The Obama Administration Plans to Violate Religious Liberty

     The Obama Administration, in implementing its plan to federalize health insurance, is requiring all health-care providers to include sterilization, contraception and abortion-inducing “contraception” in their health insurance coverage for their employees. In an unusual move, it has also decided not to allow conscientious objection for religious healthcare providers who morally oppose these practices and object to being made to pay for them. 

     Catholics, who invented hospitals in the Middle Ages, comprise over a quarter of the population of the United States. Catholic hospitals are the largest provider of healthcare in the U.S., as caring for the sick is part of Catholic belief. The only exemption to the regulation requiring insurance coverage for contraception the Administration is offering Catholic hospitals, under a narrow interpretation of religious liberty, would be if the hospitals provided care only for Catholics. The Catholic Bishops have made it clear, however, that even this exemption would violate Catholics’ religious beliefs which require them to care for all people, not only fellow Catholics. The American Catholic Bishops have objected vociferously to the Administration’s proposed regulation, citing religious liberty under the First Amendment to the Constitution, as the practices Catholic hospitals would be required to administer violate its moral and religious teaching. They cite the “unjust law” doctrine in declaring their refusal to comply with the regulation, unless it is repealed or amended to allow an exemption for religious liberty.

     I have noted that employers are not required to provide health insurance for their employees. The practice of providing this benefit was a circumvention of World War II-era wage controls. In response to the generosity of employers in providing this benefit – a form of non-cash compensation that employees receive tax-free – the liberal Democratic Congress and the Administration criticized employers who chose to pay their employees higher wages instead of providing the benefit and required all employers to provide health insurance, thereby overriding the right of employers and employees to bargain. Catholic hospitals are considering dropping health insurance coverage for their employees in response to the Administration’s regulation. However, they would then be liable for financial penalties. Thus, they are essentially being forced to provide the service. At the least, their economic freedom to offer a benefit to their employees would be violated because of the underlying violation of religious liberty.

     Although most of the media’s focus has understandably been on Catholics, the Becket Fund has taken up the civil cases of two colleges, including a non-Catholic Christian one, against the requirement to provide abortifacients in health insurance. The Eastern Orthodox and some Anglicans share Catholics’ opposition to contraception, but all Protestants had changed their minds on the matter by 1930. However, some contraceptives induce abortions by killing the embryo (i.e. after contraception) prior to implantation. This distinction is of critical importance to understand, as some in the anti-life side try to blur the line between contraception and abortion by redefining conception by some arbitrary later point (e.g implantation) in order to avoid acknowledging that many so-called “contraceptives” are not truly contraceptives, but abortifacients. As many Protestants oppose abortion, they also object to the Obama Administration’s proposed regulation, in addition to sympathizing with Catholics’ case for religious liberty. 

     Conservatives of all religious belief, including those with none, must stand in favor of religious liberty and against the Obama Administration’s proposal to violate the religious beliefs of Americans. We must continue to oppose the federalization of health insurance and resist all such attempts at imposing a government-run system of health insurance or health care, whether by direct control (socialism) or indirect control (fascism). We must stand for both civil liberty and the free market.