New (proposed) rules re: HHS contraception mandate

The latest from HHS et al. is available here.  I have the luxury of being able to read the thing carefully before deciding what I think about it.  A few things, though, seem clear, from a quick first read:  

First, the proposal does not change the fact that for-profit businesses are required to provide the preventive-services coverage, even if their owners have religious objections to doing so.  This is not the "Taco Bell" problem, but the (I think) real problem that a number of small-ish businesses will be required to act in ways that run counter to their owners' desire to participate in the commercial sphere in a way that is consistent with their religious commitments.  The RFRA lawsuits will continue.

Second, the four-part definition of exempt religious employers has been changed (or, it is proposed that they be changed), and the most objectionable parts of the current definition (the ones that invited inquiry into whether the organizations served primarily co-religionists, for example) are being removed.  However, it is still the case that the exemption is limited (p. 20) to "churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches, as well as to the exclusively religious activities of any religious order."  So, it appears that, even under this proposal, a number of religious social-welfare organizations will not be "exempt" (though some will probably be covered by the "your insurance company will pay instead" "accommodation").

Third, while the document includes some discussion about self-insured employers, this proposal does not resolve the issue for such employers.  On p. 67 of the linked-to document, it is clear that the section having to do with self-insured group health plan coverage is T/B/D.

I'm sorry to see that, in some com-box corners of Catholic blog-world, the knee-jerk reaction to this proposal is to snark about those mean and right-wing Catholic bishops and activists for whom nothing will be good enough, etc.  This reaction is not appropriate, in part because it was almost certainly pressure from the bishops and from religious-freedom activists (and also concerns about losing lawsuits) that convinced the Administration to propose new rules (which, again, might not, in the end, cure the mandate's religious-freedom defects) and also because there's no reason why the bishops and activists should welcome even a new proposal if it turns out that the new proposal doesn't cure those defects.

UPDATE:  Here is Yuval Levin:

This document, like the versions that have preceded it, betrays a complete lack of understanding of both religious liberty and religious conscience. Religious liberty is an older and more profound kind of liberty than we are used to thinking about in our politics now. It’s not freedom from constraint, but recognition of a constraint higher than even the law. It’s not “the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” but the right to answer to what you are persuaded is the evident and inflexible reality of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. It’s not the right to do what you want; it is the right to do what you must.

 

Governments have to recognize that by restricting people’s freedom to live by the strictures of their faith they are forcing them to choose between the truth and the law. It is therefore incumbent upon the government of a free society to seek for ways to allow people to live within the strictures of their consciences, because it is not possible for people to live otherwise.

 

There are times, of course, when the government, in pursuit of an essential public interest, simply cannot make way for conscience, and in those times religious believers must be willing to pay a heavy price for standing witness to what they understand to be the truth. But such moments are rare, and our system of government is designed to make them especially so. Both the government and religious believers should strive to make them as rare as possible by not forcing needless confrontations over conscience.