The New York Times’ readers’ peculiar understanding of contraception and conscientious objection

Last updated on: March 21, 2016 at 6:32 am by Jane the Actuary

The New York Times’ readers’ peculiar understanding of contraception and conscientious objection 2016-03-21T06:32:02-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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On Friday, the New York Times published a commentary piece by Constance Veit of the Little Sisters of the Poor, “Obamacare’s Birth-Control ‘Exemption’ Still Tramples on Rights,” in which she outlines her orders objections to the administration’s implementation of the contraception mandate.

She writes,

the government has candidly told the Supreme Court that we “don’t get an exemption” at all. Rather, what Health and Human Services is calling an “opt-out” is really an “opt-in” — a permission slip where we authorize the use of our religious health plan to offer services that violate our beliefs and waive our protections under federal civil rights laws. That’s why they need our signature.

In other words, their objection is fundamentally to the fact that the Little Sisters’ health plan is the mechanism used to deliver contraceptives to its employees, regardless of whether, strictly speaking, another entity funds them.

She compares the situation to a case in which a school would be obliged to permit candy vending machines on its property, and be told that its objections are duly noted, but since the vendor is paying for the machines, they have no right to object.

And she notes that various major corporations, such as ExxonMobil and Visa, are exempt due to the special provisions for “grandfathered” plans, and that, when adding in all the exempted plans as well as the uninsured, 1/3 of all women are without contraceptive coverage despite the government’s stated objective of universal coverage. Accordingly, she proposes an alternate solution:

The obvious alternative to forcing us to offer these services is for the government to allow our employees to access them through its own health care exchanges. This would both protect our religious freedom and better meet the government’s own goal of providing contraception coverage to women — those in protected religious plans and the millions of American women in exempted secular plans.

None of which is anything you or I haven’t read before. I’ve written myself that the law in question, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, poses the test of being able to burden religious freedom only if there isn’t a reasonable alternative way for the government to achieve its goal, and here a more direct provision of contraceptives is clearly a feasible and appropritae alternative approach. (See my prior post, “An incident at the drugstore, and the answer to the Little Sisters issue.”)

But note two things:

Veit does not object to tax dollars being used to provide contraception. Instead, she specifically proposes this as their preferred solution to the issue. It seems to me that it’s fairly well-established that paying taxes, even if some of that money is used for morally dubious items, is at a far enough remove that it’s not considered to be a form of coercion into participating in these activities.

At the same time, the exact mechanics of how the contraceptives are funded isn’t an issue so much as the fact that they are provided to Little Sisters’ employees and dependents through the Little Sisters’ healthcare plan. Exactly how this plays out I’m not sure, but I would guess that, as far as the plan participant “user experience” is concerned, there is no difference and that, for instance, when such an employee consults the benefits information online to see what isn’t and isn’t covered, it’s “female contraceptive drugs and devices – 100% covered” just the same as for a secular employer.

But of greater interest, really, are the reader comments. Oh, sure, as with anything about the Catholic Church, there those who say, “the chuch should be put out of business because of its sexual abuse scandals,” but they are the minority, at least here.

Some take the approach that “access = cost-free provision” — that is, they defend the Obama administration’s stand because they believe that, if a woman’s health insurance does not cover the cost of contraceptives, she is effectively denied contraception, an unjust violation of her own rights. A minority of readers recognize that direct provision of contraceptives could get pills into women’s hands without employer involvement, but mostly it’s “the Sisters don’t have the right to deprive their employees of contraception.” For instance, sbmd says, “If you don’t like the abortion and contraception services the government mandates, then don’t use them. But don’t deny them to your employees who happen not to share your religious beliefs.” Alternatively, some take the HHS contraceptive mandate as essentially a declaration of a new legal “right” — that of no-out-of-pocket-cost contraception — and therefore object that what the Little Sisters wish to do, denies women of their “right” to free pills.

Other readers claim that, because, even if the Little Sisters’ health care plan didn’t provide contraception, its employees could purchase condoms with money they earned from their jobs, there is no moral difference between paying people who may purchase immoral things with the money they earn, and providing those immoral things directly. In this logic, I suppose, there’d be no difference between providing a weekly allocation of pot, and paying people who may choose to smoke pot. Relatedly, some readers say that since contraception is just one of many items that a woman might seek coverage for, so you can’t really say that the health plan and the Sisters are “paying for contraception.” And, yes, beyond that, they do voice the idea that, since contraception would otherwise be paid for with tax money, funding contraception is inescapable so there are no grounds for complaining aobut the specific mechanism.

And the majority have some variant of “opposition to contraception is just dumb,” and, by implication, the government has no need to accomodating dumb religious beliefs.

But what’s striking is this: every single one of these reasons given why the Sisters must be required to accept contraceptives being included in their health insurance plans, could apply just as well to abortion, or physician-assisted suicide, or pretty much anything to which one might object for reasons of conscience.

And, taken in total, this set of claims — the objector and all adherents of its religion must be morally pure, the objection must not inconvenience anyone, the moral principle must make sense to the general public, as well as the mechanism of the objection and how it separates the objector — would seem to make the requriements for conscientious objection and religious accomodation impossible to meet.

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contraception

Little Sisters of the Poor

religious accomodation

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