Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Inside Higher Ed.: "Battle over Birth Control"
A story about the HHS mandate, the religious-freedom objections that have been raised, and the two pending lawsuits about it, is here.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/01/inside-higher-ed-battle-over-birth-control.html
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Is there an argument that it is actually *wrong* (immoral) to provide employees with insurance that covers contraception? Is it material cooperation with evil for an employer who considers contraception to be immoral to provide insurance that covers contraceptives? I think this would be a difficult case to make, since it is not the employer who makes the decision whether or not to actually use contraceptives, but the insured employee. I can see that Catholic employers might (and obviously do) *object* to providing insurance that covers contraceptives, but I do not think they can make the case that they are being forced to do something immoral. Employer-provided insurance is compensation, like salary. Is it immoral to pay a salary to an employee who will spend some of it on contraceptives (or even abortion)?
I know that 28 states require coverage of contraception in insurance, and while some of them allow broad religious exemptions, others allow only narrow exemptions, and others do not allow exemptions at all. I can't name any specifics, but it's my understanding that Catholic institutions in some of these states have made the decision that it is a greater good to provide insurance coverage that includes contraception than to provide no insurance coverage at all.
This doesn't make the issue go away, but it does seem to me the argument is that Catholic organizations (and others) object to the requirement to provide insurance that covers contraception, but that it cannot be argued that it forces them to do something evil (especially since there is always the option of simply not providing insurance coverage at all).