All insurance provides it. If the church doesn’t like that, they can stop providing insurance.
Again, the church is giving its employees the equivalent of a Visa Gift Card. If a particular employee uses that Visa Gift Card to buy a hand-job in Vegas, they church isn’t paying for handjobs.
The Church isn’t buying it for them. It is providing them with the means to obtain it. It provides them with the means to obtain it by paying its employees, too; does that mean minimum wage laws are an affront to religious freedom?
The Church has exactly the same guarantee that its employees won’t use their paychecks to obtain contraception that it does that they won’t use their insurance coverage: none.
Look at it another way: in states with the death penalty, the Church is being “forced to pay” for executions via payroll taxes. Is that also a violation?
I don’t understand. The Church has to arrange for (and I presume contribute to the purchase of) health insurance for its employees. The employees are, I gather, free to take or not take the plans the Church arranges for. The Church is annoyed because it can’t find a plan that specifically doesn’t cover contraception?
Seems to me they should take this up with the insurance companies, no? Try to find one that will offer a package with exactly the coverage they want.
I just had to drive for a bit to drop something off for my wife. During the trip I came up with the solution that will both make the Church and the sane people happy.
Keep the mandate for contraception. So all insurance coverage in the country will include reproductive services. But have the Church’s have employees sign a contract stating that it’s a firing offence if they use their medical for reproductive services.
That way the Church can feel all holier-than-though and the mandate stands.
It’s not the Church per se that has a problem. PPACA requires health insurers to cover contraception. Religious denominations are exempt from PPACA; sister organizations (like Catholic hospitals or Seventh Day Adventist colleges) are not.
The Church is pissy because organizations it funds will have to offer insurance that covers contraception.
Well, render unto Caeser and shut the fuck up, then.
The Church is buying the insurance plan, and then offering it as a benefit to their employees. Who writes the check to the insurance companies?
The Church is not required to buy an electric chair and then furnish it to the state.
The church is not buying contraception and distributing it, either.
No, they are providing a benefit, and it is possible to use that benefit in a way the church doesn’t like.
Like if the church provided Wifi and someone watched porn. Or if the church provided lunch and someone fucked their sandwich. Or if the church provided a t-shirt and someone choked a stripper with it. Or if the church provided pay and someone bought a handjob with it. Or if the church provided a bible, and someone underlined the contradictions in it. Or if the church provided healthcare and someone had birthcontrol pills with it.
The church isn’t required to provide healthcare. In America health insurance is required to provide contraception. There is no attack on religious liberty here. None. Zero. Nothing.
The Church isn’t being forced to do anything. Religious-affiliated organizations are. In any case, if you don’t believe in contraceptives, don’t use them. I agree that a case can be made, as John Mace has done, that the government shouldn’t be forcing insurance companies to offer contraceptives in the first place. But the idea that you are complicit in others’ use of contraception under the new regulations is ridiculous.
This.
Just because the insurance package offers birth control and abortion does not mean that the employee absolutely MUST use it or lose it. Heck, I have birth control and abortion available with my health care, and I don’t use either one of them [I got a medically required hysterectomy a couple summers ago, and previous to that I had my tubes tied so for years I didn’t bother with the pill, until my PCOS got untenable and I needed to take a supressent to keep me from bleeding out and going into labor 2 to 3 weeks out of 4. Definitely not birth control.]
The church should go soak its collective head. They need to * trust* that an employee will toe the line and not get birth control or an abortion. Though if one of the women develops PCOS or another issue that requires hormonal treatment, or their choice of diety forbid, a tubal pregnancy or another condition that requires the choice of an abortion to save the mothers life, the options are there.
Translated, TL;DNR Stupid asshat churches need to learn that there are medically mandated uses for hormones and abortion that are not birth control based, they are lifesaving medical requirements. Suck it up and shut up, they need to be available if they are needed to let the woman live. Not all abortions and hormone pills are evil, m’kay?:dubious::rolleyes:
One item that I think has been overlooked in this manufactured controversy is that Catholic groups have tried this in 2004 and lost:
…and then again in 2007:
So…is the hew and cry now “because Obama did it”?
Who writes the check to the insurance company?
Well, that’s not exactly my position. My position is that government shouldn’t force religious institutions (either churches or affiliates) to provide insurance policies to their employees that contain provisions that violate the Church’s positions unless there is a compelling reason to do so. I don’t see the compelling reason here.
There is no reason to call this a “manufactured” controversy, and there is no reason to think that the Church’s position is dependent on which party is in the WH.
Looks to me like they just refused to hear the case, but it doesn’t say why. I suspect it will be different this time, as the HCRB has been so controversial.
The church. If they decide they want to offer health insurance. If offering health insurance isn’t something they want to do, they can not do it.
Again: the church is paying for health insurance. The worker is deciding what kind of care they want. There is zero religious impact here. This is just a bunch of Catholics throwing a tantrum because they can’t get special treatment.
This is a crazy standard. It’s one thing to suggest that the church cannot fire an employee for violating the religion, if they’re being held to that standard. It’s another to suggest that the church requires some special exemption in insurance coverage from the rest of us. If the argument were that they really couldn’t practice their beliefs due to government mandate, I’d be totally supportive and agree that this is a clear trampling of first amendment rights. But this has not created a situation where individual are actually incapable of following their religion. So how does the first amendment actually come into play? It isn’t like they didn’t want to work with insurance companies that offered such plans; they just didn’t want these particular plans. So it was already accepted they would associate with such individuals. They were already “supporting” them.
Whether I am anti-religion or not, I’m definitely pro first amendment. I just don’t see how this stops them from practicing their religion as individuals or as a group. At all.
Back on page 2 Hamlet cited the New York Case and may have cited the California one too, but one of his links requires Lexis access and I couldn’t get to it. I referenced it again when I posted the current main precedent, Employment Division v Smith.
The caselaw is pretty clear. A generally applicable law, not aimed at a religious institution or belief, is allowed to regulate behavior which is prescribed, or proscribed, by a religion. You are of course still welcome to preach the evils of contraception, but Mormon’s can’t practice polygamy, and the Amish can’t opt-out of Social Security. So odds are the Catholic-affiliated businesses will be told they can’t pick and choose what parts of the legal framework for running businesses and employing people they will comply with and which ones they won’t.
Enjoy,
Steven
I’ve mentioned a few times that the new regulations apply only to religion-affiliated entities and not to churches themselves, and for that reason I don’t believe the first amendment is relevant here. Yet lately no differentiation has been made between the two by anyone. I’m curious to know if this distinction is important to anyone, or if you believe the first amendment does in fact apply across the board?
BTW John Mace, I hope I didn’t distort your position too much.
The new regulations apply to all non-church employers with over fifty employees. If they were singling out “religion-affiliated entities” then it would be a first amendment issue. As it stands now the law is one of general welfare and applicable to all entities which employ people. An exception has been carved out for churches, those entities whose sole business is religion, but not for those which mix business and religion, such as schools and hospitals.
There is ample caselaw which says the first amendment is not offended by generally applicable laws which happen to offend the practices of some religion as a byproduct of the law.
For myself, I agree more with John Mace because I lean libertarian. The private marketplace for insurance is a place where an individual, or group, should be able to exercise their conscience. It’s just another reason to get the health care debate out of employer and into societal hands.
Enjoy,
Steven
It might be important to the half dozen people who pointed out the distinction on this page.