Has President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services
awakened a sleeping giant?
In pews across America, Catholics listened yesterday to letters
from their bishops denouncing an HHS requirement that forces
virtually every employer in America to pay for health insurance
that covers contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients.
As Nancy Pelosi complained during the health care debate, many
of her coreligionists have “this conscience thing” concerning the
sanctity of human life. Now the executive branch of the federal
government is telling them to drop dead.
There is technically a small religious exemption, but it doesn’t
apply to most activities engaged in by communities of faith. For
now, a church doesn’t have to buy condoms for monks or the pill for
nuns. But religious schools, hospitals, and social service
providers will have to comply with the regulation.
Oddly, the best way for religious leaders to follow their
conscience without running afoul of the government is to not serve
or employ people outside the faith. “Sectarian self-segregation is
O.K., but good Samaritanism is not,”
observes the columnist Ross Douthat. “The rule suggests a
preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying
for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors
to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying ‘no
Protestants need apply.’”
The American Catholic bishops have pointed out that even Jesus
and his disciples might not have qualified for the narrowly
tailored religious exemption. The practical result may be to force
religious traditionalists out of charitable activities, much like
the Catholic Church has been pushed out of the adoption business in
Massachusetts.
According to some folks, that’s perfectly fine. “Perhaps the
Catholic Church should divest itself from activities that are not
100 percent religious in nature,” was one typical reader response
to
an article about the controversy.
Never mind that caring for the sick, feeding the poor, and
clothing the naked are considered religious activities in
many faiths. Forget that no one is forced to work for a Catholic
hospital or Baptist college. Pay no attention to other ways such
workers could affordably obtain these services if they so choose.
Under the HHS regulation, the coverage is required even if the
employee objects.
Religious communities in contemporary America are voluntary. No
one is forced to attend or support any church, profess any doctrine
or creed. Government, however, upholds community norms at
gunpoint.
You don’t have to look very far to find comments suggesting that
this rule is a good way to stick it to churches whose social
teachings are deemed too reactionary. Even many American Catholics
disagree with their church on birth control. But the regulation
does raise interesting questions for people of many political
stripes.
Will libertarians defend the freedom of conscience not just for
the “individual who wants to sell lemonade, paint his or her house
purple, hop on an airplane, ingest intoxicants, or marry someone
from the same sex,” but also the individual who doesn’t want to
fork over her money to help pay for activities that offend her
faith?
Will conservatives who backed the Bush-era “faith-based
initiatives” see the risk inherent in allowing administrations with
different values to fund and regulate the missions of organizations
guided by faith?
Will the Catholic left see how allowing the federal government
to force people to buy health insurance they do not want can have
unintended consequences?
This move could prove to be detrimental to a president whose
reelection fight may well hinge on the outcome in a few states with
large Catholic populations. Or it could reveal that in our tolerant
age, many Americans possess little tolerance for values that are
not their own.
