Morality of providing health insurance that includes contraception

[william71]

Let me start out by saying that I 100% agree with Catholics in this country fighting the HHS mandate.

But from a purely moral standpoint, I am wondering about the morality and culpability issues surrounding a Catholic employer providing health insurance to their employees which include contraceptive coverage.

I am the employer at a small company that has 5 employees. I also live in a state that requires all health plans include contraceptive coverage.

Am I committing and immoral act by offering health insurance in this case? Am I morally obligated to cancel the health insurance?

Until this public debate, it wouldn’t have even crossed my mind generally for the following reasons:

1. I have considered the reality of the situation being each employee paying for their own health insurance, even though it is grouped together. The money used to pay for this benefit is money that would otherwise go directly to the employee. As such, I didn’t really consider myself as an employee to be strictly “paying” for health insurance, much less buying contraception.
2. I have no real control over what an employee on the health plan does with their health insurance. Much like if I were to give an employee a $100 bonus check, he could use that to go celebrate in an immoral way, or if I gave him a $100 gift card to a grocery store, it could be used to purchase birth control devices, those decisions are made outside of my involvement.
3. I had considered the principle of double effect to come into play. Since I don’t have the option for a non-contraceptive health plan, I would need to either provide the current type of health insurance or cancel it. Since the original intent and overall effect of the health insurance (including for my own family) is to help struggling families pay for expensive legitimate healthcare services, the unintended negative effect is that an employee may use part of his benefits to pay for an immoral procedure or prescription. It seems that going down that scrupulous path could also preclude not going to a hospital or OBGYN or pharmacist that provides contraceptives - which is also not really an option for our situation.

Again, I’d rather not turn this into a discussion about the HHS policy, conscience protections or mandates, and I’m not trying to undercut those resistance efforts, but am confused about the moral dilemmas posed to an employer in this situation.

 

[JohnAlexander]

The organization providing the insurance is not doing anything immoral.

The organization requiring you to provide insurance that covers contraception and abortion is doing something immoral.

 

[runningdude]

Purchasing contraception, even on behalf of someone else is objectively immoral. An office that buys contraception coverage on behalf of its employees is sinning. An employee that uses the coverage to buy contraception is sinning.

The subjective culpability can be lessened by mandates. A Catholic University would indeed be sinning by purchasing insurance with contraceptive coverage, but might not be particularly blameworthy if it is solely because the health department is forcing them to do so. Even more so if they actively discourage their employees from using it (properly respecting privacy). I read about one diocese in the Midwest that was caught up in this kind of situation.

 

[Nate13]

The difference is what is at stake here as well as the potential ability of the Church to win this battle. I’d like to think the Church has been picking and choosing the battles it would wage, based on how probable it is that they would succeed as well as the greatness of the threat. You almost have to think of what is occurring right now in terms of a War. The Church has to fight a just war in opposition to evil and has had to balance the destruction a War would cause with the destruction that will come from continuing to use more peaceful means on trying to win over hearts and minds.

Eventually though the consequences of not fighting in a War, become greater than the consequences of fighting one. That is where we are at now. If the Church stands down on this issue it is almost a guarantee that we will have tax dollars being used to fund contraceptives, the morning after pill, sterilizations, and almost for certain eventually abortions throughout the entire U.S by mandate. This threat is great enough now that it warrants Catholic institutions and individual Catholics taking it upon themselves to refuse to pay for insurance and suffer the consequences of doing so.

There is also a strong possibility that the Church can win on this issue by refusing to comply. That also plays in to whether using these kinds of tactics is permissible. Starting a war that cannot be won and will just cause more destruction would be immoral.