I discuss the thinking behind the assertion of a right to contraception in a post for the Georgia Family Council site.
My argument in a nutshell: many of the people who argue for such a right don’t simply mean a right to be free from others’ interference; they mean subsidized access. Our government could legally create such an entitlement, or acknowledge it as a positive (as opposed to natural) human right, but the constitutional right to religious freedom has, in our polity, a higher status.
There’s nothing earth-shattering here, but too many people just don’t get it.
March 13th, 2012 | 12:45 pm
Well, but you’re avoiding addressing what you see as the real question here.
What people usually mean aside: is there a valid argument for a right to contraception?
March 13th, 2012 | 1:08 pm
I’m still not clear about the supposed conflict with “religious freedom”. What precisely is the conflict between religious freedom and the currently proposed requirements on insurance coverage?
March 13th, 2012 | 1:33 pm
Ancius,
Since many employers purchase and pay for the lion’s share (and in some places, all of it) of their employees’ health insurance, these employers can choose what coverage they want to offer. The conflict lies in the fact that the government is looking to force religious-affiliated institutions (such as Catholic hospitals, universities, etc) to pay for products (contraception, sterilizations, abortifacients) that the Catholic Church teaches are morally illicit. In other words, forcing an institution to pay for something that violates its conscience. This is where freedom of religion comes into play; according to our Constitution, and our long history of religious freedom, the government CANNOT prohibit the free exercise of anyone’s religion — for any reason. Forcing any Catholic, individual or institution, to actively pay for something that goes against Church teaching (and this teaching has not changed in over 2000 years) is prohibiting a Catholic’s ability to freely exercise the Catholic faith, i.e. it is forcing a Catholic to commit or be complicit in what the Catholic Church understands to be a grave sin. Whether you agree with the Church teaching or not should not matter; the point is that the government is claiming it can decide what constitutes religious freedom, and its practice thereof.
Obama’s “accommodation” is no better, since it merely moves the payment one monetary step away from the religious person or institution, yet the same money collected from the Church will still pay for said products, and no coverage WITHOUT said products will be available for purchase. A good analogy I’ve read is that it’s like forcing you to commit a murder for me. If you say no, I simply take your money and hire a hit man to do it. No, you didn’t commit the murder, but you’re legally complicit.
And the argument about this being a war on women’s health is a diversion. No employee is forced to accept the BENEFIT of their employer’s health coverage. People are still free to buy their own contraception, sterilizations, abortifacients, and health insurance on their own (so far). No employee of said institutions, and no individual Catholic, is being forcibly prohibited from buying or using any of these products. All the Church asks for its affiliates, and all religiously objecting individuals, is that they are not FORCED TO PAY FOR these products that violate the conscience of the paying individual.
March 13th, 2012 | 1:55 pm
An interesting article from about a year ago in Slate titled America Used to Agree on Public Funding for Family Planning. What Happened?:
March 13th, 2012 | 2:30 pm
David, were you among those who bought into the whole ‘population bomb’ thing (the global warming scare of its day) which convinced a huge swath of opinion that the world would end because of overpopulation? That was the impetus for subsidized contraception.
March 13th, 2012 | 2:45 pm
Also, Ancius, Christians practice their religion by worshipping God (praying, going to church, etc.) and by helping those in need. Jesus commanded us to do this. this is how Christians practice their faith.
The Obama mandate forces Christians to either violate their beliefs regarding contraception, abortion and sterilization, or to violate them by refusing to help the needy who are not co-religionists.
the Obama administration has instructed the Catholic bishops that helping non-Catholic needy is no longer part of acceptable religious practice. he has informed us that from now on, “religion” is limited to “worship”among our OTD (our own type, dear). Jesus Himself would not fit into the HHS definition of exempted religious exercise, because he helped and taught outsiders (the Centurion’s servant, the Samaritan Woman at the Well, the woman who compared herself to the dog who eats scraps tossed away by the master’s children, etc.).
March 13th, 2012 | 2:50 pm
Also, I don’t recall Nixon (or the others cited) saying church institutions should pay for contraception.
The focus of his concern seemed to be poor people anyway, not all employees everywhere including those who could afford all the pills they could possibly eat.
March 13th, 2012 | 3:40 pm
Family planning has moved around on the political spectrum over the last 100 years, as Mr. Nickols notes. I don’t draw many conclusions from that, as different parts of the issue come up in different decades. If he is saying that there is nothing intrinsically conservative about stepping back from paying for it, or nothing intrinsically conservative about Richard Nixon or George HW Bush, I might concur, though I don’t know what that proves beyond a “nyaa, nyaa” statement.
Ancius, I think you might understand the other POV more fully if you used as an analogy something you thought was really, truly, wrong which the government was making you personally pay for. Maybe slavery or heroin use or punching kids in the snoot.
March 13th, 2012 | 3:44 pm
Also, I don’t recall Nixon (or the others cited) saying church institutions should pay for contraception.
peg,
What I am discussing here is Joseph Knippenberg’s statement, which said in part:
Our government has, for over 40 years has come extremely close to defining access to contraception as a right. Here is the purpose of Title X as listed in the legislation:
This passed during the Nixon administration with bipartisan support. Taxpayer dollars (including those paid by Catholics) have been subsidizing contraception for decades. And now some are arguing that providing contraceptives is ridiculous and immoral. Where have the complaints been all these years?
Now, Planned Parenthood for years has been getting government money—hundreds of millions a year—as part of Title X funding, and some people have indeed complained about that. But they haven’t complained about funding contraception. They have complained because Planned Parenthood performs abortions.
March 13th, 2012 | 3:51 pm
Erin,
Thank you for the explanation. I’d like follow up with a few of naive questions. I will start with just one.
The policy you object to is the requirement for health insurers to cover things like contraceptive pills. This, however, is a problem because Catholic universities (and other Catholic affiliated institutions) are required to pay for the health insurance of their employees. So the problem is this: some of the money that the Catholic university pays for employee health insurance will, in the end, help to pay for contraceptive pills.
But suppose, however, that contraceptive coverage doesn’t increase the costs of insurance (perhaps because it is offset by savings brought about by such coverage, such as less pregnancy and child-birth related costs). If this is so, then we might reasonably say that providing the contraceptive pills adds nothing to insurance costs. If, however, the provision of the contraceptive pills adds nothing to the insurance costs, then it is difficult to see how anyone who pays for someone else’s insurance can claim to be paying for the contraceptive pills. That is, if providing the contraceptive pills adds no cost to the insurance, then we are apparently mistaken if we think that the Catholic University is paying for them in merely paying for the insurance.
If this is right, then the “religious freedom” objection rests on the assumption that the provision of contraceptive pills increases the overall cost of health insurance. Is that right?
March 13th, 2012 | 3:54 pm
That was the impetus for subsidized contraception.
Mike P.,
Then why has the United States continued to fund Title X all these years, including under Ford, Reagan, and both Bush administrations, whether the House and the Senate have been controlled by Republicans or Democrats? It is because the government has been committed all of these years, and is still committed, to providing assistance to people who need it for family planning. Family planning, per se, is not controversial. It is making religious organizations include it in their insurance coverage that is controversial.
March 13th, 2012 | 4:54 pm
Ancius,
The idea that contraceptives don’t cost anything is a curious. You go to the drugstore and you pay.
The idea that the cost is offset by something else in the future is little more than a guess as the variables are too numerous to count. For example, free distribution of contraceptives would have to prevent births that would have otherwise happened. Yet, I suspect those who would use them free would already be using them for the most part. In that case there is no birth to save costs on. So how many births will be prevented by making contraceptives free? There is simply no way of knowing, though I suspect it is close to zero. So close, that the cost of the contraceptives comes through, even in the long run. In other words, the argument is devoid of supporting data. The main reason is that contraceptives are already freely available.
Future statistics are like that. They can be anything you want them to be.
March 13th, 2012 | 5:45 pm
“If this is right, then the “religious freedom” objection rests on the assumption that the provision of contraceptive pills increases the overall cost of health insurance. Is that right?”
No, the religious freedom objection rests on the Constitutional guarantee that the government shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion. All other arguments aside, an enumerated right should logically trump a non-existent one.
The cost/offset costs argument simply brushes aside the main point of what religious freedom really is. Plus, as Mike Melendez explains, such an argument is statistically useless. In any event, one could hardly logically argue that an employer is not paying for products included in an insurance policy simply because coverage costs did not go up — if contraception, sterilizations, and abortifacients are included in the policy (which will be mandated by law to be included in ALL policies on offer for purchase), then the employer is de facto paying for them. Even if the government wants to pretend otherwise by claiming that the insurance company is adding them in for “free.”
I’ll go back to what I stated earlier: Whether you agree with the Church teaching or not should not matter; the point is that the government is claiming it can decide what constitutes religious freedom, and its practice thereof.
Would you agree with this statement? Can you see how the government is deciding what constitutes religious freedom and what constitutes religious practice? And if yes, do you have a problem with government being able to define for believers the parameters of their beliefs?
March 13th, 2012 | 5:47 pm
In other words, the argument is devoid of supporting data.
Mike Melendez,
That is just not true. There are many studies of the cost of adding contraceptive coverage to existing insurance. Here’s just one striking piece of data:
There have been numerous industry studies. Opinion is not unanimous, but there is plenty of good supporting data.
March 13th, 2012 | 9:24 pm
“It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.”
Yes, but we’re not talking about whether women should be given subsidized contraceptives: women already have access to government subsidized contraceptives.
The question is whether the separation of church & state applies to humanists, or whether it only works one way.
Are humanists within their rights to do to Christians what they describe as oppressive when Christians do it to them?
Is America a land where we’re all free to practice our religion – and the corresponding obligation to respect the beliefs of others – or are humanists the pigs that are “more equal than others”, with a special exemption from the rules that govern everyone else?
Humanists are the ones who argue most fervently that it is “oppressive” to be expected to endure proselytizing, and that it is a violation to be expected to embrace and affirm beliefs that are contrary to one’s own faith. So why do they think they are entitled to a special exemption from the rules they demand other people live by – what makes them think people of other faiths can and should be forced to privilege their views on matters of faith and morality, belief and values?
We get that humanists believe their views on social expectations, family, morality, responsibility, and sexuality are better than everyone else’s. What is not clear is why that belief (that their beliefs are “the one true and right set of beliefs”) should lead naturally to the assumption that it gives someone the right to force someone else to embrace those beliefs – then turn around and whine about “separation of church and state”.
March 13th, 2012 | 9:54 pm
The idea that contraceptives don’t cost anything is a curious. You go to the drugstore and you pay.
The idea that the cost is offset by something else in the future is little more than a guess as the variables are too numerous to count.
It rests on the assumption that the alternative is unwanted pregnancy.
Free contraceptives are in fact cheaper than unwanted pregnancies.
It is what’s known as a false dilemma fallacy – an argument that pretends there is a strict either-or logic when in fact the argument falls apart if you recognize a third option – in this case, that the genuine alternative to not paying for birth control is not unwanted pregnancy, but rather that someone else pays for the birth control.
March 13th, 2012 | 10:35 pm
Mr Nickol,
You said it correctly, “Opinion is not unanimous”. The studies I’ve read were indeterminate. Factoring out all of the variables is just not possible. The studies all involve costs but can’t touch why costs go up or down. No study, I repeat, no study was able to correlate provided contraceptives with reduced births. Yet that is the claim. Both that claim and the cause of cost fluctuation are guesses. The fact is contraceptives are relatively inexpensive compared to medical care at large and tend to get overwhelmed in the statistics.
No matter how you slice it, someone gets paid to provide the contraceptives. No money, no production. The producers get paid. That pay comes out of the premiums, there being no other place to get it. Most of the premiums are paid by our employers.
So what’s so hard about making it an option as it is today? That is, not all employers provide it.
March 13th, 2012 | 10:39 pm
Mr. Nickol,
As to your side trip into the origins of Title X, you seem to not notice what has changed since the late 1960s, particularly with regard to Planned Parenthood.
March 14th, 2012 | 12:45 am
As to your side trip into the origins of Title X, you seem to not notice what has changed since the late 1960s, particularly with regard to Planned Parenthood.
Mike Melendez,
The topic is whether there is a right to contraception. My point is that the federal government, for over 40 years, has been working in a bipartisan manner “to assist in making comprehensive voluntary family planning services readily available to all persons desiring such services.” Whatever one thinks of Planned Parenthood doesn’t change that fact.
March 14th, 2012 | 5:05 am
Erin wrote
“Would you agree with this statement? Can you see how the government is deciding what constitutes religious freedom and what constitutes religious practice? And if yes, do you have a problem with government being able to define for believers the parameters of their beliefs?”
Well, Rousseau foresaw this long ago, when he said “Each man alienates, I admit, by the social compact, only such part of his powers, goods and liberty as it is important for the community to control; but it must also be granted that the Sovereign is sole judge of what is important,” for “ if the individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical.”
His conclusion is obvious: “In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence. In this lies the key to the working of the political machine; this alone legitimises civil undertakings, which, without it, would be absurd, tyrannical, and liable to the most frightful abuses.”
March 14th, 2012 | 9:31 am
Mr. Nickol, Once again you take a bit of truth and stretch it all out of shape. Forty-five years ago, family planning was understood in a much broader sense than contraception alone. As one set of believers locked down on artificial contraception, (after all the “pill” was only created in the 1960s) and started adding elective abortion to the “Family Planning” moniker, the contours changed. “Family Planning” went from delaying and spacing children to what amounts to “Family Prevention”. The year 1973 was a continental divide on this issue. The statement “the federal government, for over 40 years, has been working in a bipartisan manner ‘to assist in making comprehensive voluntary family planning services readily available to all persons desiring such services.’” is simply not true. Broad consensus died in 1973 when the growing differences in meanings used became clear. But you choose to ignore those intervening 39 years.
March 14th, 2012 | 10:52 am
As one set of believers locked down on artificial contraception, (after all the “pill” was only created in the 1960s) and started adding elective abortion to the “Family Planning” moniker, the contours changed.
Mike Melendez,
Please do a little research on Title X. Title X does not fund abortion and never has since its establishment. The US Government has been funding family planning under Title X since 1970, under both Democratic and Republican presidents including during the times in the Bush administration when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate.
Broad consensus died in 1973 when the growing differences in meanings used became clear. But you choose to ignore those intervening 39 years.
I would say there was a consensus at least until 1995, when Republicans took control of the House and some Republicans tried to abolish both domestic and foreign funding of family planning, but (a) it has not been about abortion and (b) it has not been successful.
March 14th, 2012 | 11:08 am
So, as I understand the “religious freedom” concern, what’s objectionable is, e.g., forcing the Catholic university to pay for contraceptive pills. The person who voices this objection thinks that the university ends up paying for contraceptive pills if the university pays for any health insurance that covers contraceptive pills. If so, then the assumptions seems to be this:forcing the university to pay for insurance means forcing the university to pay for everything that the insurance company happens to pay for.
Is that right? Let’s suppose it is just to see where this assumption leads. Every insurance company pays its employees. These wages enable those employees to buy contraceptive pills. In effect, then, the money the university pays to the insurance company gives the employees of that company access to contraceptive pills. By hypothesis, then, the university is forced to pay for people’s access to contraceptive pills–even without the federal requirement for health insurers to cover contraception. Is it, then, always a violation of “religious freedom” to require a Catholic university to pay for health insurance? If not, why not? If it is, then isn’t it also a violation of “religious freedom” to require a Catholic university to pay wages to its own employees?
March 14th, 2012 | 11:37 am
Ancius, no. Insurance that covers birth control is part of the *product* that the institutions are forced to buy. “Employee wages” are not a product they’re forced to buy.
Forcing someone to buy a product they find deeply objectionable in principle is what’s at issue here.
March 14th, 2012 | 12:04 pm
Pentamon seems to suppose that access to contraception cannot be considered a “product”, or even “part of the product”. Why?
March 14th, 2012 | 1:17 pm
There is a fairly obvious distinction between government subsidies for contraceptions and a policy that forces Catholic Institutions to directly pay for contraception.
The First Amendment has never been applied to excuse one from paying taxes even if one has moral objections some types of government spending. The reason is simply necessity.
We cannot have a tax system that is workable if anyone can op-out for moral reasons. Providing an op-out provision in the tax code would mean that persons who objected to a war, for example, would not have to pay any taxes (money is fungible so proportional decreases in taxes would not work). As one multiplies the possible religious objections to government spending an opt-out provision would make government impossible.
By contrast, the U.S. government has frequently exempted religious persons from laws that require them to act contrary to their religious beliefs. One example is the conscious objector exemptions to the military draft.
One final point, the U.S. Constitution has recognized the right to contraceptives ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Griswald v. Conneticut and its progeny. States may not ban the sale of contraceptives.
I think it is distortion of the term “right” to suggest that the concept includes government subsidies to make the exercise of that right free.
If one want to argue for such an expansion of the term, I would like to know where I can pick up my free government-subsidized gun.
March 14th, 2012 | 1:56 pm
One final point, the U.S. Constitution has recognized the right to contraceptives ever since the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Griswald v. Conneticut and its progeny. States may not ban the sale of contraceptives.
pauld,
Good point.
I think it is distortion of the term “right” to suggest that the concept includes government subsidies to make the exercise of that right free.
I don’t disagree here. In fact, I would be hard pressed to come up with anything claimed as a right in America to which anyone is entitled to government subsidies for the purpose of exercising that right.
However, the fact that the government has, without significant controversy, been subsidizing contraception through Title X for over 40 years, the fact that 28 states mandate coverage of contraception, and the fact that most insurance covers the cost of contraception already would indicate that it is not a crazy idea to subsidize contraception or include contraception in insurance coverage. The one idea that truly is controversial is requiring the participation of those who disapprove of contraception on religious grounds to participate in providing it.
Some may consider providing contraceptives without co-pay as controversial, but contraceptives are classified as preventive care, and all preventive care (e.g., mammograms, colonoscopies, vaccinations, cholesterol tests) is to be provided without co-pay. I don’t hear anyone complaining that people will now be able to get a colonoscopy without co-pay.
March 14th, 2012 | 7:14 pm
Ancius,
The issue is not that, as Erin originally stated, “The conflict lies in the fact that the government is looking to force religious-affiliated institutions…TO PAY FOR PRODUCTS…that the Catholic Church teaches are morally illicit” (emphasis mine). The actual conscience issue is that the Catholic Church is being forced TO OFFER PRODUCTS/SERVICES to it’s employees that it finds morally illicit. Cost has nothing to do with the issue. The Church’s objection is not about the cost of birth control but it’s actual usage. So even though the accommodation offered by the President is suppose to ensure that the Church doesn’t have to pay for the product, the Church is still being forced to offer the product as a benefit to it’s employees.
As an example, here in Illinois the Catholic Services of my Diocese no longer facilitates adoption services due to the fact that a new state law was passed that required any adoption services organization contracted by the State to facilitate adoptions to any couple regardless of marital status or gender of the couple. This would require that Catholic Services facilitate adoptions to co-habitating and same-sex couples, something which is against the teachings of the Church. The State was unwilling to include a religious exemption clause in the law so rather than go against the moral beliefs of the Church, the Diocese decided to stop facilitating adoption services. Obviously cost had nothing to do with the issue as the Diocese would have received more money from the State if they had started facilitating adoptions to more couples.
March 14th, 2012 | 7:18 pm
controversial, but contraceptives are classified as preventive care
They are classified in a category where they don’t properly fit, because forty years ago contraception didn’t properly belong to any medical category – it was the first of its kind, an anomaly.
But now its true category is becoming both clear (and we are working toward recognition of why this update to our categorization system is necessary): contraceptives need to be rightfully recognized along with other non-medical bodily mutilations.
I say “mutilations” because it’s the only word I can think of – but if I knew of a word that didn’t carry the negative connotations, I’d use that instead.
Because “mutilating” a healthy body is the one thing that all the non-medical “lifestyle choice” options that technology promises us have in common.
Want bigger breasts? A perkier nose? Want to change from man to woman (or vice versa)? Want to improve your sex life? Want an abortion?
Tomorrow we’ll have even more of these choices: it is widely predicted that people will want to implant accessories and otherwise alter their bodies on demand, and parents will choose to make their child taller, blonder; they will want to choose their child’s eye colors.
None of these things are medically necessary. They’re all things that take a healthy body and pervert its normal functioning into some new arrangement that suits us better, flatters us, brings us pleasure or prestige or whatever it is we value enough to mutilate our body over it.
But these things are sophisticated and carry real risks and do require medical know-how, so they’ve got to be done by experts with real medical knowledge – so even though they’re not medical, they’ve got to fit into the same categorization scheme as real medical procedures.
Many people who do not mind paying for birth control are going to mind when they realize it is only the first of many such non-medical expenses being mis-classed as “medical” when it’s really vanity stuff.
BTW I still find it amusing that you have to resort to “but the law in the past said X, so therefore X must be right!”. Apparently not all progress is “good”, eh?
March 14th, 2012 | 7:26 pm
The topic is whether there is a right to contraception. My point is that the federal government, for over 40 years, has been working in a bipartisan manner “to assist in making comprehensive voluntary family planning services readily available to all persons desiring such services.” Whatever one thinks of Planned Parenthood doesn’t change that fact.
The government has not been making family planning available because it is a basic right.
The government has been working to make it available because we all believed that it would reduce unintended pregnancies and poverty.
If the evidence coming in continues to support the conclusion that subsidized family planning does not in fact reduce these unwanted outcomes, then there is no particular reason why the government needs to subsidize it.
March 14th, 2012 | 7:31 pm
pauld & David Nickol,
“I think it is distortion of the term “right” to suggest that the concept includes government subsidies to make the exercise of that right free.”
“I don’t disagree here. In fact, I would be hard pressed to come up with anything claimed as a right in America to which anyone is entitled to government subsidies for the purpose of exercising that right.”
I completely agree with both your points regarding rights but progressives do believe in these types of “rights” and they are referred to as “positive” rights whereas the rights you’re referring to are termed “negative” rights. I don’t agree with the term “negative” rights but prefer the more classical liberal term of “natural” rights.
Natural rights are those which anyone can choose to exercise or not to exercise and, regardless of their choice, it does not compel any participation from anyone else. I can speak my own mind, or choose not to, but in making my choice it does not compel you to do anything. Your choice still remains your own.
The progressive’s positive rights are those rights that are said to be needed so that people are not required to make choices they do not want to make. Nancy Pelosi captured this belief when she said that, with the passage of the healthcare bill, artists and photographers would not have to have a day job just to pay for healthcare. The need for the right (positive) of “healthcare” is so that people can do the job they want to do (positive liberty) and still have healthcare. But healthcare isn’t free so granting that “right” to everyone is only possible by compelling me to pay more for it.
They’re called “positive” because they cannot exist unless an action is taken by the government to provide them. Providing the right of healthcare to everyone is only possible if the government forces me to help pay for it. Natural rights are called “negative” because they exist unless an action is taken by the government to stop them. I can say whatever I want about the government unless the government forces me to be silent.
March 15th, 2012 | 12:11 am
It is the Catholic Church’s position that access to healthcare is a natural right, contrary to some comments above.
March 15th, 2012 | 11:23 am
I agree that the Catholic Church has worked hard to ensure that countless people in this country can have, not only, access to healthcare but also have the healthcare administered at little or no cost if needed. This is an extension of one of the defining principles of the Church – to help people, in body and in spirit.
I would also agree that there are many in the Church who would call it a natural right but I do not know for a fact that the Church itself defines it to be a natural right, or even how they define what is a natural right. If they do define access to healthcare as a natural right as I defined above then they set themselves up for this current fight because they would have then allowed this fight to be defined as a right vs. a right (freedom of religion vs. freedom to free contraceptives).
Properly defined, the contraception mandate is a cultural preference by some in the country much in the same way that it is a preference of the Church to provide healthcare to all. If enough of Americans agree to the cultural preference then we can agree on how to provide that service and, as detailed by others, Title X does just that.
The fight should be properly seen as between a natural right (freedom of religion) vs. a cultural preference (low cost access to healthcare).
March 15th, 2012 | 11:33 am
James, I take it then that the “religious freedom” concern amounts to this: Catholic institutions shouldn’t be forced to offer to their employees products/services that the Church believes are morally illicit. This must mean that the Church believes that health insurance that covers contraceptive pills is a morally illicit product/service. Is that right?
Here is my question. If health insurance that covers contraceptive pills is a morally illicit product/service, then this is, apparently, because such insurance would give the employees greater access to contraceptive pills. Is that right? Suppose it is, just for the sake of argument. Paying one’s employees a steady salary is also a service; a steady salary, moreover, gives those who receive it greater access to contraceptive pills. Would a requirement upon Catholic institutions to pay their employees steady salaries therefore provoke a “religious freedom” objection? Presumably not. But why not?
One might suppose that the answer is this: It is the contraceptive pill itself, not merely the provision of greater access to it, that is morally illicit. And, whereas a steady salary can be used for products other than contraceptive pills, the addition of insurance coverage of contraceptive pills can only be used for contraceptive pills.
Notice, however, that if this were the objection, then there would be an easy compromise: instead of requiring Catholic institutions to provide for their employees health insurance that covers contraceptive pills, the requirement could rather be this: they must provide their employees with health insurance that provides free “C/F” tokens, where C/F tokens can be exchanged for either contraceptive pills or a small dispenser of dental floss.
I do not mean to suggest that such an alternative should be happily embraced by Catholics. It’s rather meant to show that the reason I’ve suggested for the “religious freedom” objection appears to be inadequate, since such an objection can apparently be met by intuitively trivial alteration to the requirement. But it leaves us with the question: can anyone articulate the religious freedom objection to the insurance policy in a way that avoids absurd implications?
March 15th, 2012 | 12:56 pm
Ancius,
The question is not “can anyone articulate the religious freedom objection to the insurance policy in a way that avoids absurd implications?”
Many have already done so.
Rather, the question is “Can anyone articulate why people should be forced to pay for their neighbor’s expensive contraceptive/sterilization/abortifacients in a way that avoids absurd implications?”
2) and “How can it be called “healthcare” and “a right” to promote & provide some things that are harmful to women’s health and the propogation of other species (substantial side effects from forms of “birth control” that include clinical depression, breast cancer, destruction of mating populations in fish, etc.)?”
March 15th, 2012 | 4:04 pm
Artaban, you might try to improve the
inadequate answers that others have offered to the question I’ve pressed. Failing that, you might at least point us to one of the adequate answers that you assert have been provided elsewhere. As we have seen in this very thread, the answers tend to fall short.
You are of course right to notice that there are different questions that can be asked. It is odd, however, for you to insist that yours is “the” question—as if it should silence all others.
March 15th, 2012 | 6:41 pm
Ancius,
You asked several questions. I’ll take them in order.
I don’t know if the Church believes that insurance that covers birth control is a morally illicit product. But it really doesn’t matter in relation to the freedom of religion argument for two reasons. First, the Church recognizes the freedom of the insurance companies to offer such a product. The Church’s freedom to not offer that product does not infringe upon anybody else’s freedoms to use that product. Likewise, the insurance companies have the same freedom in choosing what products to offer. Secondly, if the Church did find, for whatever reason, an insurance company to be morally illicit then the Church would just stop using that company to provide the service. The Church’s right to change insurance companies is not guaranteed by freedom of religion but freedom of association.
The explanation you gave to answer your second question, “But why not?”, is not correct. Employees (i.e. nurses, doctors, secretaries, janitors, etc.) are not paid to be employees of the Church, they are paid for providing a service. Once the employee provides the service for which the Church pays them, the money is the employees and no claims on the use of the money can be made by the Church. The Church is not trying to restrict the freedom of the employees to make their own decisions on how to use their money.
Thus, the answer to your second question is basically the same as the answer to your first question. The Church is paying for a service and once that service is met the Church is not trying to tell the provider how to use the money as that would be restricting the freedom of the provider. Likewise, freedom of association is what allows both the Church and the provider the freedom to decide for themselves if they want to contract with each other.
As for your final question, “can anyone articulate…”, I cannot answer that though I would point out that the implications you have been proposing are not covered by freedom of religion but freedom of association. As both these freedoms are natural rights they can be mutually exercised at no cost to the other.
March 15th, 2012 | 6:45 pm
“But first We must speak of man’s rights. Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of illhealth; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood.”
Pacem in Terris 1963.
March 15th, 2012 | 8:41 pm
“Pentamon seems to suppose that access to contraception cannot be considered a “product”, or even “part of the product”. Why?”
Huh? First of all, this is not about access to contraception, it is about free contraception. There’s not a pharmacy in the U.S. that won’t take cash for contraception.
Second, my point is precisely that it is a product, that one person is being forced to provide for another. As others have pointed out, the cost issue is irrelevant; what is relevant is that government has created a policy forcing a religious institution to provide a product they deem morally abhorrent to other people, that those people are capable of procuring on their own.
March 15th, 2012 | 11:30 pm
@Joe Mc Faul – Thanks for the pointer to Peace on Earth. That’s why I try to be careful in my use of the term “rights” so that issues that should be seen as rights vs. preferences are not improperly defined as rights vs. rights.
March 16th, 2012 | 12:10 am
James,
Let’s grant that institutions have the right to switch insurance companies under “the freedom of association.” What needs then to be explained is one of two things: (a) why this freedom of association (or, for that matter, any constitutionally protected freedom or right) gives Catholic institutions the right to insist that some insurance company or other not include coverage of contraceptive pills for those whom the company insures, or (b) what gives Catholic institutions the right to refuse to cover their employees with health insurance. It strikes me as implausible that either supposed right is entailed by the freedom of association. It seems more plausible to locate such rights under the “religious freedom”, but I’ve yet to encounter an adequate explanation in those terms.
Pentamom, my March 15th, 11:33 a.m. comment (this thread) would seem to be relevant to your, now clarified, point.
March 16th, 2012 | 8:06 am
Ancius,
I never claimed that freedom of association is the reason why the Church should not have to provide birth control. You proposed a few examples of what you claimed were possible due to logical extensions of the freedom of religion defense and asked why those examples wouldn’t be true. My answer not only included why the freedom of religion defense would not be appropriate in those examples but also that if the Church indeed had objections as you described they would not need to try and use freedom of religion to decide how to spend their money, freedom of association is sufficient.
As to your latest questions:
(a) The Church is not insisting that “some insurance company or other” not provide birth control nor is the insurance company the entity insuring the Church’s employees. The Church is providing the insurance as a benefit to it’s employees and it can choose to do so either through self-insurance or by contracting with an insurance company. So the Church is only insisting that the insurance company with which it contracts to provide coverage for the Church’s employees not include birth control in the products/services covered. Keep in mind, even the HHS contraception mandate recognizes the freedom of religion exemption argument and agrees with it, it just very narrowly defines what constitutes a religious organization that can claim that exemption. Is it your assertion that the freedom of religion exemption in the current mandate should be removed?
(b) It is not illegal for any company/institution to not cover their employees with health insurance. Providing insurance is a benefit that a company can choose to offer or not offer. Even the new healthcare act doesn’t make it illegal for a company/institution to not offer health insurance to it’s employees. And the Church isn’t refusing to cover their employees with health insurance it just wants to exercise it’s freedom of religion rights to not have birth control included as one of the products/services offered in the insurance the Church is providing.
March 16th, 2012 | 11:22 am
James,
Let me try to clarify a couple of points.
It’s my understanding that, under the new law, institutions with over 50 employees would be federally required to pay additional fees if (a) they don’t provide health insurance for their employees, and (b) their employees, as a result, are insured with the assistance of the new federal tax credits. Universities, which tend to have over 50 employees, would therefore in one form or another have to pay for the health insurance of their employees (i.e., either directly or through the government imposed fees that defray the cost of the tax credits).
The objectionable new proposal, I take it, is that all health insurers should be required to cover, e.g., contraceptive pills. As a result, Catholic universities would be required, in one way or another, to provide to their employees health insurance that covers contraceptive pills. That I, take it, is what is supposed to be in conflict with “religious freedom.”
The continuing challenge, however, is to adequately explain how this federal requirement is in conflict with religious freedom. An adequate explanation should be principled, and its principles should not lead to absurdities.
March 16th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
Ancius,
Your original question was, “What precisely is the conflict between religious freedom and the currently proposed requirements on insurance coverage?”
Based upon the two criteria you last gave, principled and not to lead to absurdities, I hope that I have answered that question. If not, then please let me know where my answers have fallen short.
March 16th, 2012 | 2:28 pm
James,
It would be helpful to me if you were able to frame your reply as a direct answer to the question you’ve just quoted, as now clarified by this descriptions of the “proposed requirements”:
In particular, it would help me if you focused on the specific requirement on a Catholic university (as opposed to simply “the Church”). Try to articulate the exact tension between the relevant religious component and the relevant policy requirements, now clarified.
I hope by now it is clear why it is inadequate to say, for example, that Catholicism forbids the use of contraceptive pills; or to say that, according to Catholic teachings, it is wrong to provide a good/service to someone which could be then be used by that person in a morally illicit way (even if these people happen to be your own employees).
March 16th, 2012 | 10:36 pm
Ancius,
Actually you have not made it clear at all why my explanations have not been adequate. I would appreciate if you would so that I can directly respond to your objections to my explanations.
March 17th, 2012 | 10:58 am
James, I think our problem is a lack of shared understanding. As far as I have understood your explanations, I have directly responded. Obviously you disagree, as I suspected. But before I can evaluate anything further, I need to better understand the explanation you have in mind. To that end, I made the previous request.
March 18th, 2012 | 6:02 pm
The Catholic Church believes that it is a mortal sin for a person to use birth control. If the Church provides the birth control to it’s employees then the Church believes that the Church itself is also a participant in the act (i.e. the employee using the birth control) and therefore committing the same mortal sin. Catholic institutions such as schools, hospitals, and universities, share the same belief system.
The 1st Amendment states that Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. I believe that “exercise” means not just having the right to a certain belief (i.e. providing birth control to someone means you are committing a mortal sin when they use the birth control) but also the right to put that belief into practice (i.e. I do not want to commit a mortal sin so I do not provide birth control to others).
The new federal requirement forces Catholic institutions to commit what, in their belief, is a mortal sin. The Catholic institutions do not want to commit a mortal sin so the federal requirement is prohibiting the Catholic institutions from freely practicing their religion.
March 19th, 2012 | 3:21 pm
The relevant religious belief, then, is supposed to be this: a Catholic university is forbidden from “providing” contraceptive pills to a person (whoever that person may be).
What needs to be articulated, now, is the sense of “providing” that is, on the one hand, sufficiently encompassing so that it turns out that the relevant policy actually does force Catholic universities to “provide” contraceptive pills (even if the policy is slightly amended so that the insurer can instead provide C/F tokens, as suggested in my March 15th, 11:33 comment in this thread above), but, on the other hand, is sufficiently restrictive so that it doesn’t turn out that the university would be “providing” contraceptive pills if, e.g., it merely gives its employees a steady salary (which, like the health insurance or the C/F token, would give the employees greater access to contraception). In other words, the general challenge is to articulate the conflict in a way that doesn’t have absurd implications: e.g., that it is a mortal sin for an employer to pay her employee, or that it is a mortal sin to work as a pharmacist or a cashier at a convenience store (where one occasionally must “provide” customers with contraception). While it may be tempting to meet this challenge with ad hoc specifications about the relevant sense of “provide”, it would obviously be desirable to avoid this too.
March 20th, 2012 | 8:41 am
Answers to the question of the potential for committing mortal sin in the implications that you proposed are addressed by the concept of cooperation with evil. The Church long ago recognized the need to have guidelines in place that would help itself and its followers be able to live in the world where conflicts such as these arise on a regular basis.
There are various levels of cooperation with each level moving farther away from the actual act. Formal cooperation requires that the person who is not committing the act shares the same intent as the person committing the act. I doubt anyone would argue that employers including birth control in health care benefits is formal cooperation. In material cooperation though, the person who is not committing the act does not share the same intent but there is immediate material cooperation and mediate material cooperation which are differentiated by whether or not the cooperation by the non-involved person is essential for the act to occur. So the first question comes down to if an employer is committing immediate or mediate material cooperation by providing birth control in their health care plans. The answer is critically important as Formal and Immediate Material cooperation are always forbidden but Mediate Material cooperation is ok as long as it satisfies other criteria.
I cannot say with certainty why the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has decided that providing birth control in health insurance benefits is not remote enough cooperation to be considered morally licit but that isn’t needed for the discussion we are having. I may disagree with the USCCB’s position on this issue but I’m not the one who’s responsible for making these decisions for the Catholic Church in America and it’s tens of millions of followers, they are. The Church’s moral theology is not new, principles of it have existed for centuries, and the spiritual leaders of the Church, the USCCB, has determined that the Church would be morally illicit if they provided birth control as required in the new mandate.
The federal government is in essence defining that the cooperation with evil with this new mandate is not morally illicit and is forcing Catholic institutions to accept this definition. The religious freedom guaranteed by the 1st Amendment gives religious institutions the right to define for themselves what practices are morally or immorally illicit.
If you do not agree then please answer the following questions:
(a) Do you believe that the 1st Amendment gives religious institutions the right to define for themselves what is morally illicit conduct?
(b) Do you believe that the 1st Amendment gives religious institutions the right to practice their beliefs outside of their house of worship?
(c) Even if the federal government is using the same thought process (i.e. the theory of cooperation with evil) in determining if a practice is morally licit do you believe that they have the power to override the decisions made by the spiritual leaders of the religious institution?
March 20th, 2012 | 11:23 am
James, I appreciate your thoughtful and informed replies. They stimulate reflection.
Let me first respond to your questions at the end.
(a): certainly religious institutions have and should have this right. (I don’t think that the HHS, or any government entity, is forcing Catholics to change their doctrines.)
(b): they have and should have this right within broad limits. But make no mistake: there are and must be limits, especially since we put no restrictions on the right on in (a). So, while a religious institution may have the right to define the failure to perform honor killings as morally illicit, this does not thereby ensure that honor killings are, or should be, constitutionally protected. There are limits to what a pluralistic society should be expected to accommodate in the name of religious freedom.
(c): It probably depends on what you mean by “the power to override.” (It is not as if Kathleen Sebelius has the power to directly change Catholic doctrine.) The more relevant question might be about the powers/authority that the government should have, rather than the power it does in fact have. It’s certainly the case that federal courts have the authority to evaluate arguments of religious institutions for the purposes of determining whether or not such arguments provide sufficient grounds for overturning a law.
I expect you will agree with the answers I have given here. If so, please let me know, as this might help us better locate our disagreement. (I think I could say more in response, but let me first pause to make sure we’re tracking each other.)
March 20th, 2012 | 1:17 pm
Ancius,
I do agree with the answers that you gave to my questions.
March 21st, 2012 | 10:06 pm
James,
You seem to suggest that the USCCB’s own arguments for its conclusion (that the policy requires Catholics to violate a religious prohibition) is irrelevant for concerns at hand. You seem to suggest that what matters is simply that USCCB has concluded that the policy would require Catholic institutions to do what is religiously forbidden. I disagree; I think it matters how the USCCB has reached its conclusion.
On the one hand, if the USCCB hasn’t arrived at its conclusion on principled grounds, then it is hard to see that it is a conclusion to which the religion commits them (the USCCB)–in which case the resultant conflict between the religion and the policy is artificial; it’s of their own doing. (And we might even think that the bishops are to be criticized for so creating a dilemma for certain Catholics, such as those who own or manage large businesses and must decide whether to purchase health insurance for their employees.)
If, on the other hand, the USCCB has arrived at its conclusion on principled grounds then, in learning of those principles, we can all better understand what it would take to accommodate the Catholic position. Through this understanding we might come to see that there is a way to alter the legislation in a way that fully respects the Catholic principles without too great a cost to our other interests. On the other hand, we might come to realize that there is no feasible way to fully accommodate the Catholic position in a way that also accommodates the equally weighty rights or freedoms of others (perhaps because the stated principles imply a whole lot more than merely the conclusion at issue here). This would show us that there will be no clean way to proceed, and that the policy decisions cannot be determined by simple facts about what will and and what will not fully accommodate one group’s weighty rights or freedoms.
March 22nd, 2012 | 9:13 am
Ancius,
I limited my previous response to laying out the principle which the USCCB would use to determine if following this mandate is morally illicit, as I cannot state the exact reasons as to why the Bishops have determined which level of cooperation is involved in this situation. It would be repetitious for me to continue discussing the theory but for those who want to know more a very insightful article on how the theory could be applied in this case can be found at the Catholic Moral Theology website at: http://catholicmoraltheology.com/hhs-roundtable-cooperation-with-evil/ and insights can also be gained by examining the “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” directive issued by the USCCB at: http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/health-care/upload/Ethical-Religious-Directives-Catholic-Health-Care-Services-fifth-edition-2009.pdf
As I cannot lay out the USCCB’s own arguments for its conclusions perhaps you see this discussion as needing to come to an end as those arguments are first and foremost the answers you are seeking. But I find this discussion to be very thought provoking and would like it to continue so I propose that we move the discussion from the principled grounds on which the USCCB rests it’s arguments to the principled grounds on which the federal government can impose the mandate as it is currently written. Your thoughts?
March 22nd, 2012 | 10:48 pm
James, thank you for the links. I found Dana Dillon’s piece interesting, along with the Vincent Miller post she cites. I don’t quite follow Dillon’s suggestion that in these matters the moral standards should be stricter for institutions (or collective agents) than for any Catholic individuals. Also, I think the discussion that follows might be slightly improved by distinguishing two claims: (a) that Catholic institutions (or individuals) ought to resist the proposed legislation (for, e.g., symbolic reasons), and (b) that such legislation–once enacted–would require some Catholics (individuals or otherwise) to do what is religiously forbidden. It sounds as if they might be trying to make the case for (a) without establishing (b). If, however, they can’t make the case for (b) then it is disingenuous to oppose the legislation on the grounds that such legislation would violate religious freedom (at least with the sort of violation we’ve been discussing here).
I probably shouldn’t have placed such emphasis on the USCCB’s actual arguments; what matters more, I think, are the good arguments that are available to them. Therefore, even if the USCCB happened to argue badly for their position, my concern is not to uncover that fact, but rather to discover the best argument that can be given on behalf of their position. And perhaps we’re in a better position to speculate about that. But I’m willing to drop that pursuit.
So I’d be happy to turn this new question you raise. What initially comes to my mind are three possible sources of justification: (i) the concern to improve the prospects and opportunities of lower income women, (ii) the concern to reduce the number of abortions, (iii) the concern to reduce the overall costs of health care. The first of these strikes me as the strongest. I suspect that a good share of that consideration can be framed in terms that even devout Catholics can be expected to appreciate.
March 23rd, 2012 | 1:39 pm
Ancius,
I agree with your statement, “If, however, they [the USCCB] can’t make the case for (b) then it is disingenuous to oppose the legislation on the grounds that such legislation would violate religious freedom”. Just as I don’t agree in calling something a “right” when it is in fact not, I’m equally against using a freedom of xxx (religion, speech, association, etc.) argument when it is in fact not applicable. I believe both of those actions dilute the extreme importance of rights.
Before progressing forward on discussing the three justifications you proposed, I want to make sure that we’re in agreement as to the starting basis for our discussion.
Our previous discussion assumed that the federal government is using valid principles on which to base its claim that the mandate can be implemented as written and we were exploring what valid principles the USCCB is using to charge that the mandate violated religious freedom.
I propose that this new discussion switch the two. We would now be assuming that the USCCB is using valid principles on which to base its claim that providing birth control would be morally illicit, and thus against it’s religious beliefs, and we are now exploring what valid principles the federal government is using to claim that implementing the mandate, as written, does not violate religious freedom.
Agreement?
March 24th, 2012 | 10:44 am
Up until now, I took the primary issue to discovering the best sense that could be made of the claim that the new policy requirement would force some Catholics (or some Catholic institutions) to do what their religion forbids them to do. For settling this question, I believe I encountered no reasons to take a stand on whether or not the policy in question was legitimate or illegitimate on other grounds. So, I never even needed to assume that the federal government “is using valid principles…”
Now, for the new turn in our discussion, I likewise think that we should not simply assume that the USCCB’s claim (that the policy would require some Catholics to do what their religion forbids) is justified. There are three reasons for this. First, that claim that remains dubious. Second, to decide whether or not a right to religious freedom would be violated, we would presumably need to more fully understand the sense of the USCCB claim (so that we might, in particular, understand how reasonable it is for Catholics to insist that the rest of the country should accommodate them on this point). If for example, we come to understand that the conflict with religion could be avoided by a very trivial policy adjustment (e.g., the C/F tokens), then the current policy would presumably be much more difficult to justify–given that gratuitous conflicts with religion should be really difficult to justify. Third, it makes good sense to independently explore the positive grounds for the policy before trying to make the far more difficult evaluation of whether or not the policy is, all things considered, illegitimate.
March 24th, 2012 | 3:41 pm
If we’re not going to be assuming that the Catholic Church’s position is legitimate then I’m unsure as to what we will be discussing. My argument has never been whether or not mandating the providing of contraception coverage is an acceptable act of government but whether institutions with valid religious objections should be exempt from the mandate.
It is my belief that if the Church has a valid religious argument against the mandate then they, and their institutions, should be exempt. Perhaps knowing your answer to that question (should they be allowed an exemption if their reasons are valid?) would help me better understand the current discussion.
March 25th, 2012 | 1:36 pm
Yes, but whether the Church has a valid religious argument against the mandate–which provides a decisive grounds for their exemption–depends on weighing two things: (1) their grounds for objecting to the mandate; and (2) the grounds for imposing the mandate. We thought quite a bit about (1); now I had thought that you wished to discuss (2).
March 25th, 2012 | 3:07 pm
I think we’re close enough in our understanding.
So what do you see as the government’s principled grounds for imposing the mandate?
March 26th, 2012 | 2:20 pm
As I mentioned, what initially comes to my mind are three possible sources of justification: (i) the concern to improve the prospects and opportunities of lower income women, (ii) the concern to reduce the number of abortions, (iii) the concern to reduce the overall costs of health care. The first of these strikes me as the strongest. I suspect that a good share of that consideration can be framed in terms that even devout Catholics can be expected to appreciate.
Arguments from these sources (perhaps a combination of them) would plausibly provide, prima facie, sufficient reason for imposing the mandate. It becomes trickier, of course, if it can be shown that such a mandate requires some people to do what their religion forbids them to do.
March 26th, 2012 | 5:00 pm
By including in the rules for the mandate the definition of what type of religious institutions can claim an exemption, the Department of HHS is acknowledging the fact that the mandate would require some institutions to do what their religion forbids them to do.
So what are the principled grounds on which the Department can force those institutions not covered by the religious exemption definition to provide birth control in their health care benefits.
March 26th, 2012 | 10:12 pm
Your first sentence isn’t true. An obvious possibility is that the HHS is exempting some institutions in an attempt to steer safely wide of any plausible conflict with religious freedom. But even if they’ve explicitly stated that “acknowledgment”, they may be making a mistake. At any rate, we shouldn’t just assume, on the grounds you’ve mentioned, that, if not for the exemption, the exempted institutions would have been required to do what their religion forbids
March 27th, 2012 | 9:11 am
Ancius,
But the HHS is not justifying the exemption based upon any “attempt to steer safely wide of any possible conflict”. If you haven’t read the final rule that has been posted in the Federal Register it’s available here: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/02/15/2012-3547/rin-1545-bj60
One of the relevant paragraphs to the justification for the exemption is, “The religious employer exemption in the final regulations does not undermine the overall benefits described above. A group health plan (and health insurance coverage provided in connection with such a plan) qualifies for the exemption if, among other qualifications, the plan is established and maintained by an employer that primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the organization. As such, the employees of employers availing themselves of the exemption would be less likely to use contraceptives even if contraceptives were covered under their health plans.”
That seems to be to be a rather poor justification for a religious exemption as it’s not based at all upon the religious beliefs of the organization. And it’s an even poorer justification for maintaining such a narrow exemption as, again, it’s based upon the amount of people who would use the benefit and not the religious belief of the institution which should be the focus of any discussion on conflicts with the freedom of religion clause in the Constitution.
So my questions would be, (a) on what principled grounds should the exemption be included or not included and, (b) if the exemption should be included, on what principled grounds should the exemption be narrowly defined?
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