Posts
Life has kept me overly busy the last few months so I have not been blogging, but with the April 8 deadline to submit comments to Health and Human Services (HHS) on the their new amendments to the Contraception Mandate, I had to sit down and put pen to paper. I encourage all of you to comment at the government's website http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=CMS-2012-0031 . There are a number of good web sites that offer talking points or background on the issue, including the USCCB at http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/ and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty at http://www.becketfund.org/hhsannouncementcoverage. I actually forced myself to read the amendment and my post today is a copy of the comments I sent to HHS...
I have just read, and have grave concerns on the impact of
the amendment to the proposed rule for “Coverage of Certain Preventative
Services under the Affordable Care Act” on our basic civil liberty of religious
freedom. The amendment appears to be
little more than a tighter definition of religious organizations as “houses of
worship” and it explicitly states its goal is to “not expand the universe” of
exemptions on a rule that was already overly restrictive in its definition of
religious organizations.
At its core, I see this rule as an attempt to redefine the constitutional right to Freedom of Religion.
This right, which includes the Right to bear witness to one’s beliefs in
the public square, is being recast into a much more restricted right to Freedom
of Worship. Since our founding,
religious institutions have played a significant role in the public square,
from helping serve the poor to taking heroic stands on social issues such as
the abolition of slavery or the Civil Rights movement. The HHS mandate on contraceptive services is
forcing many of these faith based organizations, that are not explicitly “houses
of worship” to decide whether they should continue witnessing their faith
through service to the community or violate their conscience on critical issues
of morality and faith. The proposed
amendment does nothing to protect faith based charitable organizations such as
schools, hospitals and charities from the contraception mandate.
Additionally, the mandate does nothing to address the plight
of individuals working in private enterprise who might object to contraception
and abortion based on religious grounds.
With this rule, the government is effectively saying that if you want to
operate a business, you must abandon your faith based convictions and facilitate actions which violate
your conscience. The word facilitate is of specific
significance here, because the mandate is not asking private individuals to
accept or tolerate certain behaviors they find objectionale because they are operating in a secular
workplace; it is compelling them by law, with penalties for non-compliance, to facilitate behaviors which
violate their conscience as a person of faith.
Our laws allow a person to avoid military service as a conscientious
objector based on either secular or religious convictions. If we can make participating in the defense
of our country optional based on conscience, why can we not protect a business
person’s conscience when it comes to facilitating a woman’s choice to use birth
control birth control or abortificants?
What has occurred in our legal system that suddenly allows the choice of
one individual, in a very personal and private matter, to compel another individual to
violate their conscience on the same issue? The answer is nothing. This rule is an extreme overreach of the federal
government into a very personal aspect of its citizen’s lives. It is not the role of the government to
establish laws which dictate private moral behavior. In doing so the government takes a step
towards establishing a national religion, even if that religion is secular and morally
relativistic.
The amendments to the HHS mandate for “Coverage of Certain Preventative
Services under the Affordable Care Act” have done nothing to address the issues
of religious freedom the original mandate created. If anything the
restrictions are more oppressive in their explicit restriction of the exemption
to “houses of worship”. Additionally,
the mandate imposes a restriction on who can participate in private enterprise. By excluding conscience protection for
business people, talented entrepreneurs are forced to decide between creating
jobs or violating their faith. The HHS
Mandate needs to be completely rewritten to include conscience protection for organizations
and individuals of faith, wherever they might operate in the public square.
