Obama Admin Regulating Religious Employers

Me too. I think there is a lot of grey area here. I also admit that I'm somewhat biased towards the admin on this one.

 

Really good post.

 

If the government is supporting these institutions (beyond just the tax breaks they get), then I have a problem with them not following govt rules.

I don't necessarily agree with the govt rule to begin with (if I want insurance without BC I should be able to get it), but that's a different matter.

 

As others have pointed out birth control pills are used to treat other things since they female hormone therapy. Besides that though most health care plans cover reproductive health care such as OB/GYN visits and erectile dysfunction birth control just happens to be another part of reproductive health.

 

thanks for the info Rhad....didn't know the churches themselves were exempt. An unnecessary concession in my opinion, but regardless....makes the whole outrage even less worthy. Exempting connected hospitals and universities would be absurd. Too much separation between their purposes, and who they serve. Doubt they'd want to be considered a religious institution when other funding opportunities came up .

 

Yes.

It's her choice to make.

She can get BC through other means.

 

So what?

If she turns down a job because they don't offer BC, then she obviously didn't need a job that bad in the first place.

Insurance is not the only way to get BC, this argument is ridiculous.

 

I hate this rhetoric so much.

Christianity is so used to getting tax exemptions and other handouts from the government that when they're finally asked to play fair along with other religions (or lack thereof), they cry foul and that it's a war against them. Apparently, asking for equal treatment is too much for them.

It sickens me.

Also: *Cue

 

At the same time, if a religious entity wants to take advantage of federal tax exemptions, they should also play by their rules.

 

+1

This is another excellent argument for separating the church and state.

This mess becomes moot if that special treatment goes away.

 

It seems fair to me. Churches are allowed and do discriminate in employment based on religious convictions. To be a Catholic priest, you have to affirm certain Catholic beliefs or you won't be hired. So, to force those employees to go along with the avowed beliefs of the church when it comes to insuring birth control measures makes all the sense in the world.

But, non-Church religious-aligned institutions, like a Catholic hospital, does not require theological conformity from employees. So, why should non-Catholic employees have to conform their health insurance to the theology of an employer with whom they do not theologically agree?

Obama is doing them a favor. If the Catholic institutions won this argument, they'd put themselves at a competitive disadvantage to their secular competitors with no way out. This way, they can complain about religious persecution while still enjoying all the benefits of the health protections the rest of the industry enjoys.

 

Speaking hypothetically:

Let's say there's a woman who works as a janitor in a Catholic Hospital. Said woman is single and sexually inactive. She goes to church every Sunday and is waiting for marriage to have sex. Said woman does not make much on a janitor's salary and is reliant on the healthcare she gets as an employee. She suffers from severe abdominal pains and vaginal bleeding that can only be curtailed with birth control pills.

Is it really morally wrong for this woman to be prescribed and insured for birth control? She's not aborting anything. She can go off the pill once she is married and starts having sex.

 

Yup, just like she would pass on a job that she felt paid too little or had inferior benefits.

 

I need some clarification here. Birth control was already covered under the policies to begin with right? The only change now is that the insurance has to pay 100% of the cost for birth control without any copays.

This is my understanding. Am I correct?

So the debate here is not that the hospitals and stuff have to provide a plan that covers birth control because that was already done, but now their plans have to cover birth control at 100%. Am I right?

 

Silly comparisons. Nobody is going to pass on a job at a hospital because they can't get free birth control. It's too cheap a commodity to have that kind of impact. It would be like passing on the job because they don't give you a bottle of water every morning.

Heck, many doctors will give you a prescription card that makes birth control less expensive than a bottle of water a day.

 

Thank you for proving my point....

 

Some things to keep in mind.

1. It's only under Obamacare that all new health plans are required to cover contraceptives (including abortifacients, which is the most egregious portion of this that is being overlooked).

2. At my alma mater, President Obama promised that he would give "a sensible conscience clause" with respect to abortion and presumably these types of difficult moral questions.

3. The religious exemption is such that very few are afforded its protections. The four qualifications for being a religious employer are 1) the organization’s purpose is the inculcation of religious values 2) the organization primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the organization 3) the organization serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the organization 4) the organization is a nonprofit that is a house of worship or religious order.

That excludes, food banks, universities and high schools, Catholic charities, and hospitals. Heck even Jesus and his disciples served people of other faiths, so I guess he wouldn't qualify either. More importantly, this definition of a religious employer (and therefore having 1st Amendment protections) is defining what it means to have religious faith. Even the Supreme Court in all of their wisdom has never attempted to define what exactly religion is.

4. Ownership of the hospitals. Catholic hospitals are not for profit institutions which would make them tax exempt anyway. They all vary a little, but generally a group of religious sisters would start up a ministry, get backers and money for donations, and then run like a normal not for profit while have many religious members on a board of trustees. Some institutions have direct Diocesan sponsorship and help.

On the University side, again you have a similar structure, often times with much more diocesan involvement.

5. JuanValdez wrote "But, non-Church religious-aligned institutions, like a Catholic hospital, does not require theological conformity from employees. So, why should non-Catholic employees have to conform their health insurance to the theology of an employer with whom they do not theologically agree? "

They don't have to conform their health insurance to a theology they don't agree with, they can always get their own or use their spouse's.

That's all I have right now. Apparently the administ; http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/...on-decision/?partner=rss&emc=rss&src=igration might be rethinking the whole let's piss off the Catholic church strategy

6. Oh yeah, one more thing, the "war on religion" cry makes a little more sense in wake of the brief filed by DOJ in the Hosanna-Tabor case, which was promptly shot down 8-0.

 

twhy, your point #3 seems like a reasonable enough distinction between 'church' and 'church affiliated stuff' for both this measure and access to federal funding. IF you're going to ignore this distinction for this measure and embrace a first amendment argument, don't you pretty much cut off the arguments for allowing federal funding for non-religious stuff by a religious org?