Follow-Up on the Obama Administration’s Violation of Religious Liberty

     The “accommodation” offered by the Obama Administration on its mandate that employers provide their employees health insurance coverage for sterilization, contraception and abortifacients falls short of adequately protecting religious liberty.

     See my post from last month, The Obama Administration Plans to Violate Religious Liberty, http://www.williamcinfici.blogspot.com/2012/02/obama-administration-plans-to-violate.html.
 
     The accommodation no longer requires employers to pay directly for sterilization, contraception and abortifacients, but requires insurers to provide them free of charge, which means that their cost will be passed along in higher premiums. Thus, religiously-affiliated organizations (e.g. hospitals, charities, schools) would still be complicit in sterilization, contraception and abortion because their employees’ access to them would be by virtue of their employment. Also, religiously-affiliated organizations that self-insure would be required to provide them. Insurers who oppose sterilization, contraception and abortifacients would be required to provide coverage of them. Individual employers who oppose them for religious reasons would be required to provide the coverage. Those employers, including religiously-affiliated employers, who refuse would be levied heavy fines, which is tantamount to a tax on the free exercise of religion.

     Abortion and contraception are moral issues. Because religious doctrines require morality, religious objections to moral issues are therefore legally valid objections under the free exercise of religion. Religious liberty does not depend upon the whim of executive policy to make exemptions; freedom of religion is natural law that is guaranteed in the state and federal constitution, and enforced by legislation. 

     A pattern of hostility to freedom of religion has been discernible in the Obama Administration’s policies. It has favored the term “freedom of worship” over “freedom of religion.” The former expression refers narrowly to worshipping at a particular house of worship, while the more robust latter expression refers to the liberty to act publicly in accordance with one’s belief. The Obama Administration has denied licensing to Catholic charitable organizations for providing foster care for victims of human trafficking because of the Catholic Church’s opposition to placing children with same-sex couples. The Administration recently lost a case unanimously before the United States Supreme Court in which it tried to narrow the ministerial exemption which allows congregations to hire their own ministers. 

     There has been much misinformation in the debate about the Obama Administration mandate and the subject of contraception in particular. A few points are necessary to be made. Women who take prescribed contraceptives for certain health reasons are not necessarily contracepting. Pregnancy is not a disease; abortion is not healthcare. Providing “free” contraception to all women encourages sex outside of marriage. The objections of Catholics and Orthodox, however, are broader than that valid concern; they oppose artificial contraception in all instances because of their belief in the unitive and procreative purposes of the marital act. 

     Some of the misinformation on this controversy centers particularly on Catholics, who have been the most vociferous in their opposition to the mandate and who operate the most hospitals and schools of any religious denomination in the U.S. Contrary to some contentions, the Catholic Bishops opposed the federalization of health insurance bill signed into law by Obama in the first place. Indeed, during the debate over the plan by the Obama Administration and the liberal Democratic majority in Congress to federalize health insurance, the fear expressed by the plan’s opponents that it would lead to mandated insurance coverage of abortion has turned out to be well founded, as some contraceptives work in a number of ways, including the inducement of abortions (i.e. they are abortifacients). Also, there have been exaggerations about how many Catholics contracept. Regardless of the number, the point is that those devout Catholics or Orthodox who oppose contraception cannot be made to subsidize it without violating their religious liberty. 

     As I have continued to note, the issue of the contraception mandate is part of a broader issue of the general mandate by government to provide health insurance. Such a mandate from the federal government violates the Commerce Clause, which allows it only to regulate interstate commerce, not commerce within states – let alone decisions not to engage in commerce. It thereby violates the principle of federalism established by the Founding Fathers. Although it is right that Catholics and Orthodox oppose the contraception mandate, together with a great many others who are sympathetic to them because of the clear violation of religious liberty, Catholics should also oppose the general mandate and the federalization of health insurance on the grounds that it violates the principle of subsidiarity, in which it is held that local authorities are best suited to handle matters of local concern, such as providing health care for members of one’s family or community. The contraception mandate is exposing the dangers of the centralization of power. It is only one of many such regulations to come should the federalization of health insurance not be overturned or repealed.