In recent weeks the President of the United States and his
Administration announced that all employers would be required to provide health
coverage that included coverage for birth control and abortifacients regardless
of the employer’s religious affiliation.
What this means is that religious institutions will be required by law
to provide the means to do something that the parent religion considers to be a
violation of conscience. The federal
government has told the Catholic Church that its hospitals, its adoption
services, and its other outreach branches, as well as Methodist Hospitals,
Baptist Hospitals and Jewish and Muslim
charity and community centers, that they must all provide this benefit to their
employees regardless of whether or not this is a violation of the teachings of
their religion. I want to be clear, I am
not a Catholic but this is serious stuff and it is important for all of us regardless
of religion.
I have heard friends say that the complaints against the
government are just a power play by entrenched male power interests in the church
to oppose necessary health provisions for women but I don’t think so. It was the Catholic Church (and a few other
churches) who built charity hospitals to provide care to the poor when medical
care was something only the wealthy could afford (did you ever wonder why so
many hospitals have Saint something in their name or end in Methodist, Baptist,
or Catholic Hospital?) It was the
Catholic Church who built one of the biggest AIDS clinics in San Francisco when
many hospitals were afraid to treat AIDS patients. The caring and compassion of the church,
particularly in the field of medicine, has been repeatedly demonstrated.
What’s more, the consistency of the Catholic Church is well
established. As a Protestant, I do not
have a problem with birth control but draw the line at abortion and abortifacients
because we believe that a child in the womb, a fertilized egg implanted and
growing in the uterus, is a life.
Somehow, those of Protestant faith believe that a fertilized egg is not
necessarily a life, but once it has ‘taken root’ it becomes a life. This is a pretty fine line. The Catholic Church doesn’t try to split
hairs and it never has, they believe that a fertilized egg is a human being,
period. The position of the Catholic
Church has never changed on this and although I do not agree, I have great
respect for the consistency of their argument.
Life is life.
For the government to say that the Catholic Church (and all
other churches) must provide benefits that it believes are morally unconscionable
is, to me, a clear violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the
United States. What if the government re-instituted the draft to support the military?
In such a draft, undoubtedly, persons would be drafted that, for religious
or moral reasons, choose not to carry a gun or to be placed in a situation where
they might be required to kill another human being. For that reason, our nation has allowed these
persons to become conscientious objectors, and we allow them to serve their
country in another capacity. One of my
uncles served in the Korean Conflict as a medic for that reason. If our government is allowed to force people
of faith to provide birth control and abortion inducing drugs against their
will, is it any stretch at all to imagine that conscientious objectors could be
forced to carry a gun into combat? Can
American Indians be prohibited from ceremonies that require the use of
peyote? Could Muslims be prevented from making
daily prayers during the workday? The
principle is exactly the same. If
religious objections are overruled for one, they can be overruled for anyone.
Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or
the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government
for a redress of grievances.
– U.S. Constitution, 1st Amendment,
Article 3.
If the government is permitted to prevent Catholics and
others from exercising their religion, and their conscience, in this way, what
other Constitutional rights will it find “inconvenient” tomorrow?
I am not a Catholic and though I respect the Catholic Church I often do not agree with it. My position on birth control is different
than the one held by the Catholic Church.
Even so, I think they are right and the government is wrong. I stand in support. Will you?
