The HHS contraception mandate for insurance plans is “more radical”
than any other in the United States and entails “nationwide coercion of
religious people and groups,” the U.S. bishops’ general counsel said as
he called for the mandate to be rescinded.
“Only rescission will
eliminate all of the serious moral problems the mandate creates,” said
Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops.
Picarello and bishops’ conference associate general
counsel Michael Moses submitted an August 31 comment to the Department
of Health and Human Services criticizing its requirement that insurers
provide sterilization and contraception, including some drugs like Ella
which can cause abortions.
It is “an unprecedented attack on
religious liberty” to require that religious people and groups sell,
broker or purchase services to which they have religious or moral
objections, the attorneys said.
Under the new mandate,
religiously-affiliated employers will be “affirmatively barred” from
offering a plan to the public, or even to fellow believers, that
excludes objectionable items.
“Until now, no federal law has
prevented private insurers from accommodating purchasers and plan
sponsors with moral or religious objections to certain services,” they
said. “Likewise, federal law did not forbid any insurer, such as a
religiously-affiliated insurer, to exclude from its plans any services
to which the insurer itself had a moral or religious objection. Indeed,
the freedom to exclude morally objectionable services has sometimes been
stated affirmatively in federal law.”
Picarello and Moses said
the mandate violates the Weldon amendment, the 2010 health care
legislation and the Obama administration’s stated policy to exclude from
the mandate any
drug that can cause an abortion.
They criticized a
proposed religious exemption as “narrower than any conscience clause
ever enacted in federal law” and narrower than the “vast majority” of
exemptions from state contraception mandates.
The exemptions cover
a non-profit religious employer whose purpose is “the inculcation of
religious values,” which primarily employs persons who share its
religious tenets, and which primarily serves those who share its
religious beliefs.
The exemptions would not apply to many Catholic
colleges and universities, charities, social service agencies and health
care providers.
Secular organizations with objections to coverage of contraceptives or sterilization will also be ineligible, they noted.
The
HHS released the mandates as part of the preventive care requirements
of the 2010 health care legislation. A 60-day comment period on the
regulations began on August 1.
Other prominent Catholics have opposed the regulations, including Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.
“Pregnancy
is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be
suppressed by any means technically possible,” he said July 19, while
the rules were under consideration.
Sr. Carol Keehan, president
and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, has criticized the religious
exemption as “not broad enough to protect our Catholic health care
providers.”
She helped pass the health care legislation last year.
A
group of Obama-friendly Catholic leaders and professors also issued an
Aug. 26 open letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius seeking an
expansion of religious protections.
The requirements are also
being opposed by the San Diego-based St. Gianna Physician’s Guild, which
has launched an online petition against them.
Unless the regulations are rescinded, they will take effect on Aug. 1, 2012.