Obama Administration: Religious Organizations Must Provide Birth Control Coverage

February 3rd, 2012

The Obama administration decided that, under their health care reform, nearly all health insurance plans are legally required to provide contraceptives like birth control, ella and Plan B.

The Catholic Church objected and asked for an exception for insurance plans provided to employees of Catholic churches, colleges and charities.

The administration did make one strange exception, however. They said that if the religious organization doesn’t serve people of different faiths—if they only serve their own—then they are not covered by this rule.

Set aside your feelings, one way or the other, about birth control. I see no moral issue with it, while others do. Look at the substance of what this decision means: it is the federal government forcing religious institutions to either violate their beliefs, discriminate against people of other faiths, or be unable to operate. There is no other choice.

Ross Douthat commented about the absurdity of this:

Ponder that for a moment. In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not. The rule suggests a preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying “no Protestants need apply.”

The administration’s decision—and health care reform itself—is bizarre in its lack of consideration of ramifications, but it’s also dangerous. If the federal government can mandate that religious organizations violate their own beliefs—force them to provide something to their employees which is squarely immoral for them—why can’t the federal government also mandate that all organizations involved in women’s health also teach a class on abstinence? Or that all private schools must incorporate intelligent design into their biology courses?

That sounds absurd, because it is, but I see no substantive difference between the law requiring one and the law requiring the other. What principle distinguishes them?