Catholics asked to fight birth control insurance rule

Published: Tuesday, September 20, 2011, 10:00 AM

By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune The Times-Picayune Thousands of Catholics who attended church Sunday around metropolitan New Orleans were asked to object in writing to a new federal rule that will require Catholic ministries to offer birth control coverage to their employees in opposition to the church’s teaching on that practice.

John McCusker, The Times-Picayune archiveNew Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond

In particular, Catholic bishops say a “conscience clause” that ought to exempt church organizations is too narrow and should be rewritten.

Archbishop Gregory Aymond asked pastors in about 108 parishes to distribute a letter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops objecting to the insurance mandate, and showing Catholics how to file a written objection at the bishops’ website.

It was not clear Monday whether every parish did so. Aymond was not available for comment.
Under a new rule by the Department of Health and Human Services implementing health care reform, employers will have to offer their workers insurance packages that include a range of preventive health services without co-pays.
Developed by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the list includes services like mammograms, colonoscopies and childhood immunizations.
But more controversially in some quarters, the rule also requires that insurance plans offer sterilization services and birth control, including “day after” emergency contraceptive methods already approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Planned Parenthood and other supporters regard the inclusion of free contraception as a significant victory for women under health care reform.
“We want all women to have access to all the health care they need,” said Julie Mickelberry, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood in Louisiana.
“Birth control is normative. Its use is normative even among religious women,” she said.
But the Catholic church regards contraception as illicit because it artificially splits sex from the possibility of procreation.
And Catholics and evangelicals who believe pregnancy begins at conception regard “day-after” birth control as theoretically indistinguishable from abortion.
Part of the bishops’ objection comes from a consumer’s point of view: that buyers of insurance should not have to pay premiums that include services to which they morally object.
However, polls consistently show that 80 percent or more of the Catholic rank and file practice artificial birth control, unpersuaded by church teaching. Evangelicals, who do not have the same objection, also widely use birth control, although many object to “day-after” emergency contraception as early abortion.
A second Catholic objection is that the church itself, acting as an employer through ministries like Catholic Charities and Catholic hospitals, should not have to offer employees coverage for medical practices the employer find morally objectionable.
The insurance requirement, which goes into effect Jan. 1, 2013, at the latest, contains a conscience clause exempting some religious institutions.
But Catholic bishops, and other groups like the evangelical Family Research Council, say the exemption is unworkably narrow.
The rule exempts organizations whose purpose is to inculcate religious doctrine and organizations that hire and serve mostly those of their own faith.
But Catholic and evangelical opponents said that excludes faith-based ministries: hospitals, battered women’s shelters and anti-poverty programs that hire staff without regard to religion and dispense services without regard to faith.
The Catholic write-in campaign was directed particularly at enlarging that conscience clause, to remove Catholic institutions from the mandate.