Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
There has been a lot of discussion in the media recently about the HHS contraception coverage mandate. Much of the talk has focused on women’s sex lives and the types of birth control that doctors prescribe for women in order to prevent pregnancy—as well as on the separation of church and state and the mandate’s infringement on religious freedom and the Catholic Church’s First Amendment rights. There has been much less talk about women’s health, women’s rights, and the use of birth control pills to treat certain female medical conditions, including polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis. Both of these conditions can cause severe pain and lead to other health problems. According to Bruce Nolan of The Times-Picayune, the Institute of Medicine—which is a non-profit advisory panel—recommended the contraception coverage because “those services are basic to individual health.”
Many Americans—especially women—think that contraceptive coverage and other “female-related” medical services ARE basic to women’s health. Catholic bishops, however, believe that contraceptive coverage and some hospital services are in conflict with the church’s “moral conscience.” The bishops contend that the church has the right to deny certain types of health insurance coverage for women who work for Catholic institutions. It doesn’t matter to the bishops whether the female employees are members of other religions…are atheists or agnostics. The church’s position is that all female employees of Catholic institutions should be denied access to all forms of contraceptives and not be provided medical insurance that would cover the cost of certain medical procedures. The bishops also believe that certain types of treatment and procedures—including tubal ligations—should not be provided to women at Catholic hospitals.
When I was doing research on an earlier post, The National Women’s Law Center Takes a Position on Contraceptive Coverage & “Extreme” Legislation, I came across some information about Catholic hospitals that caused me great concern. The information left me with the belief that Catholic bishops and the Catholic Church do not seem to value the lives of women as much as they value the lives of men and the unborn. In this post, I will look at the “usurpation of female patients’ rights” at Catholic hospitals. I think after reading my post you will understand why I drew the conclusion that I did.
In January of 2011, the National Women’s Law Center issued a report about women’s health and lives being at risk at some hospitals because of religious restrictions. The NWLC report includes a legal analysis of the implications of its study—which focused on Catholic-affiliated hospitals’ treatment of women with pregnancy complications.
From the National Women’s Law Center:
The Center’s report, Below the Radar: Ibis Study Shows that Health Care Providers’ Religious Refusals Can Endanger Pregnant Women’s Lives and Health, demonstrates that certain hospitals, because of their religious beliefs, deny emergency care, the standard of care and adequate information to make treatment decisions to patients experiencing miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies. The study and report focused on cases where no medical intervention was possible that would allow the patient to continue her pregnancy and where delaying treatment would endanger the woman’s health or even life. These hospital treatment practices violate federal laws and regulations that are intended to protect patients and ensure the delivery of quality health care services at hospitals receiving Medicare funds…
“Most women assume that when they go to a hospital they will be offered the best medical treatment options for their diagnosis,” said NWLC Co-President Marcia D. Greenberger. “But this report paints a chilling picture of women with ectopic pregnancies or suffering miscarriages who are not offered the full spectrum of medically appropriate treatment options because they have gone to a hospital whose religious affiliation conflicts with the provision of those options. To make matters worse, women denied certain medical options may never even be told that these options could, for example, improve their chances of having a healthy pregnancy in the future. Women who fail to receive appropriate treatment or to be informed that preferable options would be provided in another hospital can suffer serious harm with long-term adverse consequences to their lives and health.”
The reports highlight stark cases where doctors noted a discrepancy between the medically-accepted standard of care for miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy and the treatment provided by hospitals due to their religious affiliation. For example, while the standard of care for certain ectopic pregnancies requires patients to receive the medication methotrexate, doctors in the study reported that their hospitals forbade the use of the drug. Instead, patients were either transferred to another hospital or required to undergo unnecessary and invasive surgery to resolve their condition, thereby being denied the standard of care.
One doctor in the study reported several instances of potentially fatal tubal ruptures in patients with ectopic pregnancies at her Catholic-affiliated hospital. She said that her hospital subjected patients with ectopic pregnancies to unnecessary delays in treatment, despite patients’ exhibiting serious symptoms indicating that a tubal rupture was possible. These patients, therefore, were denied emergency care to which they were legally entitled.
In some of the miscarriage cases described in the Ibis Study, the standard of care also required immediate treatment. Yet doctors practicing at Catholic-affiliated hospitals were forced to delay treatment while performing medically unnecessary tests. Even though these miscarriages were inevitable, and no medical treatment was available to save the fetus, some patients were transferred because doctors were required to wait until there was no longer a fetal heartbeat to provide the needed medical care. This delay subjected these patients to further risks of hemorrhage and infection and could have violated their right to receive emergency medical treatment under federal law.
Early last year, the NWLC filed a complaint with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in which it identified violations of health care provider obligations “under the Medicare Conditions of Participation (CoPs) resulting from these practices.” The complaint urged “HHS to issue a notification reminding hospitals that they are bound by all CoPs; to require hospitals to institute policies and procedures to protect patients’ legally enforceable rights; to investigate the failure of hospitals to provide standard of care and informed consent, and to take corrective action to prevent further violations.”
Jill Morrison, Senior Counsel for NWLC, said that religious dictates should not “trump bedrock legal protections that entitle patients to the standard of care and informed consent in the American medical system.” She claimed that hospitals had been allowed to disregard their obligation “to prioritize women’s health and lives” for too long. Morrison added, “It’s time to shine a light on these serious violations and make hospitals accountable to protect the lives and health of the patients they serve.”
I think it is of great import for women to read the study. According to the National Catholic Reporter, “Catholic health care facilities form the largest not-for-profit health service sector in the United States, caring for nearly one-sixth of all U.S. hospital patients each year.”
In his article in the March/April 2011 issue of The Humanist, Rob Boston wrote about Catholic Hospitals’ usurpation of patients’ rights:
Healthcare has been in the news a lot lately, but much of the discussion has centered on the bill backed by President Barack Obama that Republicans in Congress are trying to repeal. Americans obviously have different opinions about that legislation. We can hope, however, that most Americans don’t support medical decisions being made subservient to religious dogma.
Yet about a fifth of all U.S. hospitals abide by a series of directives promulgated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The directives ban abortions for any reason, forbid distribution of birth control (often including “morning after” pills for rape victims), deny sterilization operations such as vasectomies and tubal ligations, and nullify advanced directives and “living wills” that conflict with Catholic doctrine.
Catholic hospitals impose these narrow doctrinal views—which are so strict that even most American Catholics don’t support them—while receiving a windfall of public support through direct government subsidies and participation in Medicare and Medicaid programs.
Americans are increasingly finding that medical services they took for granted have evaporated as a spate of hospital mergers across the country has subjected many people to the bishops’ directives. Why is this? Because when Catholic hospitals merge with non-Catholic institutions, the latter are required to accept the directives as part of the deal.
Women’s rights groups and advocates of reproductive freedom have been speaking out, but too often their complaints fall on deaf ears. In Montgomery County, Maryland—an affluent suburb of Washington, DC, with a well educated population that leans toward progressive politics—state regulators recently ruled that a Catholic hospital group could build the county’s first new hospital in thirty years. In making this decision, the board bypassed a rival proposal from a group run by the Seventh-day Adventists. Although both groups are religious, the Adventists had promised to provide the full range of reproductive services.
Asked about the lack of reproductive healthcare at the new facility, one hospital regulator blithely said that people who needed those services could go elsewhere.
An Example of Catholic Courage
It is good to hear stories about people of conscience who work as administrators and doctors at some Catholic hospitals. These are individuals who choose to provide life-saving medical services frowned upon by bishops to pregnant female patients in emergency situations.
Sister Margaret McBride, a nun who worked as the administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Arizona, chose to sign off on an abortion “for a woman who was eleven weeks pregnant and suffering from life-threatening pulmonary hypertension.” The woman was twenty-seven-years-old and the mother of four children. Doctors at the hospital had determined that terminating the woman’s pregnancy was the only way to save her life because her heart and lungs were in jeopardy. The nun’s action did not sit well with Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted. The bishop was “furious” and demoted Sister McBride. He also announced the she had automatically excommunicated herself from the Catholic Church by her actions. Olmsted also stripped the hospital of its affiliation with the Roman Catholic diocese.
In his New York Times column Tussling over Jesus, Nicholas Kristof said that Sister McBride appears to be the individual in this story who “emulated the life of Jesus” and not the bishop. Kristof wrote that Bishop Olmsted had spent much of his life “as a Vatican bureaucrat climbing the career ladder.” He added that what happened at St. Joseph’s Hospital “is a bellwether of a profound disagreement that is playing out at many Catholic hospitals around the country.” Kristof believes that we are likely to see more clashes like the one between the bishop and the hospital in Arizona in the future “as the church hierarchy grows more conservative, and as hospitals and laity grow more impatient with bishops who seem increasingly out of touch.”
Click here to watch a PBS video on the subject of Catholic-Secular Hospital Mergers. The video is just under ten minutes long.
SOURCES
Women’s Health and Lives at Risk Due to Religious Restrictions at Hospitals, New Center Study Shows: National Women’s Law Center Files Complaint with Department of Health and Human Services (National Women’s Law Center)
Below the Radar Fact Sheet: Religious Refusals to Treat Pregnancy Complications Put Women in Danger (National Women’s Law Center)
Assessing Hospital Policies & Practices Regarding Ectopic Pregnancies & Miscarriage Management (National Women’s Law Center)
Commentary: Dust-up over contraceptive rule ignores rights of employees (The Kansas City Star)
Catholic hospitals serve one in six patients in the United States (National Catholic Reporter)
U.S. Catholic Bishops Major Force Behind War on Women: Statement of NOW President Terry O’Neill (NOW)
The Men Behind The War On Women (Huffington Post)
Prescription For Disaster: Hospital Mergers And Heavy-Handed Tactics Are Giving The Catholic Hierarchy An Increasingly Problematic Role In American Health Care (Americans United for Separation of Church and State)
House Passes H.R. 358, the “Let Women Die” Act of 2011 (RH Reality Check)
Catholic Death Panels Coming to a Hospital Near You (Ms. Magazine)
Employees Need Birth Control Coverage Mandate (The Nation)
Hospital merger limits medical options: Catholic rules will bar tubal ligations at University hospital (Courier-Journal)
Catholic-Secular Hospital Mergers (PBS)
Medical Emergency: Catholic Hospitals Usurp Patients’ Rights (The Humanist)
Tussling Over Jesus (New York Times)
Americans almost evenly split over conscience exemption in birth control coverage (The Times-Picayune)
Contraception and Separation (Turley Blawg)
Elaine,
Thank-you for the great article!
@Patric 9:06pm: “…I submit it is preposterous to believe friends, neighbors and strangers ought to be forced to finance other peoples’ sex products. But that’s just me.”
Maybe you ought to read the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, Consensus Report, on the topic “Biomedical and Health Research, Select Populations and Health Disparities, Women’s Health” which the department of HHS used to base their recommendations; before you make a statement as preposterous as Rush. But that’s just me!
http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2011/Clinical-Preventative-Services-for-Women-Closing-the-Gaps.aspx
The catholic church is perverting truth all over the place. Hell for one hell is Gods light to those that love darkness.That light will purify the universe. The hell the catholic Church speaks of is the hell the devil wanted, and would have got if God did not keep our first parents away from the tree of life. There would be no death with all of the bad things we have now ending up roasting in a red giant star , and then freezing when the star went to a dwarf star, and we would not die even with no air. That is the hell the Catholic Church teaches. What is on the mind of the l fallen angle lucifer.
The Catholic church is divided against its self having their form of sex, and then has the gall to teach others to dictate what kind of sex others can, and cannot have.
Puzzling –
Sounds like you subscribe to any number of obstetric myths, up to & including the belief that a hospital environment is inherently safer than the home. Absolutely not.
You may want to take a peak at the Cochran Studies, as an educational starting point:
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD000352/home-versus-hospital-birth
“There is no strong evidence to favor either planned hospital birth or planned home birth for low risk pregnant women.”
One of the finest books on the subject was written 15 years ago:
“Obstetric Myths versus Research Realities,” by Henci Goer.
And lastly, your statement of “To ascribe C-sections to a profit motive and selfishness of physicians, devalues real and legitimate choices of women . . . (snip).” is inherently flawed. The profit motives & convenience of care providers are on one side of the equation. The mothers are on the other.
As long as the mother is well-informed, I personally don’t care where she chooses to have the child.
Unfortunately, in my interviews of hundreds of full-term moms, women are often not well-informed, about the dangers of any number of hospital interventions, any more than the typical citizen is aware that nosocomial infections clobber 5,500 patients everyday of the year, and kill about 250 of them.
Perhaps, if & when, the U.S. rises to the ranks of at least the top 30 nations in infant survival, we could have a different discussion.
lotta,
Left you a little fractal present on the Shield thread.
Excellent work Elaine M., as always.
Elaine,
Perhaps the best to date of any of your posts and that’s really raising the bar. You provide very important information for all of us to know. How many men understand how really dangerous ectopic pregnancies are to a woman, for instance.
Patric whose writing is on occasion admirable, is despite his medical expertise unable to really comprehend what many woman giving birth go through, I can’t. What is sorely lacking from most debates about woman’s issues in America is women’s perspective. You and the other women who I am proud inhabit this blog, have been setting the men here straight on context and perspective.
No one would dare prosecute the men with the collars for any thing as petty as Medicare fraud. The desire for money and power has perverted the Catholic Church. In order to divert all eyes from the obvious fact the Church is focusing on its time proven target women. They and it wiil countenance and support any outrage against women to prove they are “pious”. It is a scandel and a sin but that has never mattered.
The catholic church is perverting truth all over the place. Hell for one hell is Gods light to those that love darkness.That light will purify the universe. The hell the catholic Church speaks of is the hell the devil wanted, and would have got if God did not keep our first parents away from it. tree of life. There would be no death with all of the bad things we have now ending up roasting in a red giant star , and then freezing when the star went to a dwarf star, and we would not die even with no air. That is the hell the Catholic Church teaches. What is on the mind of the l fallen angle lucifer.
The Catholic church is divided against its self having their form of sex, and then has the gall to teach others to dictate what kind of sex others can, and cannot have.
Elaine,
Excellent article. I knew the Catholics had a large share of the hospital market, but I had no idea was as large as 1/6th of the total market. No wonder the greed of Mammon is driving instead of the compassion of Jesus.
The greed of mammon. Jesus said give unto God what is Gods. When we give what God made to each other we are giving what God made to the spirit of God in each of us. Jesus was saying we could do without money. way back then. Humans did not get it when he said unless toy eat my flesh,and drink my blood you have no life in you. The thing is when we love like he loves we have him in us being flesh, and blood in us as if we ate him without j having to eat him at all. That is because we are flesh, and blood. Money is used by devils in a body that dies deceiving devils into thinking they can buy their way out of something when they can’t buy their way out of anything.
If hospitals are disregarding the CoP that is part of the package associated with taxpayer funding then the funding needs to be pulled regardless of the reason for the compromised care. It’s Medicare/Medicaid fraud plain and simple.
PatricParamedic wrote:
Natural childbirths done off-hours in hospitals raise complication rates and can be more painful, prolonged, and less convenient for mothers. Scheduled C-sections allow birth to happen when a hospital has full services and expertise available, increases predictability for mother and staff alike, and reduces pain and complications over the uncertainty that can occur in natural childbirths.
To ascribe C-sections to a profit motive and selfishness of physicians devalues real and legitimate choices of women acting on behalf of their health, safety and comfort as well as the well-being of their unborn children.
The disregard of the church for the lives of actu living breathing was brought home to me the th movie the Cardinal. In that movie the”Cardinal” dramatically turned hisback in his pregnant sister and let her die. The Church is in control of a significant if not a controlling percentage of all the health care in the US which is funded in large portion by uninformed taxpayers whose lives are put at risk by hospital who allow bishops to make medical decisions based on their beliefs rather
That the best interests of the patients. It is outrageous and is nothing les than an establishment of religion. UnAmerican, unconstitutional but very profitable for the Church and the politicians they bank roll with their tax free dollars.
Heath care as you know it is sorcery down playing good care practitioners. A list on http://www.upcspine.com. That is the best advice I can give you. There has to be classes teaching the lingo, technique names,and how to really know if you have a U,C,S, practitioner working on you or not. .
This post brings to mind the article yesterday about the crimes of IBM in profiting from the holocaust and facilitating the movement of people and data controls of people. One contention in the article and the comments was that a corporation was amoral, Not immoral. But not accountable for such crimes. That a corporation owes a duty to shareholders and that is it.
Justiapose that against Citzens United. Here on this article we have contentions that the Church, not the members, have First Amendtment rights. The prong of the First Amendment is not cited but let us presume the free expression of religion. Does it belong to the Church or to the person? the other prongs of the First Amendment might be the free expression clause and the right of a person to assemble at the clinic under the assembly clause to discuss and promote rights of persons to medical care.
In other words the issues are not narrow and cut and dried. Here I would suggest that the right of the person to freely follow their religious belief on the issue of medical care trumps the right of the Church to suppress those beliefs. A Church in America does nto have the right to suppress either religious belief or free expression on medical issues of a person just because they are a church member. As Mark Twain said: Never the twain shall meet.
Here too, the person is an employee of a church entity,. not a monk. A student at a university, albeit a Catholic University is likely to not be Catholic, at Saint Louis University only 70% are Catholic. So, a doctor prescribes a drug and the Catholic Church intervenes and says No that drug is against our First Amendment rights. You can not obtain that in our clinic. Even if the person is not engaging in sex but needs the drug for a life threatening situation. The student who spoke out against these Vatican practices was called a slut by Rush Limbaugh yesterday. Does Rush have a First Amendment right to defame her? Does some Priest get to defame her before the Mass tomorrow?
Just a DogTalkin
4 Mar 2012 06:50 PM
The Politicization Of Catholicism
BENEDICTHANDS2JoeKlamar:AFP:Getty
The legacy of Pope John Paul II and the current pontiff is increasingly felt. In rejecting the separation of church and state, and by focusing primarily on sexual issues, the hierarchy in many countries is beginning to fuse with parties of the social right. And the politics is now Santorum-esque. Listen to Cardinal Dolan of New York embracing the culture war:
“We are called to be very active, very informed and very involved in politics.”
There’s more:
“It is a freedom of religion battle,” he said. “It is not about contraception. It is not about women’s health.” He added: “We’re talking about an unwarranted, unprecedented, radical intrusion” into “a church’s ability to teach, serve and sanctify on its own.”
The cardinal mocked a secular culture that “seems to discover new rights every day.” “I don’t recall a right to marriage,” he said, describing marriage, instead, as a “call.”
“Now we hear there’s a right to sterilization, abortion and chemical contraceptives. I suppose there might be a doctor who would say to a man who’s suffering some type of sexual dysfunction, ‘You ought to visit a prostitute to help you.’ ”
The rhetoric is creeping toward Limbaughism. The Second Council’s notion that all Catholics are the church is dismissed:
At a news conference after Saturday’s speech, Cardinal Dolan said, “We kind of got our Irish up when leaders in government seemed to be assigning an authoritative voice to Catholic groups that are not the bishops.” He added: “If you want an authoritative voice, go to the bishops. They’re the ones that speak for the truths of the faith.”
Yes, they did a great job ensuring that thousands of children were left at the mercies of child predators for decades, didn’t they? Just trust them. Don’t listen to the majority of Catholics who dissent, or those brave souls who exposed the network of pedophiles and pederasts. Then the leader of an institution which refuses to allow women equality, boasts of using women as p.r. elements of a political campaign:
He told a story about bishops hiring an “attractive, articulate, intelligent” laywoman to speak against abortion and said it was “the best thing we ever did.”
And in Britain, Cardinal Keith O’Brien has now likened allowing gay citizens to have civil marriage to “madness” and the legalization of slavery:
Disingenuously, the Government has suggested that same-sex marriage wouldn’t be compulsory and churches could choose to opt out. This is staggeringly arrogant. No Government has the moral authority to dismantle the universally understood meaning of marriage. Imagine for a moment that the Government had decided to legalise slavery but assured us that “no one will be forced to keep a slave”.
It’s in this context that you have to understand the recent cruel withholding of communion to a lesbian daughter at her mother’s funeral, or the abrupt firing of a gifted music teacher because he sought to marry the man he loves. As modern society shifts, and as its own flock shifts with it, the Church hierarchy has decided to double-down on its sexual absolutism. The cruelty comes with it.
Bill,
“Now that the bill has been passed, Catholics feel absolutely betrayed by this ‘mandate.’”
There are many Catholics who don’t agree with you.
Bill,
Most Catholics agree with the amended rule. Your alleged facts on both issues are unsupported.
puzzling, How can you attack Obama on matters of church and state and women’s health and then support Ron Paul?
Bishops Lobby Congress to Codify Their Beliefs into Law; Majority of Catholics Oppose Bill
Catholics for Choice
13 October 2011
http://catholicsforchoice.org/news/pr/2011/BishopsLobbyCongresstoCodifyTheirBeliefs.asp
Excerpt:
Washington—Catholics today expressed anger about the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ role in promoting support for the so-called “Protect Life Act” (HR 358), a bill that will endanger women’s lives across the US with an extreme ban on abortion coverage while expanding permission for health professionals to refuse to provide reproductive healthcare services, even in life-threatening situations. The US bishops have been actively lobbying policymakers and pushing conservative Catholics to do the same in an effort to see the bill passed.
“The Catholic bishops’ actions show an unhealthy obsession with sexual issues. They appear to be hell-bent on wasting real and political capital on dictating to all Americans what their sexual choices should be. In their campaign to impose their will on others, they are willing to stoop to new lows,” said Catholics for Choice president Jon O’Brien. “The arguments that the USCCB has made are not scientifically, medically or legally sound. The bishops, having failed to convince the majority of Catholics on issues related to reproductive health and sexuality, are attempting to use Congress to impose their personal beliefs on all Americans. The bishops should stop forcing their personal beliefs on others and allow women and their doctors to make healthcare decisions. It’s time for us to respect the consciences of all and support people’s right to make their own decisions about their lives and health.”
Elaine –
There are a number of reasons, but to keep it brief, here’s but one:
Over the years my partners & I have treated somewhere around 320 women in labor, and have delivered – as near as I can recall – 39 babies. As you might imagine, C-sections are not performed in the field, so that certainly isn’t an option for us in the emergency setting. So we assist the mother in the traditional ways. It has become abundantly clear to us that C-sections – a major surgery – are far too frequently performed, both for the convenience of the physician, as well as the millions of dollars they generate. From our standpoint, this in itself is an abomination.
Since the subject here is women’s health, here’s an accurate overview, in case you haven’t seen it:
http://www.childbirthconnection.org/article.asp?ck=10456
The fact is this…The Catholic Church SUPPORTED Obamacare believing the representations made by the Obama administration that a conscience clause would be included. Now that the bill has been passed, Catholics feel absolutely betrayed by this ‘mandate.”
When are we going to realize Obama is just out of his league. He already has one serious constitutional issue with Obamacare, so he INTENTIONALLY creates yet another? Oh my…
Last Week’s Congressional Hearing on Religious Liberty:
A Disturbing Presentation by a Catholic Bishop Raises Questions About the Separation of Church and State
11/3/11
http://verdict.justia.com/2011/11/03/last-weeks-congressional-hearing-on-religious-liberty
Excerpt:
Last week, the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives held a most curious hearing on “religious liberty.” Those testifying included the Rev. William C. Lori, the Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport, CT and the Chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ newly-instituted “Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty”; Colby May, Director and Senior Counsel of the American Center for Law & Justice; and the Rev. Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
There was no actual topic for the hearing, other than the generic topic of “religious liberty,” a malleable term that was made to fit each speaker’s current legislative agenda. The oddest of the three presentations was that delivered by Lori, who employed the Roman Catholic Church’s definition and theory of “religious liberty” as though the members of Congress could simply forsake the Constitution, and instead embrace the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.
Lori’s presentation should be disturbing to anyone with even a basic knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, as I will explain.
Why Lori’s Presentation Should Give All Americans Cause for Concern
To begin, Lori’s sources for defining and explaining “religious liberty” included Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II, and the Second Vatican Council, as opposed to, say, the United States Supreme Court.
Moreover, there appears to be little room for non-believers in Lori’s religio-centric worldview. According to him, “[R]eligious liberty is inherent in our very humanity, hard-wired into each and every one of us by our Creator.” For those who do not believe in his “Creator,” this would come as a surprise at many levels.
His description of religious liberty, viewed through the Catholic Church’s lens, partook of the current fashion of treating religious believers as though their beliefs should always trump societal interests. For instance, Lori claimed that “individuals ‘are not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to [their] conscience’ nor ‘restrained from acting in accordance with their conscience.’” This, however, is an incoherent standard that would forbid the prosecution and punishment of fanatical Islamic terrorists, of the child rapists and polygamists of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and of the “faith-healing” parents who watch their children die of treatable medical ailments.
In America, however, the law can and does, in fact, force religious believers to act contrary to their religious beliefs when they are harming others, and thank God that is so.
Another Item on the Religious Agenda: Opposition to Contraception
After these initial statements, Lori got down to the legislative nitty-gritty that I assume was the true impetus for the hearing in the first place. The Catholic bishops’ problem, at least as suggested by Lori, is not really about religious liberty. Rather, their core problem is that they have lost the public debate over contraception.
Normally, legislators fall all over themselves to curry the favor of the bishops (apparently believing that doing so will increase their re-election chances). But when a significant majority of the American public takes a different view than the bishops have adopted, the bishops no longer have as much power. And when it comes to contraception, a sizable majority of the American public, Catholic and non-Catholic, believes that the use of contraception is perfectly appropriate. The majority’s views on the issue of contraception, therefore, are not in line with the bishops’ attempts to forestall its use.
The Catholic hierarchy opposes the use of contraception, and does not want Catholics to use it. Of course, it is their prerogative to hold such views, and to try to persuade their members to follow their precepts. However, they now want the federal government to assist them in ensuring that people do not use contraception. Fortunately, however, Lori’s list of grievances only documents the Catholic Church’s prior failures to convince politicians and most Americans to embrace this plainly and solely religious view.
The Church is especially critical of federal law in this area. First, federal health care law requires most private insurance companies to cover contraception and sterilization. There is an exception for religious employers when the religion’s tenets forbid taking such measures, but apparently, that is not enough for Lori and the Catholic bishops. They want to allow—or perhaps even force—private plans employed by secular employers not to cover contraception or sterilization, too.
This is a weak argument, because there is nothing in federal law that requires anyone to use contraception or sterilization. The government does not force women to swallow birth control pills, or to undergo forced surgical procedures to tie their fallopian tubes. Rather, the legal rule is that if women choose for themselves to use contraception or undergo sterilization, then the insurance company will have to cover the cost.