They also provide employees with money, which they can use to buy Burger King if they wish. Since the decision to buy Burger King or not is made by the employee and not the employer (despite the employer providing the paycheck), the morality of the decision also rests with the employee. I would not be impressed with an employer claiming he found Burger King immoral therefore had a right to pay his employees only in Taco Bell free food vouchers. And if the gov’t had a law saying a portion of wages had to be paid in the form of money I would not buy the claim that the employer was being forced to violate his religious views (if he had some religious objection to Burger King’s practices)

Likewise a woman using the services of a doctor to get a simple checkup, to get contraception or to have a baby is the agent who is deciding how her health benefits are being used.

I’m also left wondering how reactive care such as the morning and week after pill has become mandated through the PPACA free preventative care clause.

1. Since the doctor’s appointment is required to get the contraception, it stands to reason employers would have to be told when their female employees go to the doctor and what they discussed so appointments that dealt with contraception could be billed directly to the women.

2. If a woman is prescribed contraception for a medical condition, she would have to submit all sorts of details about her medical condition to demonstrate that the script was not for contraception.

Notice men do not have to go through this. Your boss has no idea how often you see your doctor, what you talk about with him, or what he prescribes for you. On top of that it would be illegal for your doc to tell you boss even if he asked!

John Burford,

The implication is that cheap generic oral contraceptives are the best choice—or at least an adequate choice—for women who want contraception. Many women have health issues that make oral contraceptives a bad choice. Also, “the pill” may be cheap, but it is not the most effective form of contraception available.

Something that hasn’t received much attention is the witness aspect of all this. Let’s say that a city passed a law mandating that a Catholic hospital display an enormous pro-choice banner on one side of the building, but the city would pay for the costs of installing and maintaining that banner.

This illustrates the problem with the argument. Suppose instead the hospital was paying its employees with prepaid visa cards that would allow them to buy anything they want, but *not* be able to donate to Planned Parenthood who wanted to put up a bit pro-choice billboard.

Clearly your example of them putting up the banner themselves would have huge speech, press and religion problems. The second case though would much more clearly be a case of the hospital violating property rights, trying to control how employees spend money they already earned and were paid.

In other words, call me if the gov’t is saying the hospital must dispense oral contraceptives or do sterilizations itself for its employees. But all the hospital is doing is providing health coverage, how that coverage is used hinges upon the decisions of the individual employees covered.

Spare us the whole “contraception is a vital women’s health need that many women wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise” spiel. Generic daily oral contraception is available at Wal-Mart for $9 a month. People can afford to pay $9 a month for their own birth control–it’s hardly a “compelling state interest” as is required under strict scrutiny. There’s going to be bipartisan agreement in overruling this when this goes before the Supreme Court.

http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2007/09/27/walmart-launches-phase-two-of-prescription-program-with-new-4-medications-increased-savings

I think the hospital could win a religious freedom lawsuit in such a situation, or perhaps a freedom of speech lawsuit. If it is a violation of the First Amendment to prevent someone from sending a message that they want to send, surely it is also a violation to force someone to send a message that they do not want to send.

I think similar reasoning applies in this situation. Making religious groups offer contraception, even if they’re not paying for it, forces them to send the message that they are in favor of its usage when they are not.

Look there’s a distinction in law between a church and a business. If a Church needs a pastor and says they won’t hire a Jewish rabbi, no one objects. After all, how can you have a religious church if you can’t use religion as a criteria in selecting its leadership? But if a church happens to buy a Taco Bell franchise and fires all the Jewish employees, that’s discrimination and is illegal (the Ayn Rand libertarian view that a business can do whatever it wants with the public having no say was rejected a long, long time ago).

Do people have a right to ‘practice religion’ when they own a for-profit business? Sure. But those making that case better come up with some definition of what that means that doesn’t sound like a variation on “you can do anything you want if you just raise your hand and say its about your religion”.

In the above example, a person may indeed feel its a religious duty to only hire fellow Christians and not Jews. But he isn’t allowed to operate a Taco Bell like that. If he honestly feels that way then he must opt to find ways to accomodate his religious beliefs to society’s norms (i.e. by becoming a hiring manager for a church) rather than the other way around.

For example, why wouldn’t an employer also be able to deny women health coverage for pregnancies because he asserts women shouldn’t be having babies if they are single and if they are married they shouldn’t be working? For that matter why not let an employer declare that overpopulation is his pet issue and refuse to cover pregnancy for women who already have two kids could only have coverage for abortions or contraception?

That’s not a change from the accommodation offered a year ago. The only changes seem to be that church-controlled non-profits (so still no hospitals and schools) will be brought into the accounting gimmick and that self-insured organizations have the cost picked up by public exchange fees.