...should have spoken up before this was signed into law, but I'm going to theorize that they didn't because if they had it would have adversely effected it's business affiliations with some hospitals that were not associated with the church at the time.

Remind me of what large groups of Amish employers are denying women reproductive services. Great Scott, there is no effort to "deny Catholics religious-based medical care exemptions." The denial is to employers. The right to have religious freedom from government regulation is an individual right, available to all individual Catholics and Amish alike. It's not a collective right of Catholic employers to deny medical services to their employees.

What a bunch of blockheads.

When left to their own devices, groups such as these invent strawman arguments to diminish the efficacy of centralized control. What part of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need," don't you understand?

I've never know of an Amish business that employed more than a dozen or so people. The majority of Amish are employed by us "English" when they work off the farm - and there are a LOT more of them now (working off the farm) than there were 25 years ago when I was living back in PA.

restrict the medical care available to THEIR EMPLOYEES.

This is about WORKER RIGHTS and not personal religious freedom.

Your religion ends where another person's body begins.

another unintended consequence. Marx and Engles were right.

If they do not like it they can go live in a monastery

I am getting real tired of religion trying to trump secular law.

guarantees us FREEDOM FROM religion. It does not guarantee any religion the right to force us into anything.

The Health Care Affordability act will evolve into it's intended purpose, A SINGLE PAYER SYSTEM.

Then these ludicrous "religion" objections will be superfluous.

general public, then one might need to worry about such issues with regard to the Amish.

If certain Catholics (or members of other religions) find the general mores of modern society too unacceptable to tolerate in their vicinity, then perhaps they should indeed act like the Amish, and organize their own insulated communities, rather than demand that everyone else follow their religious rules. Indeed, some groups of Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, etc. do exactly that, and choose to live in monasteries or convents or other religiously-run groups. And good for them!

If an Amish individual took a job in an IT firm and claimed a conscientious objection to using modern technology, I don't think they'd get very far. So far as I know, no one has attempted this.

You used: "If an Amish individual took a job in an IT firm and claimed a conscientious objection to using modern technology, I don't think they'd get very far." But really the more apt analogy is that the Amish hire someone who is not Amish to say, feed the pigs. If they then say, "We'll pay you for this but you can't use any of the money to buy technology like an iPhone or television." THEN you've got the analogy.

Health insurance is, effectively, part of the payment that employees get for their work. I mean, really, is the Catholic Church any *less* paying for contraceptives if a woman uses her salary to buy it? Is that the next step? The Church saying, "You can only use the money we pay you in ways we approve, no matter what you personally believe"? Putting it another way, if the Amish provide health insurance to their non-Amish employees, they can't say, "We'll won't pay for health insurance that allows our employees to be X-Rayed or given ulta-sounds..." Once they give the employees heath insurance--like giving them money--what the employees do with it (i.e. what their health requires they get with it) is not up to the employer. It's up to the employee and his/her doctor.

Through the churches and community, they collect a pool of money to be used for members who get sick or whose barn burns down, whatever. It's still insurance. Since it's church based, the church dictates who the money goes to.

Had the RCC formed an insurance company, likely it would be exempt from insuring any woman between the navel and the knees, as befitting a patriarchal religious organization. It's hard to think of who would sign up for it, though, unless it was offered at a steep discount. Catholics are part of the world the Amish have pretty much rejected.

They are part of the worker's earnings. So the workers should have a say in how those earnings are spent.

The EEOC made a ruling that coverage for men and women must be equal. In the case of these two examples, one rejects insurance and the other is self funded therefore not violating what the EEOC ruled on.