Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
What ISIS Can Teach Us About the HHS Contraceptive Mandate

What ISIS Can Teach Us About the HHS Contraceptive Mandate

Last updated on: August 22, 2015 at 8:36 am by Jennifer Fitz

What ISIS Can Teach Us About the HHS Contraceptive Mandate 2015-08-22T08:36:09-05:00 Jennifer Fitz

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The courts are back and forth on whether the current HHS rules violate the religious freedom of non-church religious employers. (You, for example, have some kind of religion or philosophical system. If you were an employer, wouldn’t you want to follow your principles, even if it was just a public car wash or a daycare you were running? You are the kind of people these cases are talking about.) Kathy Schiffer writes on the latest in the ping-pong:

A federal appeals court ruled August 21 that nine Catholic groups in Michigan and Tennessee must provide birth control in their employee health insurance plans.

. . . It was the opinion of the Appeals Court that their religious rights are not substantially burdened by a process created by the federal government for opting out of providing contraceptive coverage due to religious objections.

. . . Meanwhile, another court ruled in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor in their case against the HHS Mandate. A ruling today by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the Little Sisters of the Poor did not need to pay for contraception for their employees, nor pass the responsibility for contraceptive care along to another organization.

You can read about the process that is being debated at the HHS website. The debate comes down to this: The government has put together a method that, in their opinion, allows religious people to avoid directly paying for coverage they have moral objections to, but still allows their employees to access the covered services.

It’s an effort at compromise, but the compromise does not meet its goal. We’ll talk at the end about some simple ways this goal could be achieved using existing systems that would be morally unobjectionable for all.

First let’s look at what the process entails, morally speaking. We’ll call in ISIS to help us.

The Trouble with Other People’s Religions

The difficulty in making sense of someone else’s moral system is that the other guy is wrong. We certainly hope so, anyway — if you think a person’s religion or philosophy is correct, you ought to be following it yourself.

Other people’s moral qualms seem like so much petty delicacy. I can remember the moment of utter bewilderment in middle school when it dawned on me that my observant Jewish friend would never, ever, eat a bacon cheeseburger. Furthermore, the depth of someone else’s objections can be difficult to grasp. Is this bacon thing on par with murder and theft? Or is it more like a preference or a discipline? Would you rather die than make a cheeseburger, or is it actually just fine to make and serve the food, you just aren’t planning to eat it yourself?

Other people’s religions pose questions we can’t answer from the outside.

So let’s be clear: Despite the fact that there are many, many bad Catholics in the world who ignore the Church’s teaching on contraception (the rest of us find other, more interesting ways to be bad Catholics), contraception is a serious sin. It’s an on-par-with-murder sin. Indeed, it’s rather viewed as murder-before-the-fact — the willful preventing of the existence of a person who should have been.

That’s a hard thing for non-Catholics and dissenting Catholics to grasp. It’s an idea so foreign to our present culture that it becomes impossible to believe faithful Catholics truly object to the practice at such a profound level. The fact that the teaching is so widely disregarded by Catholics only cements the opinion that this is a matter of mere preference or discipline.

It is very hard to understand the moral implications of the HHS mandate if you are fixed on the idea that contraception is just this minor thing, a personal practice of no great significance.

Ethical Conflicts Make No Sense if You Don’t See the Conflict

So what we need to do is look at the process through a different lens. What we want to see is whether the requirements of the HHS would be sufficient accommodation for your freedom of conscience if the law concerned not contraception, but some other thing. So let’s pretend, just for a moment, that the HHS mandate requires employers to subsidize a practice that I hope you find reprehensible enough that you want nothing to do with it, ever, under any circumstances: Sex slavery.

Pretend, God forbid, that ISIS settles down into a less-ravenous kind of calm, where people are oppressed and bought and sold, but where there are certain accommodations given lip service all the same. In a grand gesture of mandatory almsgiving, the dear leaders at ISIS decree that all employers shall provide their male employees with comprehensive mental health coverage, and that this includes the procuring of sex slaves on the boss’s dime.

The way this works is that employers pay for a health insurance plan that covers broken legs and brain surgery and group therapy and the purchase of a certain number of sex slaves each year. (Probably just one every other year, like new glasses frames under the low-budget vision plan — which at $3000 a pop works out about the same as some of the more expensive forms of contraception. And it’s not like everybody’s going to re-up on their slaves every other year, so the cost gets spread and shared.)

ISIS, in its broad-minded generosity, has acknowledged that some Muslims object to the buying and selling and raping of other human beings, and it wishes to accommodate that scruple — but not at the expense of workers who need their base urges gratified. So they crib notes from the HHS and work up an identical deal:

The final rules also lay out the accommodation for other non-profit religious organizations – such as non-profit religious hospitals and institutions of higher education – that object to sex-slave coverage. Under the accommodation these organizations will not have to contract, arrange, pay for or refer sex slave coverage to which they object on religious grounds, but such coverage is separately provided to men enrolled in their health plans at no cost. The approach taken in the final rules is similar to, but simpler than, that taken in the proposed rules, and responds to comments made by many stakeholders.

With respect to an insured health plan, including a student health plan, the non-profit religious organization provides notice to its insurer that it objects to sex slave coverage. The insurer then notifies enrollees in the health plan that it is providing them separate no-cost payments for sex slave services for as long as they remain enrolled in the health plan.

Similarly, with respect to self-insured health plans, the non-profit religious organization provides notice to its third party administrator that objects to sex slave coverage. The third party administrator then notifies enrollees in the health plans that it is providing or arranging separate no-cost payments for sex slave services for them for as long as they remain enrolled in the health plan.

In other words: If you have no scruples, you pay your insurance company, for example, $15,000 per worker per year, and in exchange they provide your employees with an array of services including the provision of sex slaves.

But if you do scruple, there’s an out: Pay your insurer the same $15,000 a year, but send along a note saying, “We object to paying for sex slaves.” The insurer will then privately handle every thing on the side — your employees can still get their sex slaves at no additional cost, and using the wonders of white-out the line item on your insurance bill that says “sex slave coverage” will magically disappear.

See? All better. You are in one stroke of the pen absolved from all involvement in the transaction — other than that you just sent orders to your insurer telling them to please handle the sex slave thing so you don’t have to.

Contraception and Sex Slavery Are Not the Same

Now you may be thinking, “Well, yes, concerning sex slavery I’d find the accommodation to be so much slight-of-hand. But we are not talking about sex slavery. We are talking about something that’s a human right, like food and water!”

So pretend for a moment than instead of contraception, the HHS mandate calls for employers to purchase apples. Or some other completely harmless thing.

Pretend further that some nutcase in Iowa has an anti-apple (or whatever) religion and says his rights are being violated by this so-called accommodation that leaves him footing the bill for the thing he abhors, and even having to send a note of instruction, explicitly asking someone else to handle the distribution of the awful thing. The rest of us think it is just no big deal — we may or may not think the government should be mandating apple-provision, but it’s hardly worth occupying the courts for years on end settling the stupid matter.

Is there a different way to provide apples (or any other contended service) to employees, without requiring employers to be involved in the purchase of the disputed item?

Yes there are. Furthermore, they are all methods that are proven to work effectively and efficiently.

How to Have Your Apples and Your Clean Conscience Too

Let’s look at the three most likely candidates for managing any disputed health care questions:

1. Cash.

Remember cash? Your employer cuts you a check each month to compensate you for your labor, and you can use the money to buy whatever you like. The HHS could require that employers who don’t include the full array of services in their insurance coverage instead pay their employees in cold hard cash to compensate them. The employees can then go buy the health services they want, or use the money some other good way.

2. Health Care Savings Accounts

But what if you are concerned that women will squander their cash foolishly, rather than setting aside the funds to purchase needed health care?

In this case, the employer who doesn’t purchase the whole array of mandated services sets aside funds sufficient to pay for the lacking services, and puts the money into health care savings accounts. Women can then use the money to purchase what they need, but only if it’s health care.

3. Supplemental Health Insurance

But maybe women are too sneaky to be trusted with a health care savings account. They might buy all the wrong medical services. They must have the powerful incentive of free stuff to get them to take their pills like good girls.

In this case, employers who object to covering the full slate of services required by the government can set aside sufficient funds to allow the employee to purchase the remaining coverage herself. She can choose to write the note purchasing the contraception or choose to leave the money on the table, but it is she, not the employer, who actively picks up the cash and uses it to buy the services.

This last option stands at the hairy moral edge. “Okay, here’s the money you could use to buy sex slaves, and it can’t be used for anything else, but I’m not involved in whether you use it or not.” To make this an unequivocally moral option, the designated funds ought to be usable for any kind of supplemental insurance coverage, so that the employer isn’t in the position of creating a temptation to purchase an objectionable service just because the money’s there and will otherwise go unused.

***

These solutions aren’t complicated. If you actually believe there is no compulsion in religion, the HHS contraceptive conflict is easily resolved.

Kurds and Armenians protest Turkey.jpg

Photo by Raveen Kajo (VOA) (Voice of America) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Human Rights

Previous Post

August 21, 2015

Dear Every Priest I've Ever Known,

Next Post

August 23, 2015 Is Your Parish Your Community? Or Not So Much?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Books Catechesis Catholic Q&A Chastity Church Craziness Come See Me Talk Disability & Chronic Illness Economics Evangelization Facepalm Forgiveness Good Things History Homeschooling Human Rights It's All Catholic Listen to Me Survey Series Liturgical Living Marriage Modesty Not Satire. But almost. Rant-o-Rama Sacred Art & Music Satire South Carolina Spark Clutter Stick that Corner Suffering Thinking Topics Writing Stuff

Select a Month September 2026 July 2026 June 2026 January 2026 December 2025 September 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 November 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 May 2019 April 2019 February 2019 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does Paul say is the greatest of faith, hope, and love?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Love Faith Grace Hope