The Obama administration’s recent confrontation with the Catholic Church over religious liberty is emblematic of an administration that is callous towards the religious freedoms afforded by the First Amendment. Although only recently reported, and often misstated by the mainstream media, this conflict has been brewing for over a year and has become heated since August, 2011 when the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) held public hearings on their interpretation and implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Catholic hierarchy, led by Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), clearly and strongly voiced opposition to the mandate, proposed by unelected bureaucrat HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The mandatedirectsthat all private health plans throughout the country provide preventive services, such as screenings and mammograms to everyone to prevent disease. In a stretch of reason, HHSconstrues pregnancyto also be a disease and therefore, all private health plans must provide insurance coverage for prevention of pregnancy, including sterilization procedures, oral contraceptives, contraceptive devices, and abortifacients. Religious employers have always been exempt from offering such services under the protection of federal conscience laws. With the new mandate, Secretary Sebeliusexcludes religious institutions like Catholic hospitals and universities from the federal conscience clause and they are now subject to the mandate.
The mainstream media has often presented this controversy as an infringement on thereproductive rights of women and their access to contraception. Regardless of one’s stance on contraception, this has little to do with the controversy. At a time when abortifacient drugs (the morning after pill) are dispensed from vending machines on our college campuses, one can hardly claim that women do not have access to contraceptives. Rather, the media, even conservative cable news channels, has missed the real news. The important, earth-shattering issue relates to how it came to pass that religious institutions lost their religious exemptions under this present administration. Exactly how can a department of the government, directed by an unelected official, by the stroke of a pen, change federal protections afforded by the First Amendment? Under what legal structure does President Obama and his underling, SecretarySebelius, have the authority to force religious institutions to offer services that are clearly and categorically opposed to their core teachings?
Ironically, it is the Catholic hospital’s own mission statement that has rendered it undeserving of the conscience clause exemption under the new ruling. Catholic hospitals were established to provide health care to the poor and the disenfranchised of society, regardless of the patients’ religious affiliation or their ability to pay for services. Therefore, they are obliged to care for all, as directed by the Gospels. The irony is that if Catholic hospitals allowed only Catholic doctors to practice, employed only Catholic staff, and cared for, and provided services to,only Catholic patients, then they would be protected by the new,narrowly defined exemption to the mandate. Catholic churches and other places of worship are still exempt because their memberships are of the same religious affiliation. The Catholic Medical Association has clearly pointed out that thenewly defined law is so assiduously crafted that even Jesus and his disciples would not qualify for thereligious exemption. Likewise, Catholic hospitals and universities, because they serve everyone, from atheists tobelievers of all faiths, do not qualify for the religious exemption. One can be certain that the encroachment on religious freedom from this mandate will cause even further judicial challenges to the already beleaguered Obamacare legislation.
President Obama’s first solution to the dissent was to give the religious institutions a year to comply with the mandate. Having received an unexpected backlash to the mandate, Mr. Obama recently proposed a new compromise: have the insurance plans provide the contraceptive services for free. The savings they would receive from fewer pregnancies would more than offset their expense in providing the contraceptives. So, to understand the president, the solution to the infringement of religious freedom is to strong-arm private companies to offer services ‘for free’. Of course, if faced with a federal mandate, the insurance companies would comply and then quickly pass the cost back to the plan sponsors, leading us back to square one. The USCCB has already rejected this last charade. Unfortunately, the administration continues to dupe some well-meaning, but misled, Catholic leaders like Sister Carol Keehan, D.C., president of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. Sister Keehan would like to believe the president is sincere in promising to protect religious liberty as he stated personally to Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, at the White House in August. If the president were truly sincere, the solution is clear: restore the religious exemptions to all religious institutions.No one will go without her contraceptives. Nothing will be different than it is now. The president must just stop trying to force religious institutions, fundamentally opposed to contraception, to fund these services.
One must ask himself: ‘Why would the administration pick a fight with an institution that provides roughly a quarter of all the healthcare in the country, often to the uninsured poor and the most vulnerable in our society, at a time when we are facing a crisis in access to healthcare and skyrocketing costs?’ The answer lies in the hubris of this administration and their unceasing efforts to secularize our society to such a degree that all religious thinking and belief is ridiculed and belittled, to the point that God no longer has any place in public discourse. The First Amendment is often mischaracterized to support this viewpoint.
The administration’s ideological bent trumps even political expediency in bringing this issue before voters in an election year. The administration well understands that the president cannot be re-elected without the Catholic vote. Nonetheless, this has not refrained them from creating a quagmire that may threaten the president’s re-election hopes. Hopefully, all Catholics and religious citizens will be heard next November.
This administration favors a truly secular government where rights and liberties are dispensed by the government. Given by the government, these rights can be rescinded at any time, just like they were whenan unelected bureaucrat altered the conscience clause to suit the administration’s agenda. The president himself has often said that he is ‘tired of old worn out ideas’. Remember ‘change you can believe in’? Perhaps these old ideas include the founding principles of this country like the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. Our founding documents are based on the principles of Judeo-Christian belief that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. God, not government, grants us these rights. It’s disappointing that a constitutional attorney like the president would have such disregard for these soundly crafted documents.
Alfonso Oliva, MD
530 S. Cowley Street
Spokane, WA 99202
