refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act and its criticism of DOMA as an act of bigotry
--The Department of Justice's argument against expanding the "ministerial exception," which allows religious groups to be exempt from employment laws, including claims to sexual harassment and unlawful termination
--The narrow religious exemption in New York state's same-sex marriage bill, which, in particular, doesn't protect the rights of county clerks to refuse to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples for moral reasons.

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Mr. Obama's compromise is shrewd in that it shines a light on the true motivations behind the bishops' crusade. The bishops' complaint was that Catholic universities, hospitals and charities would have to pay for services that are not consistent with Catholic doctrine. Mr. Obama arranged it so they would not have to pay for those services. The hierarchy, therefore, should be as pleased as Sr. Carol Keehan and Fr. Larry Synder.

The fact that the bishops aren't satisfied suggests they and their right-wing religious and political brethren had a broader agenda at work all along. Members of the Obama administration should be applauded for seeing through the bogus holy war they ignited.

In their objection to Obama's compromise, the bishops argue that it "continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions."

This criticism is ironic, since the bishops are insisting that employers have the right to force their personal morality on their employees. They are demanding that employers to be allowed to coerce employees -- through the denial of benefits -- into accepting their personal or religious convictions.

If such a scenario had been allowed, it would have created a hostile work environment for women and gay and lesbian employees not only in Catholic institutions, but in the secular work force as well. It would have legitimized, if not codified, our society's disrespect for the rights of women, gays and lesbians.

Most of all, it would have fostered the anti-feminist, anti-gay culture that so many right-wing religious and political groups dream of.

Mr. Obama's compromise averts what could have been the beginning of a disaster for human and civil rights. If given this pass, the bishops would no doubt have continued to achieve the goals set out by the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty.

And if that had been allowed to happen, eventually this could have happened, too: Poor- and working-class women would be denied adequate health care, trafficked women who are systematically raped would be denied reproductive care, those threatened by the global HIV epidemic would be denied life-saving prophylactics, and gays and lesbians would be denied the rights to which they are entitled as working, tax-paying citizens.

By refusing to cave in to the demands a religious and political right-wing agenda, Mr. Obama actually upheld the Constitution: He ensured that most individuals in this nation will be guaranteed equal protection under the laws.

--The Department of Justice's argument against expanding the "ministerial exception," which allows religious groups to be exempt from employment laws, including claims to sexual harassment and unlawful termination