Is the birth control mandate a violation of the 1st Amendment?

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62Joy said:
Years ago I, a Catholic, took hormone therapy to correct a severe anemia and bleeding problem. It stopped me from having to have surgery. The pills I took were commonly called birth control pills. I thought of them as the pills that kept me home with my children, from having to have shots for anemia and surgery. I took those pills for years until I was old enough for menopause when the situation cured itself. I did not feel guilty because as I saw it they were a cure for my problem - note I still had children I think all women should have access in their insurance plans for similar situations. Obama said they don’t have to pay for the coverage so that should certainly take care of the moral problem. I think it is turning into a political issue that will backfire.
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The pill is not expensive. If someone is supposed to be taking an aspirin everyday should that be covered under insurance as well? What about vitamins? The pill is already available for free in a lot of different places as well. Also please note that what you may have been taking was a reduced form of the pill that could not be used effectively to prevent pregnancy even if you had wanted it to. I could probably get hairy in this regard as to what forms of hormones were allowed and which were not.

Despite that problem though this also mandates that the morning after pill and sterilizations are covered. You should also know that this will allow for full out abortions to be covered eventually under this insurance. Its almost a guarantee that this will occur because abortion is legalized right now. It happened in Massachusetts when they passed their law. Originally it didn’t cover abortions, but someone sued and bam, abortions are being funded. If he will not give these Catholics institutions their first amendment rights now, they will never give them to them.

I have an analogy for you on what exactly the Obama administration has done here.
Instead of directly mandating what they want the essentially did this:
  1. They give me a gun and mandate that I shoot it in a particular spot.
  2. They find another guy and mandate that he sticks his head where I’m supposed to shoot.
  3. I shoot, the man dies, but its alright because supposedly I didn’t directly kill him… Apply this maneuver to what the administration has done and you can see how absolutely ludicrous it is.
 
Dan_McVay said:
I have heard a lot of Catholics say the birth control/sterilization mandate is a violation of the 1st Amendment. If you take that position, I would like to know why you take this position. Could you please specifically address how you square that position with Justice Scalia’s majority opinion where he writes that a generally applicable law that requires a person to violate his conscience is not a violation of the freedom of religion. Why is that opinion not controlling to the mandate? After all, this is not a ministerial exception case?

(I would like to leave aside whether mandate violates any other constitutional provision or any statutue.)

law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0494_0872_ZO.html
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Because thereis a difference betweeen requiring people to do something and forbidding people from doing it.
 
I was trying to point out that hormone therapy has many uses that do not apply to birth control. including controlling some cancers. And, yes, it is expensive but a lot less expensive than the surgery I would have had to have plus missing work and depriving my family. I think freedom of religion applies to practicing your religion…not trying to make others practice it. I don’t understand how this is a religious issue at all now that the church does not have to pay for it. Because my insurance covers something does not mean I have to access it. I do like Obama’s idea of women having mamograms and other preventative tests. It is time that the amount of money you have should stop dictating the health care you get. You may disagree on that but the statistics point out that it is true. Peace.
 
62Joy said:
I don’t understand how this is a religious issue at all now that the church does not have to pay for it. Because my insurance covers something does not mean I have to access it. I do like Obama’s idea of women having mamograms and other preventative tests. It is time that the amount of money you have should stop dictating the health care you get. You may disagree on that but the statistics point out that it is true. Peace.
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Its really quite simple.
  1. Insurance companies are mandated to provide a service.
  2. All companies are required to purchase insurance.
  3. Thus all companies are required to purchase the service mandated to the insurance companies
The insurance companies are just going to pass on the cost of having to cover birth control pills, sterilizations, and the morning after pill to the employers who are mandated to buy it. Thus nothing has changed from the original mandate.

Oh and there are Catholic insurance companies who are now going to be required to breach their consciences and provide contraceptives to people free of charge. How can you deny the right of people to avoid directly facilitating people to do something they believe is immoral and could cause people to go to hell?
It is time that the amount of money you have should stop dictating the health care you get.
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This reasoning sounds great, but lets apply it to another area of your life. What about if I said:

“its about time the amount of money a person makes stops dictating the quality of food they can buy”.

The food we eat is apart of healthcare is it not? The right to food and water would be even more essential then healthcare as well correct? Is it not unfair that you are able to buy more healthy and nutritious foods as opposed to poor people who live on ramen noodles? Is that not lowering their lifespan as well? What about if they are diabetic? They can get all the meds the need because of healthcare, but can they buy the foods necessary to stay healthy?

Based on this I would have to assume that you all for the government collecting food insurance and doling out to everyone the same amount of money to buy food. They would then mandate which foods you are allowed to buy and how much of each you are allowed to buy. You would get some choices, but they would be limited since the government knows best what you need.

Now I have to believe this sounds completely insane to do with food does it not? Would that not be an incredible breach of our liberty? So why the heck does it make sense to do with healthcare? Its also incredibly stupid to only do so with our healthcare and not with our food. Whats the point of covering people’s healthcare if they are going to eat poorly and cause more problems we have to pay for? Wouldn’t food insurance be the next step in preventive care?

Think about where this line of reasoning leads to. We need to help people who can’t afford healthcare but a mandate by the government is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to work to change the hearts and minds of people and inspire them to reach out and help others. I’m still trying to find the verse in the Bible where Jesus said:

“If your brother does not help others, tax him, and do it for him. It’s easier than working to convert his heart, save his soul, and inspire him to help others in the process. Man is evil and must be forced to be good.”
Man is evil and must be forced to be good.
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This right here is the mantra of almost every bit of wickedness the World has seen. Its at the core of communism as well as the Manichean heresy St. Augustine fought and won against back in the day.
 
62Joy said:
I was trying to point out that hormone therapy has many uses that do not apply to birth control. including controlling some cancers. And, yes, it is expensive but a lot less expensive than the surgery I would have had to have plus missing work and depriving my family. I think freedom of religion applies to practicing your religion…not trying to make others practice it. I don’t understand how this is a religious issue at all now that the church does not have to pay for it. Because my insurance covers something does not mean I have to access it. I do like Obama’s idea of women having mamograms and other preventative tests. It is time that the amount of money you have should stop dictating the health care you get. You may disagree on that but the statistics point out that it is true. Peace.
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The problem didn’t go away by the “compromise” though. As the recent letter from the USCCB points out:
·It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate.
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·It would allow non-profit, religious employers to **declare **that they do not offer such coverage. But the employee and insurer may separately agree to add that coverage. The employee would not have to pay any additional amount to obtain this coverage, and the coverage would be provided as a part of the employer’s policy, not as a separate rider.
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Also:
…we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.
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And the big picture:
…stepping away from the particulars, we note that today’s proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions. In a nation dedicated to religious liberty as its first and founding principle, we should not be limited to negotiating within these parameters. The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.
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62Joy said:
I was trying to point out that hormone therapy has many uses that do not apply to birth control. including controlling some cancers…
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The Church does not object to paying for medicine used to treat a problem, even if it is the Pill.

What the Church objects to is paying (even if through an agent) for birth control, elective sterilizations, and abortifacients, all of which the Church considers immoral.

And why should *anyone *have to pay so that people who want to have sex without children pay for them to do so?
 
Dan_McVay said:
That was clearly written before the new exemptions. No religiously affiliated organization has to purchase an insurance plan that covers birth contro, etc.
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Apparently they will. What about dioceses and Catholic institutions which self insure? They must still provide and pay for the objectionable coverage.

And there is no conscience protection whatever for a Catholic insurance company which provides health insurance acceptable to Catholic institutions. The Catholic insuror must still viiolate its conscience. Religious freedom is not protected.

Finally, what about individuals? Individual Catholic business owners who currently provide health insurance which is not morally objectionable, have no waiver. Now, they must violate their conscience by providing morally objectionable insurance coverage. Or they can drop coverage entirely and pay a fine for doing so.

Pay a fine for exercising one’s religion? To me, that sounds like the essence of a violation of religious liberty.
 
Everyone had important things to add to the discussion and I agree on some of the points. I am retired and required to buy Part D Medical insurance or prove I have coverage that is as good as a Part D plan because I am on Medicare. I see nothing wrong with that and am grateful to have it. I lived in Canada for 10 years and, despite what critics like to portray, their health care system is as good or better than ours. It is unheard of for someone to loose everything because of an illness there- it is common here. My sister is a case and point. . The Canadian insurance is expensive but still costs less than our system. I also wondered, that If I belonged to the Christian Science Church, who does not believe in modern health care at all - should I not be as outraged that my institutions would be forced to participate in any insurance at all? Or is it just the fact that they have few members and we have many? I am totally, morally against war…especially the one in Iraq (thank God it’s over) …I am also morally against the death penalty… Yet, I understand that I have to contribute my money to causes all the time I am morally opposed to…it is part of being a member of this society. I simply don’t believe the church should make this a moral issue at all - it is not. Catholics do not have to avail themselves of birth control…unfortunately, I had to loose a nephew in a war that I felt was immoral. We can’t always pick and choose where our money goes. Peace.
 
62Joy said:
Everyone had important things to add to the discussion and I agree on some of the points. I am retired and required to buy Part D Medical insurance or prove I have coverage that is as good as a Part D plan because I am on Medicare. I see nothing wrong with that and am grateful to have it. I lived in Canada for 10 years and, despite what critics like to portray, their health care system is as good or better than ours. It is unheard of for someone to loose everything because of an illness there- it is common here. My sister is a case and point. . The Canadian insurance is expensive but still costs less than our system. I also wondered, that If I belonged to the Christian Science Church, who does not believe in modern health care at all - should I not be as outraged that my institutions would be forced to participate in any insurance at all? Or is it just the fact that they have few members and we have many? I am totally, morally against war…especially the one in Iraq (thank God it’s over) …I am also morally against the death penalty… Yet, I understand that I have to contribute my money to causes all the time I am morally opposed to…it is part of being a member of this society. I simply don’t believe the church should make this a moral issue at all - it is not. Catholics do not have to avail themselves of birth control…unfortunately, I had to loose a nephew in a war that I felt was immoral. We can’t always pick and choose where our money goes. Peace.
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Lol but you voted based on those principles didn’t you? You voted to end the War and the death penalty because of your beliefs correct? The bishops have said many times that abortion is the greatest evil we face today. The womb is by far the most dangerous place a person can be in the World today. Neither war nor the death penalty is intrinsically evil either.

The number of births in the U.S per year is 4 million. The number of abortions per year in the U.S is about 1.37 million. That means outside natural causes a baby in the womb has a 25% chance of death! Add in deaths due to the morning after pill and who knows how high the real percentage is.

Do you know what the chance of death in Iraq is for an American soldier? Less than 1%. Do you know how many people have been killed because of death row? 1,264 people have been executed in America since 1976. There were 33 executions in 2011.

The saddest thing in this country right now is that an inmate who has been put on death row has 5 times the chance of not being directly killed as compared to a baby in the womb.
According to a study published in 2004 in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 5 percent of the 5,826 death sentences imposed from 1973 to 1995 were carried out in those years. By contrast, the study found, there was a 68 percent chance that death sentences in those years would be overturned by the courts.
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Only 5% of the people put on death row are actually executed.

I’m going to repeat that again because its really hard to imagine.

An inmate who has been put on death row has 5 times the chance of not being directly killed as compared to a baby in the womb.

Its about time the Catholic bishops stood up in defense of religious freedom and a lot of other freedoms that are being stomped on.
 
Thank you Nate. I agree abortion is an evil. But I disagree on what is going to lessen the number of abortions. History proves that making it illegal did not work - it just drove it underground. And it is naive to think that it won’t happen again. Actually, the number of abortions has decreased in this country…a good thing. Here is a good article about the rise in abortion being larger among poor women. Those “food stamp” people that the GOP talks about with so little respect. Unfortunately, the same party out there that claims to be anti-abortion is also the party against things that will have an impact on ending them - things like health care, school lunches and child care so the mother can work. It’s not enough to say we want children to be born - we have to, as a society, make sure they are fed, schooled and not abused. We need to set up a system to take care of them when they are. The current one is not effective and neither is our adoption laws. I would like to see the Church work this hard on changing adoption laws and making adoption the popular thing to do. The Church of Later Day Saints had wonderful commercials on TV for a long time…you may have seen them…they ended with, “Life—a Beautiful Choice”. That is money well spent…we should be doing more of that and less of spinning wheels on the current situation. I don’t know how to make a link…so you will have to copy and paste.

guttmacher.org/media/nr/2010/05/04/index.html
 
62Joy said:
Thank you Nate. I agree abortion is an evil. But I disagree on what is going to lessen the number of abortions. History proves that making it illegal did not work - it just drove it underground. And it is naive to think that it won’t happen again. Actually, the number of abortions has decreased in this country…a good thing.
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Actually what you have there is a completely false notion. Abortions were much less common before abortion was legalized…much less. Estimates by pro-choice people themselves put the number between 200,000 and 1.2 million a year during the 1950’s and 1960’s. That spread there should tell you how much that estimate is worth.

realweb.ifastnet.com/stats.html
The statistics vary, but most claim that before the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, around 5,000 to 10,000 women died annually from complications arising from illegal abortions. These statistics, put out in the early 1970s by pro-choice proponents, have been shown to be completely false. A founding member of the National Abortion Rights Action League, Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who now is pro-life, admits that he as well as others simply made up the numbers for effect, fully aware that they were a huge overestimate.
•The U.S. Bureau of Vital Statistics reports that in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade, there were only thirty-nine women who died from illegal abortions. By comparison, the National Center for Health Statistics reports that in 1971 there were fifty-four deaths from legal abortions.
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Legalized abortion is saving 54 lives of women per year assuming of course that abortion agencies are actually truthfully reporting deaths of patients from abortions. There have been many scandals recently showing that many deaths of women associated with abortion are covered up. You would also have to ignore the 28 studies that show a woman getting an abortion leads to an increased risk in breast cancer of up to 50%…

There is no defense for being pro-choice.

Do you really believe we live in a country where 1.37 million illegal abortions could occur under the nose of the law? I’m sorry but that is ridiculous.
 
62Joy said:
Everyone had important things to add to the discussion and I agree on some of the points. I am retired and required to buy Part D Medical insurance or prove I have coverage that is as good as a Part D plan because I am on Medicare. I see nothing wrong with that and am grateful to have it. I lived in Canada for 10 years and, despite what critics like to portray, their health care system is as good or better than ours. It is unheard of for someone to loose everything because of an illness there- it is common here. My sister is a case and point. . The Canadian insurance is expensive but still costs less than our system. I also wondered, that If I belonged to the Christian Science Church, who does not believe in modern health care at all - should I not be as outraged that my institutions would be forced to participate in any insurance at all? Or is it just the fact that they have few members and we have many? I am totally, morally against war…especially the one in Iraq (thank God it’s over) …I am also morally against the death penalty… Yet, I understand that I have to contribute my money to causes all the time I am morally opposed to…it is part of being a member of this society. I simply don’t believe the church should make this a moral issue at all - it is not. Catholics do not have to avail themselves of birth control…unfortunately, I had to loose a nephew in a war that I felt was immoral. We can’t always pick and choose where our money goes. Peace.
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To the best of my knowledge, Part D of Medicare is not mandatory. You can take it or leave it. I left it. And my supplemental insurance does not cover much in the way of drugs. But Part D was not worth the price. (Of course it is also helping to bankrupt the nation.)

Contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing morning after pills are widely available. If anyone wants insurance which covers them, they can get it. There is absolutely NO reason for the Federal government to mandate that every insuror must cover them. The problem is more one of finding a morally acceptable policy than trying to find birth control. That is everywhere. Keep the government out of my religious practice!
 
I posted a reply to you, Nate, but can’t find it. As far as the numbers of abortions…I don’t know how anyone would know how many illegal ones there were years ago. But, I do know that they have been going on, long before records were kept. I said in that post that I participated in marches on a local abortion clinic when I was younger. The comments of one young mother hit me deeply. She felt she had no choice; no family support and no money to support the two children she already had. It made me realize that I was not even thinking about her when I went to that march…nor even much about this child after birth. .I had went to the march to stop her from aborting a pregnancy but with no clue as to what would happen to that child later. That is why I get so upset when the same politicians who claim to be pro-life put down people who need help - how DARE they call someone a “food stamp mom” like it is something to be ashamed of? That is why we MUST do something to improve the adoption laws, education and child care. . When we say we support life that has to be before AND after birth or in my mind we are those “clanging cymbals” in I Corinthians. Peace

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” Note: some versions the word “love” is “Charity”.
 
The church has always taught that you cannot morally do an evil thing specifically in the hope of getting a good result. IT’s called the principle of double effect.

This is also accepted in the secular world of moral philosophy as a guiding principle.

You probably have never heard of Immanuel Kant or any other philosophers of the modern period, but they all wrote about this. This has all been done. Nothing here is new.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/
 
62Joy said:
I posted a reply to you, Nate, but can’t find it. As far as the numbers of abortions…I don’t know how anyone would know how many illegal ones there were years ago. But, I do know that they have been going on, long before records were kept. I said in that post that I participated in marches on a local abortion clinic when I was younger. The comments of one young mother hit me deeply. She felt she had no choice; no family support and no money to support the two children she already had. It made me realize that I was not even thinking about her when I went to that march…nor even much about this child after birth. .I had went to the march to stop her from aborting a pregnancy but with no clue as to what would happen to that child later.
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The fact is people are going to suffer whether abortion is legal or illegal as long as people continue to deny the true meaning of sex. Planned Parenthood has a budget of 1 billion dollars. How much relief could you give women who had children if you put that money towards that cause instead of killing children? We could bring another billion home from Egypt and give it to mother’s instead of the Muslim Brotherhood and then we would really have a start. If we upped the average % of income given to charity in America from 3% to 10% that might have an impact on the situation as well don’t you think?

You are right in that the infrastructure to help women in trouble was just not in place back then. The reason was because the attitude towards sex was just shifting in bulk. The idea of having sex for pleasure with no risk of children was becoming pervasive. When you detach sex from children and believe you can have sex without being open to the possibility of a child coming from it, you then become a believer in abortion. We were all caught with our pants down by this as more and more people we were having sex with no intention of being open to a child should it come of it.
That is why I get so upset when the same politicians who claim to be pro-life put down people who need help - how DARE they call someone a “food stamp mom” like it is something to be ashamed of? That is why we MUST do something to improve the adoption laws, education and child care. . When we say we support life that has to be before AND after birth or in my mind we are those “clanging cymbals” in I Corinthians. Peace
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“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal” Note: some versions the word “love” is “Charity”.
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The food stamp thing spawned from when Obama gave a speech where he touted the fact that they had got more people on food stamps as something to be proud of. That is why people are criticizing him for it. No one should be proud to be on food stamps or be out of the job. That does not mean they should be looked down upon at all, but it does mean they should be given real help to find a job and improve their situation. Being ashamed of something is not a bad thing if its justified. That is the motivation that spurs a person to do something about where they are at in life and make changes to fix it. Our job is to make sure they have opportunities.
 
Where ever the food stamp thing started,it is wrong. I heard Gingrich use that term many times of late as well - that is why I laughed when I heard him say he did not understand where the “war between the classes idea came from”. I heard a priest say once (in better words than I am using) that everyone is either a giver or a receiver. Both roles are equally important and at some time in our lives we will be both roles. God looks kindly on the giver as does the person he is helping and the world for that matter. The giver gets a lot from his gift. But, we don’t usually consider that without the taker there would be no opportunity for God to bless the giver. I try to keep that in mind when I find myself judging someone.

You are right that society has changed when it comes to women and sex. In some ways that is bad but in other ways it is good. I would never want one of my granddaughters, for instance, to go back and lhave to ive in the 40’s, 50’s - 60’s again. Those happy days people talk about are a myth perpetuated by primarily men. There were always good mothers and bad mothers; promiscuous women and homebodies. The same as now.
 
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