Birth Control Coverage for Everyone? Not So Fast.

[demmiblue]

Source: Mother Jones


<snip>

Not everyone found the rule change so invigorating. That's because the new regulations contain a religious refusal clause, also known as a "conscience clause," exempting "certain religious employers" from having to cover the cost of contraception in employees' insurance plans if doing so would contradict the employer's belief system. The proposed conscience clause defines a religious employer as a nonprofit organization that "has inculcation of religious values as its purpose" and primarily employs and serves people who share its religious tenets. Religious groups say that language is far too weak and might force some religious institutions that don't want to provide birth control to women to do so anyway. Women's groups, meanwhile, are arguing that the language shouldn't be there at all.


The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)—the official arm of the Catholic hierarchy in America—has warned that the current religious refusal language might exclude Catholic hospitals, for instance, from qualifying for exemption because Catholic hospitals don't primarily serve Catholics. "Health and Human Services must think Catholics and other religious groups are fools," a blogger for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote on August 1. "We help people because we are Catholic, not because our clients are."

Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, doesn't see it that way. "I am completely confused how the US Department of Health and Human Services has a greater right to protect corporations rather than individuals," O'Neill says. She argues that access to birth control is a vital component of preventative health care for women, and that it might prove the difference between a woman having a healthy family versus not being able to afford contraception and dealing with unwanted or unhealthy pregnancies. In a letter to HHS, O'Neill urged Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to remove any trace of a conscience clause from the Affordable Care Act's recommendations, stating, "Women's health and well-being are frequently endangered by refusal clauses."

<snip>

This news fell on deaf ears at the USCCB, which instead chided HHS for seeking "to force church institutions to buy contraceptives" for their employees. But the Guttmacher Institute's Adam Sonfield argues that as soon as you try to stop paying for one type of coverage on the basis of your own faith, you undermine the idea of insurance altogether. "If I didn't have to contribute to an insurance pool where someone else is using health services I don't believe in, that would make insurance completely unworkable," Sonfield says. "You would have people questioning treating lung cancer for smokers or accident victims of a motorcycle wreck, or objecting to people having too many kids."


Read more: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/08/affordable-care-act-contraception-catholics-conscience-clause

[williesgirl]

1. I still say we should tax the fucking churches and religious orgs.

They get to stick their nose in government, but we can't tax them. Makes me no sense! I always believed it was the right thing not to tax them when they were actually helping the poor, the sick, the homeless. But now they're just huge organizations who could give a shit less about the less fortunate.

[mzteris]

4. +1 million. n/t

:thumbsup:

[nenagh]

2. The framing of the question re whether health care providers cover the cost of.

birth control pills should be... does the insurance company cover the cost of Viagra, etc...

[Confusious]

3. Don't want birth control? Don't take it.

I'm SURE all the Catholics working there are good followers and DON'T do anything the pope doesn't like.

So why do they worry?