Bishops Renew Call to Legislative Action on Religious Liberty

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I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around Obama’s contraception mandate. I’ve browsed the web, but instead of answering my questions I just get a lot of arguments pro and con. I trust in the bishop’s wisdom of standing against it, but I would like to educate myself more just in case I find myself at a table full of liberals. Can someone answer these questions:

  1. *]What is the current health insurance law?
    *]How does the Obama mandate change the current law?
    *]How does Obama’s recent compromise change the mandate?
 
I’m fairly certain there is no federal law relating contraception to health insurance at the moment. EDIT: Rather, there was no such law until the HHS created it via Obama Care’s preventative health clause-thing, which I suppose makes the mandate current law. But I’m reasonably sure there was nothing before this.

In regards to 3) -

His original plan was to make (nearly) every employer offer insurance which covers that stuff.

His current plan is, he says, to no longer make employers offer insurance covering that stuff, but to make the insurers give it away for free regardless of what plan they are offering or whether or not it is included in that plan. Which is to say, force it to be in every plan. Which is in fact forcing every employer to offer insurance that will end up covering that stuff.

If anything, he made it worse because now even his stupid little narrow exception he had in his first plan may no longer apply - now the insurers hired by parishes will be required to give out contraception etc for free, which is the same thing as parishes buying plans that cover it.

An analogy - It’s the difference between forcing an organization to hire hit men and forcing an organization’s employees to kill people.

That is to say, it’s not really a difference.
 
To put it simply - Obama is violating your civil Liberties. Is it not most interesting that the ACLU is deafeningly silent on this issue? Hmmmmmmmm…:hmmm:
 
PrayHarder said:
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around Obama’s contraception mandate. I’ve browsed the web, but instead of answering my questions I just get a lot of arguments pro and con. I trust in the bishop’s wisdom of standing against it, but I would like to educate myself more just in case I find myself at a table full of liberals. Can someone answer these questions:

What is the current health insurance law?
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Health Care, before ObamaCare, was regulated at the state level and state mandates vary.
How does the Obama mandate change the current law?
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It says that everyone must purchase health insurance, and that HHS will set, by regulations, what the minimum coverage for these mandated plans are. HHS is saying that all plans must now offer contraception coverage paid for by the employer (oops) or now, by the plan.
How does Obama’s recent compromise change the mandate?
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Not at all. All plans still have to cover contraceptives at no copay.
 
Iron_Donkey said:
I’m fairly certain there is no federal law relating contraception to health insurance at the moment. EDIT: Rather, there was no such law until the HHS created it via Obama Care’s preventative health clause-thing, which I suppose makes the mandate current law. But I’m reasonably sure there was nothing before this.
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Its a regulation that federal law authorized the HHS to make, although its a regulation that oversteps the HHS’s authority.
In regards to 3) -
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His original plan was to make (nearly) every employer offer insurance which covers that stuff.
Click to expand...
His current plan is, he says, to no longer make employers offer insurance covering that stuff, but to make the insurers give it away for free regardless of what plan they are offering or whether or not it is included in that plan. Which is to say, force it to be in every plan. Which is in fact forcing every employer to offer insurance that will end up covering that stuff.
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The plan is an obfuscation, trying to make birth control appear “free”, while its secretly being paid for, in part, by those morally opposed to it.
If anything, he made it worse because now even his stupid little narrow exception he had in his first plan may no longer apply - now the insurers hired by parishes will be required to give out contraception etc for free, which is the same thing as parishes buying plans that cover it.
Click to expand...
An analogy - It’s the difference between forcing an organization to hire hit men and forcing an organization’s employees to kill people.
Click to expand...
That is to say, it’s not really a difference.
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Pretty much.
 
This is being misrepresented by the media as a “contraception” or “birth control” issue. It is not. It is a constitutional issue involving a government mandate to force Catholic institutions to provide sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptive pills which are also abortifacients, IUD’s which prevent implantation of a live, fertilized, growing human person, and various anti-life devices, to their employees – at no cost – through their insurance programs. There is no exception, no conscience provision.

Now Obama is saying the hospitals and charities who object on the basis of conscience won’t have to provide these services – the insurance companies have to provide them FREE OF CHARGE. Well, there’s no such thing as “free.” The Church and all her institutions will have to pay for insurance policies that will provide these “free” services.

And this ruling disregards the fact that many Catholic institutions are self-insured and others are insured with a Catholic insurance organization.

It’s a shell game. Obama moved the mandate from direct payment to indirect. But Catholic organizations still have to comply and pay.
 
Nimzovik said:
To put it simply - Obama is violating your civil Liberties. Is it not most interesting that the ACLU is deafeningly silent on this issue? Hmmmmmmmm…:hmmm:
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Oh, they’re not TOO silent. They’re saying just what you’d expect them to say.

Modified Birth Control Rule Should End Controversy (But Probably Won’t)
excerpt:

*Access to affordable birth control is essential for women and their families. Women use contraception to prevent unintended pregnancies, plan their families and protect their health. Virtually every woman of childbearing age — including 98 percent of sexually active Catholics — uses contraception at some point in her life.

For days now, the bishops and some other religious leaders have been claiming that their religious liberty is under attack. Let’s be clear: it isn’t. The bishops have been trying to use their religious beliefs to discriminate against the female employees of religiously-affiliated organizations like universities and hospitals. *

Why the Contraception Mandate Matters
excerpt:

We’re relieved that with today’s announcement from President Obama, by this time next year, the HHS mandate will allow us to make our own decisions about whether or not to take birth control. We will consult our own consciences, informed by our own health needs, and our own religious and moral convictions, not the religious beliefs of a distant religious figure. As U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand recently said, “whether or not to take birth control is the woman’s choice, not her boss’s.”
 
It’s surely a fact that the Catholic Church’s higher-ups don’t want to hear, but it’s one that the White House has heralded in his defense of the new (and today, amended) requirement for Catholic employers to offer insurance that covers contraceptives. “According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, most women, including 98 percent of Catholic women, have used contraception,” the White House’s blog wrote last week. They were referring to an April 2011 report from the organization that describes its mission as to “advance sexual and reproductive health and rights.” The 98 percent was among all Catholic women who have had sex and did not include “natural family planning,” i.e. the only officiallly Church-sanctioned method of preventing pregnancies. That number is nearly indistiguishable from the reported 99 percent of all American women who say they have used contraception.
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…
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And while, as PolitiFact notes, the White House’s posting didn’t clarify that that 98 percent referred to all sexually active Catholic women in the U.S., the Guttmacher Institute’s study makes it clear that even unmarried and devout Catholic women are sexual beings: 89 percent of all unmarried Catholic women have had sex.
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news.yahoo.com/98-catholic-women-used-contraception-church-opposes-201936745.html
 
My guess is that it is 99% of sexually active women. Would have to dig up the study.
 
The point is that woman have chosen to ignore and understand Church teaching on this issue. How often do you hear it from the pulpit? In school? At home?

There has been a huge gap in teaching and much dissent over this issue. They don’t even want to tell women the harmful effects to their own body and their relationships with men.

However, all this is besides the point. Obama wants to trash the first amendment and religious liberty. It doesn’t matter if a % of women have chosen to disobey. He wants to remove the influence of religion from the public square and relegate it to private practice.
 
anodos said:
They didn’t ask me. 😉
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Hey, they didn’t ask me either! But I would have answered yes! I did use birth control!!!

when I was 12, to regulate my cycles!

I also used it before I converted to Catholicism.

so I guess I’m part of the 98%! perhaps I should start a protest in the city.

Seriously, this study is worded so poorly I can’t even begin.

Also, I am completely and utterly shocked that the Guttmacher Institute, whose mission it is to “continues to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights” would find such results! Yeah, they wouldn’t be biased at all.
 
This does not surprise me, but this is largely a case of lack of education I think. Many, many Catholics do not fully grasp the church teachings on this, and tend to place contraception on a level with sins that are a little bit naughty, rather than a huge problem.

In my experience unless you look for information on this, you simply very rarely stumble across it, in church or otherwise. I believe Catholic women behave almost on a par with every other woman - some will have sex, some won’t, but in mostly the same numbers, if not for the same reasons.

I don’t appreciate that the blame here lies only with women though. It appears that men are just as sexually active? I wonder what percentage of men use contraceptives and why their activity in this regard is less often studied/commented on with horror.
 
The Catholic Church,over two thousand years old.Christ’s Church,has stood firm on it’s beliefs,not bending to popular demand.This is what Obama,and unfortunately, a lot of Catholics don’t get:(
 
Is someone arguing that because 98% of Catholic women (supposedly) have use ABC at come point during their lives, the Catholic Church should not oppose ABC?

That’s like saying that because 100% of Catholic women have sinned at some point during their lives, the Catholic Church should not oppose sin.
 
saraih said:
I don’t appreciate that the blame here lies only with women though. It appears that men are just as sexually active? I wonder what percentage of men use contraceptives and why their activity in this regard is less often studied/commented on with horror.
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Double standards no doubt. Boys will be boys. :rolleyes:
 
DaveBj said:
Is someone arguing that because 98% of Catholic women (supposedly) have use ABC at come point during their lives, the Catholic Church should not oppose ABC?

That’s like saying that because 100% of Catholic women have sinned at some point during their lives, the Catholic Church should not oppose sin.
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Bingo! 👍
 
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