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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHere comes the RW media on contraception
Editorial: Contraception mandate violates religious freedom
Few Americans of any political stripe would disagree with the simple proposition that the government should steer away from meddling in church affairs. Certainly, it should never try to force a religiously affiliated institution to violate a central tenet of its faith.
Yet in drawing up the rules that will govern health care reform, the Obama administration didn't just cross that line. It galloped over it, requiring employers affiliated with the Catholic Church to include free birth control in their health insurance plans. That's contrary to both Catholic doctrine and constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.
In the two weeks since the rule was finalized, setting off a predictable backlash from Catholic bishops and others, the administration has mounted three lines of defense for its decision, all of which sidestep the central issue.
The first is that churches and other houses of worship are exempt, which at least shows the administration weighed the issue. But then it whiffed. The exemption does not cover Catholic organizations that employ or serve large numbers of people of different faiths the very definition of many Catholic colleges, hospitals and charities. Those organizations and the people who lead them would be put in the impossibly awkward position of facilitating contraception even though the church teaches that it is "intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence."
- more -
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-02-05/contraception-mandate-religious-freedom/52975796/1
Few Americans of any political stripe would disagree with the simple proposition that the government should steer away from meddling in church affairs. Certainly, it should never try to force a religiously affiliated institution to violate a central tenet of its faith.
Yet in drawing up the rules that will govern health care reform, the Obama administration didn't just cross that line. It galloped over it, requiring employers affiliated with the Catholic Church to include free birth control in their health insurance plans. That's contrary to both Catholic doctrine and constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.
In the two weeks since the rule was finalized, setting off a predictable backlash from Catholic bishops and others, the administration has mounted three lines of defense for its decision, all of which sidestep the central issue.
The first is that churches and other houses of worship are exempt, which at least shows the administration weighed the issue. But then it whiffed. The exemption does not cover Catholic organizations that employ or serve large numbers of people of different faiths the very definition of many Catholic colleges, hospitals and charities. Those organizations and the people who lead them would be put in the impossibly awkward position of facilitating contraception even though the church teaches that it is "intrinsically wrong to use contraception to prevent new human beings from coming into existence."
- more -
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/story/2012-02-05/contraception-mandate-religious-freedom/52975796/1
I agree with Rachel Maddow (http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002271129):
"Roughly 80 percent of people say that anybody providing health insurance should be required to cover contraception. And so there is a way you can try to make this into a religious freedom issue but...campaigning against the availability of birth control in America is going to run into a 21st century ceiling," Maddow said.
Maddow later said, "the idea that the Catholic church is being forced to do something that, as a church, it does not want to do is a misnomer...The question here is...when you want to become a health insurance provider, you must follow the rules of providing health insurance. And in this country, that means you have to cover contraception."
Maddow later said, "the idea that the Catholic church is being forced to do something that, as a church, it does not want to do is a misnomer...The question here is...when you want to become a health insurance provider, you must follow the rules of providing health insurance. And in this country, that means you have to cover contraception."
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Here comes the RW media on contraception (Original Post)
ProSense
Feb 2012
OP
It's a joke - only the catholic hierarchy and some pundits even care about this
tularetom
Feb 2012
#3
Summer Hathaway
(2,770 posts)1. If only the RW media
were actually "on" contraception - there'd be a lot less of them around to squawk.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)2. It seems
that when progress is to be made on significant issues, especially when it challenges the RW institutions that have a stranglehold on civil rights, the media can always be counted on to side with the RW.
tularetom
(23,664 posts)3. It's a joke - only the catholic hierarchy and some pundits even care about this
I heard somewhere that something like 90% of catholic women of child bearing age, actually practice contraception.
So I'm totally mystified why it should even be an issue, unless it's just another way for religious wack jobs to trash the administration.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)4. Look at
the first line of the editorial:
Few Americans of any political stripe would disagree with the simple proposition that the government should steer away from meddling in church affairs.
This is about providing health care and contraception.
Fifty Years Later, 86% of Americans Believe Having "the Pill" Available Is Very Good For Society
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/331/Default.aspx
Thomson Reuters-NPR Health Poll Finds Most Americans Support Government Insurance Subsidies for Birth Control Pills
http://thomsonreuters.com/content/press_room/healthcare/thomson-reuters-NPR-poll-birth-control