53% of voters are women Republicans please pick this fight with the president over which party has their reproductive and health interests at heart.
I've actually dated quite a few Catholics and went to Catholic school briefly.. Anyway my point was in this discussion it doesn't matter that we aren't talking about abortion but contraception since both are sins and the central issue here is that religious institutions feel they are being forced to fund something they don't morally agree with.
Yeah, I'm not sure I understand it either. The religious organization is not providing the services or making anyone use them - they are just basically paying for them if people choose to use their insurance to get them. How is that really any different than paying someone a salary, and then they use that salary to buy birth control? If the employee wants birth control and the insurance doesn't provide it, they are going to buy it with their Catholic-hospital salary anyway.
thanks for the info, i started the thread. i'm catholic, i know the issues. don't tell me what the issue is again, thanks its a waste of both our times. anyway, the issue is catholic rights/civil rights and by not offering this they are discriminating against employees, not members.
judoka, i don't mean to be an ass but you did this to me in another thread, kept repeating what the issue is while i'm telling you i know what it is and we are basically saying the same thing. its incredibly frustrating
I haven't read the whole thread, buit this is just ignorant. So, the Supreme Court has ruled on this very topic twice in the years before Obama became President.
They are providing the means to the service. Possibly a lame example, but assume my nephew wants some sort of explict lyrics CD for Christmas. I refuse to buy that for him. Instead I give him a Best Buy gift card. I would prefer he not use it to buy that CD, but once he has his salary (gift card) it's out of my hands. I have followed my moral standards by not providing him the CD, now it is his moral standards that are brought into question.
its so funny. i heard joe scarborough basically say the same thing about obama making an issue out of something these are the same people that say obama won't take a stand on issues and also the idiots who support the rich guy who takes two stands on everything
Quick question: is a doctor at a Catholic hospital allowed to prescribe birth control pills to a patient that requests it?
I can see that - but here, you're not buying the person birth control. They still have to contact their insurance and make the decision to get it - it's still an "out of your hands" situation and based on the employee's moral standards. It's sort of like buying your nephew an iTunes gift card that can only be used on music (health care) vs providing an Amazon gift card that could be used on a whole range of stuff (salary).
Isn't there a more direct relationship between the Catholic entities and the sins inherent in birth control in the prescriptions they write than there is in the provision of a fungible benefit that could be used on birth control? A patient or a Catholic doctor or a priest can all find alternate means of paying for birth control pills if they wanted them, but they have to have a prescription for the purchase to be legal. And while money and insurance are fungible, prescriptions are highly specific. Even if they did not prescribe birth control out of conscience, I would still think they should be obligated to provide mandated coverage. But all the more so if they are prescribing such medicines to patients.
. . . and there is something called RFRA, which this mandate violates and still applies to federal laws, not state laws. Summarized by Ed Whelan "Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the HHS mandate can be applied to those employers only if the government can demonstrate that 'application of the burden to the person … (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.' If the HHS mandate can’t satisfy both these prongs, it violates RFRA." Here #2 is not met, as there are lots of different ways further the compelling (and that's doubtful) governmental interest in providing contraception and emergency contraception. Anyway you slice and dice this, its a bad move for Obama, he's going to lose in court under RFRA, and he's alienating liberal Catholics who give a damn, not the ones who show up on Easter and Christmas. As tree hugging Catholic Michael Sean Winters writes: . . . Yes, I want a solution to this mess. But, I also want a victory by which I mean I want a really robust conscience exemption. I want any change by the White House not only to work in terms of resolving this issue but to send a clear and unambiguous statement that in this great diverse, pluralistic country of ours, there is room for us Catholics to be Catholic, with all of our quirks, and that the government recognizes that they have no business telling religious organizations what their mission is or how to manage it. I do not want the White House to cry “uncle” for the sake of crying uncle. But, when somebody punches me in the nose, and when someone punches my friends Sr. Carol Keehan and Father John Jenkins and countless others in the nose, I am not going to rush to make nice with them either. There needs to be an apology. And the President needs to go to the pro-choice caucus and explain that their stance imperils the entire Affordable Care Act, both politically and legally, and without that, they would not be discussing extending contraception to anyone. Make no mistake about it - those who support denying Catholic institutions a more robust exemption have placed their commitment to pro-choice orthodoxy above their commitment to health care reform. Is that progressive? Is that something progressive Catholics, who fought so hard to pass the ACA, want to defend? It is time for so-called progressive Catholics to stop serving as chaplains to the political status quo and recognize a first principle when they see one. It is time for Catholics to insist that a conscience exemption that only applies to religion on Sunday and no help for the poor unless they are also Catholic is no conscience exemption at all. And, if the White House doesn't see it that way, let them pay the political price for it. This isn't a neighborhood bridge game. It is politics.
Barry has been kind of frisky lately. I'm glad he did what he did so my Catholics friends that voted for him finally woke up.
That's strange, given that a majority of Catholics support the decision, and they do so by a larger margin than the average American. They might just have told you they "woke up" so you'd leave them alone.
Mr Obama is one smart cookie GOP Ripe For Splits In Assault On Birth Control Rule Congressional Republicans’ pledge to mount a legislative push against the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance plans cover birth control comes with a risk: Alienating their members who have previously pushed or voted to mandate contraception coverage. -------------- A Republican-led appropriations bill in 2001, passed by a GOP Congress and enacted by President Bush, included a mandate that federal employee health insurance plans include contraception and birth control coverage. The legislation cleared the Senate by a voice vote and passed the House 334-94, winning the votes of incumbent Republicans including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (VA) as well as Sens. Rob Portman (OH), Lindsey Graham (SC), Roger Wicker (MS), Kirk and others.
Why then did you write this? Did that have any relevance to the subject of this thread or were you just venting for the sake of venting? What also was your point about bringing up repressed Catholic school girls? Was that supposed to be some sort of flip remark that has no relevance?
Not so sure about that, but I don't profess to be an expert. Sure. You wanna claim a religious exemption? Stop taking federal funds.
How far though should these type of religious exemptions go though? You are talking about Catholic institutions but what about other religions? For example someone brought up religions that don't believe in modern medical practices. If those institutions want to run clinics should they then be exempt from regulations regarding sanitary practices because to do so would go against their religious beliefs?
