Obama Offers Birth Control Compromise That Was Worse Than The Original Mandate

Today the Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services.  Once a religiously-affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.
This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy.  It is certainly no compromise.  The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust.  Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not “paying” for this aspect of the insurance coverage.  For one thing, it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers.  More importantly, abortion-drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the religious institution or believing individual.  They will only be made available to those who are insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the insurance contract purchased by the religious employer.  It does not matter who explains the terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer.  What matters is what services the policy covers.The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.  This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand.  It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept as assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.Finally, it bears noting that by sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches, auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy (like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty.  The administration still fails to understand that institutions that employ and serve others of different or no faith are still engaged in a religious mission and, as such, enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.

 Signed:
John Garvey
President, The Catholic University of America
Mary Ann Glendon
Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University
Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
O. Carter Snead
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame
Yuval Levin
Hertog Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
_______________________________________________
Jean Bethke Elshtain
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Professor of Social and Political Ethics in the Divinity School, Department of Political Science and the Committee on International Relations, The University of Chicago
Tom Farr
Director of Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, Georgetown University
Richard W. Garnett
Associate Dean and Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame
Patrick MacKinley Brennan
John F. Scarpa Chair in Catholic Legal Studies and Professor of Law, Villanova University
Gerard V. Bradley
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame
Paolo Carozza
Professor of Law and Director, Center for Civil and Human Rights, University of Notre Dame
George Weigel
Distinguished Senior Fellow and William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Gilbert Meilaender
Duesenberg Professor in Christian Ethics, Valparaiso University
President Timothy O’Donnell
ChristendomCollege
Dr. William K. Thierfelder
President, Belmont Abbey College
Steven Smith
Class of 1975 Endowed Professor of Law, San Diego University
Jacqueline M. Nolan-Haley
Professor of Law and Director, ADR & Conflict Resolution Program, Fordham University        
Michael Stokes Paulsen
Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law The University of St. Thomas
Prof. Alan Mittleman
Professor of Modern Jewish Thought
The Jewish Theological Seminary
Rabie Meir Y. Soloveichik
Director, Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, Yeshiva University
Micah J. Watson
Director, Center for Politics and Religion and Assistant Professor of Political Science, Union University
Helen Alvare
Associate Professor of Law, George Mason University
Michael Moreland,
Associate Professor of Law, Villanova University
V. Bradley Lewis
Associate Professor of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America
Matthew J. Franck
Director, William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution, the Witherspoon Institute
Kristina Arriaga
Executive Director, The Becket Fund
Christopher Tollefsen
Professor of Philosophy, University of South Carolina
Rusty Reno
Editor, First Things
Ryan Anderson
Editor, Public Discourse
Patrick Lee
Professor of Philosophy, Franciscan University of Steubenville
Francis J. Beckwith
Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies, Baylor University
William Imboden
Assistant Professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas
Patrick Fagan
Senior Fellow and Director, Marriage & Religion Research Institute
Gerald R. McDermott
Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion, Roanoke Collegee
Austin Ruse
President, C-FAM
Ramesh Ponnuru
Senior Editor, National Review
Donna Bethell
Chairman of the Board, Christendom College
Father Jonathan Morris
Author, Televison Analyst
Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral, NYC
Father Terence Henry
TOR President of Franciscan University of Steubenville
Marianne Evans Mount
President, Catholic Distance University
Robert D. Benne
Director of the Center for Religion and Society, Roanoke College
William Edmund FaheyPresident, The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts (NH)
Michael Novak
George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy and Public Policy, American Enterprise Institute
Bernard F. O’Connor
President, DeSales Unviersity
Thomas S. Kidd
Associate Professor of History and Senior Fellow, Institute of Religion, Baylor University
Joseph Knippenberg
Professor of Politics, Oglethorpe University
Maggie Gallagher
Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
Robert C. Odle, Jr.
Partner, Weil Gotshal and Manges
Nancy Matthews
 
 
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The Dems are starting to realize they’ve shot themselves in the foot cut themselves off at the knees.

 Odipshit would have been better off to have waited until after the election to drop this turd in the punch bowl. It’s a clear indication he didn’t believe he’d win in November and now he’s absolutely sure he won’t

Evil is as evil does.

Should Catholics be allowed to only pay the portions of their taxes that will be used to support policies that they support? “Hey, Feds, I can only pay 70% of my property tax bill, I disagree with your foreign policy in Bolivia.”