The Jesuit editors at AMERICA on the USCCB's problematic judgment in the debate about healthcare reform

AMERICA, April 12, 1010

How Compelling?

The administrative committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops gave a half-hearted welcome to news of the passage of the Obama administration’s health care reform bill. “We applaud,” wrote Cardinal Francis George, the conference president, “the effort to expand health care to all.” “Many elements of the health care reform measure signed into law by the president,” he noted, “...help to fulfill the duty we have to each other for the common good.”

Praise was muted, however. The bishops had opposed passage of the centerpiece Senate bill that failed to meet all their expectations. They cited in particular provisions for protection of the conscience of health professionals, the coverage of undocumented immigrants and possible funding for abortions. All merit further legislative and legal action as health care reform is implemented. The law’s imperfections are many, but with the reform in place these priorities provide a platform to address its shortcomings in the months and years ahead.

The great stumbling block to endorsing the bill was the fear that under the terms of the core Senate bill, financing might seep out through community health clinics to fund abortions. The evidence, the bishops argue, was “compelling.” Certainly compelling for the bishops, and for some others who have made extraordinary efforts to examine the legislative language and weigh legal scenarios for possible future court suits, but not compelling for many other legal analysts. Tenuous legal arguments somehow hardened into matters of principle. (While the conference’s general counsel later disclosed his legal reasoning, the bishops’ reasons for drawing their conclusion were not available for others to probe during the debate on the bill.)

The desire to make the prohibition on abortion funding airtight is admirable, but the argument for doing so seems to have been built on a tissue of hypotheticals that was far from conclusive. How could such a hard and fast position have been founded on such contestable foundations? How did the bishops come to depend so heavily on debatable, technical questions of law? How did they banish doubt when opinions differed so? If there ever was a prudential judgment that might have been left to the practical reason of legislators, the possible backdoor funding of abortion is surely such a case.

How, in the end, did very fine points of abortion-denial come to weigh more heavily than guaranteeing health care to all?

[Cross-posted at ReligionLeftLaw.]