…of fellow “liberal” Catholics upset with the HHS mandate for its quite un-liberal approach to conscientious objection. In a piece in today’s Washington Post, he writes:
One of Barack Obama’s great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health care law.
While Dionne’s main point is that the mandate makes for bad politics, particularly for a president who campaigned as a unifying figure by appropriating the rhetoric of the religious right, he also notes broader theoretical objections to this sort of compulsion:
Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here.
Read the rest of the editorial, which goes into detail about how Dionne wishes Obama would approach the question of conscience exemptions, here.
Even though the piece is hardly a ringing statement of principle, it’s notable that statements of concern like this one have been issuing from so many unexpected quarters. In fact, has there yet been a member of the mainstream commentariat who’s risen to defend the mandate?
January 30th, 2012 | 11:51 am
If you’ve lost E.J. Dionne on an issue….you might want to re-think. Like Dionne (one of the few times I could actually write those two words) I don’t even understand the politics of this. What is the upside politically for the Obama administration? Who does this score political points with other than the hardcore NARAL types who vote lockstep Democratic to begin with?
What a head-scratcher from a political stanpoint (not to mention an outrage from a First Amendment standpoint).
January 30th, 2012 | 1:04 pm
It is also a head scratcher from a medical standpoint. Traditionally, “preventive care” has referred to what we now call “wellness”- screening for diseases that can be screened, recommending lifestyle modifications to control risk factors, etc. It has never referred to medication – even cholesterol medication to prevent heart attacks. It doesn’t make sense to include contraception and abortion under preventive services. They don’t prevent a disease, they prevent a natural outcome of a specific, chosen act.
January 30th, 2012 | 1:28 pm
It is also a head scratcher from a medical standpoint.
Liberals would consider abortion & contraception health care, so it’s natural for them to include it under an insurance mandate.
They don’t prevent a disease, they prevent a natural outcome of a specific, chosen act.
The outcome wasn’t chosen, though. :-) Since it has to do with anatomy, it’s health care. Get it?
BTW, I disagree strongly with this line of reasoning, but it is the general line of reasoning put forth by those who insist on such mandates.
January 30th, 2012 | 1:46 pm
Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix has responded correctly to this totalitarian abuse of the raw power of government clearly outside the bounds of its legitimate authority:
“We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.”
I am anxious to hear a similarly concise and honest announcement coming from the USCCB.
January 30th, 2012 | 2:07 pm
So, do you think the government will mandate that insurance companies cover cholesterol medication at no cost to their subscribers? (No copay, no co-insurance, no deductible) Cholesterol medication prevents heart disease. By their logic they should.
January 30th, 2012 | 2:38 pm
The abstract of Mayo Clinic Proceedings 2006; 81:1290-1302 states that the use of oral contraceptives is associated with a significant increase in the risk of pre-menopausal breast cancer, especially if used before a woman’s first full-term pregnancy.
Explain please how a plan that pays for oral contraceptives promotes anyone’s “health”.
January 30th, 2012 | 4:13 pm
[...] Obama HHS mandate has contributed to a crumbling of the Catholic left, and Matt Cantirino offered further evidence of that crack-up in the form of a column by E.J. Dionne. Now I see that even secular stalwarts are [...]
January 30th, 2012 | 8:01 pm
I read EJ Dionne’s column this morning. It made me think of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. There’s the passage where the wizard Gandalf (I think it was he) describes how the elves forged Sauron’s “ring of power” for him; and found out– too late! that they’d been betrayed by the Dark Lord. (Ok, not to be too over-the-top here: Pres. Obama isn’t quite in Sauron’s league, and thank God for that!)
January 30th, 2012 | 9:30 pm
First Things has treated us to a number of articles depicting liberalism and indeed democracy as a kind of leviathan that seeks to swallow up whole and destroy all of Christianity. Liberals and especially liberal Christians have protested, explaining that liberalism and democracy are merely trying to make the nation hospitable for everyone, only to be told, often stridently, that they are arguing in bad faith.
So it comes as no surprise to me that Dionne, the Washington Post, Commonweal, and other liberals and liberal Christians have argued against the HHS mandate. As Commonweal puts it, there’s nothing liberal about the “illiberal” HHS mandate. Perhaps it is time for First Things to put aside its relentless demonization of both liberalism and democracy and try to contribute to a productive conversation about how tolerance can best operate in a pluralistic society.
January 31st, 2012 | 8:43 am
It’s a special category of blindness which can say with a straight face that one of the attractions of Obama was his “sensitivity” to others’ religious beliefs. Could you not always recognize…well, never mind.
In any case, we don’t need EJ Dionne to “speak as a Catholic.” We have plenty of faithful Catholics who can speak very well for us, thank you anyway.
February 1st, 2012 | 7:08 am
Liberals and especially liberal Christians have protested, explaining that liberalism and democracy are merely trying to make the nation hospitable for everyone, only to be told, often stridently, that they are arguing in bad faith.
Yes, but I think conservatives do a good job of explaining why they argue that liberals are arguing in bad faith, which is the key point.
And this blog does a truly impressive job of allowing rebuttal and diverse points of view.
I don’t believe liberals “are merely trying to make the nation hospitable for everyone” because that is not compatible with how I perceive them as treating me. Either you have a very different notion of what constitutes ‘hospitable’ than I do, or else perhaps conservatives aren’t part of “everyone”.
February 1st, 2012 | 11:49 pm
“I think conservatives do a good job of explaining why they argue that liberals are arguing in bad faith, which is the key point”
Be that as may be, no one on this thread, including you, has made such an argument, and so to claim that conservatives are good explainers is “the key point” is fallacious.
“And this blog does a truly impressive job of allowing rebuttal and diverse points of view”
I agree. My point about this blog was something different.
“I don’t believe liberals “are merely trying to make the nation hospitable for everyone” because that is not compatible with how I perceive them as treating me.”
Ah, pulling out the victim card again. But the point is that liberals believe that they are making the nation more hospitable. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail, but this is what they believe. It’s a little like Romney or Gingrich claiming they are conservative. They believe they are even when they are not.
February 2nd, 2012 | 8:50 pm
The only thing that surprises me about this mess is that there are people who are surprised by what President Obama has done.
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