The faculty members at John Carroll University who wrote to Rev. President Niehoff, S.J., urging him to “take a stand in the face of the bishops’ unwillingness to accept the accommodation offered by the Obama administration” (here) assume that the administration’s revised policy constitutes a genuine accommodation.
Is this in fact the case?
The so-called “accommodation” was a move from (A) a requirement under which religious institutions such as Catholic hospitals, universities and food pantries must provide health insurance to their employees that includes the provision of contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization procedures free of charge to (B) a requirement under which religious institutions such as Catholic hospitals, universities and food pantries must provide health insurance to their employees that includes the provision of contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization procedures free of charge but where the insurance companies will purportedly pay for them.
The supposed shift of financial responsibility to the insurance companies for these objectionable drugs and services has been rightly characterized a rhetorical sleight of hand, “a cheap accounting trick” (here).
Everyone knows the expression “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” The same is also true for contraceptives. “There is no such thing as a free dose of Ortho Tri-Cyclen.” Someone is going to pay.
And if the insurance companies have anything to say about it, it won’t be them (see here). They will take the risk pool presented to them by the demographic profile of the religious institution’s workforce and calculate the cost of insurance, including the expected cost of the mandated contraceptives, abortifacient drugs and sterilization procedures.
Those who seriously believe that the drugs and services mandated by the HHS rule are truly “free” – provided on a complimentary basis by employers’ health insurance companies – probably also believe that the drinks served by casinos to the gamblers at their blackjack tables are also “free.” Only the hopelessly naïve dupe or the willfully ignorant person doesn’t know in this situation that the expression “Compliments of the house!” actually means “You’re paying, and so is the loser sitting next to you who just went bust.” Your next martini isn’t “free” and neither was the one before it. Someone’s paying and it isn’t the house. In the case of health insurance it’s you and the person who paid for your seat, namely, your employer.
Even aside from the question of cost, the so-called “accommodation” forces a religious institution to make available under its auspices contraceptives, abortifacient drugs and sterilization procedures that violate its beliefs. In this way the government is empowered to pick and choose among the religious groups it likes and make liars out of the religious institutions it disfavors (see here). A Catholic university or hospital may attempt to teach its members and its employees that engaging in this sort of activity is profoundly immoral and deeply harmful to society – all the while having to provide through its insurance plan the very thing it says is evil. Plainly this has the effect of undermining its religious witness. Actions speak louder than words, and the act of forcing the religious institution to support such actions through its insurance plan (albeit begrudgingly) says “Sure, the Church says its wrong, but nobody really believes that crap. They’re going along with this just like everybody else.”
The alternative, as Francis Cardinal George has noted (here), is to force the Church out of the “business” (more correctly, the “apostolate”) of the corporal works of mercy (social services, hospitals, and nursing homes) and education (schools and universities). Plainly, extricating the Catholic Church from healthcare is a goal of many of the President’s allies (see here) some of whom were involved in crafting the administration’s policy (here).
Beyond this, the larger import of the HHS mandate is that the federal government is attempting to exercise a radical kind of power that is unprecedented in the history of this country. Through the mandate the government is claiming the power to determine which religious institutions are really religious and those that are not – a distinction the government makes in the service of its own political ends. It subjects the former to one standard of regulation and the latter – those it deems insufficiently religious – to another standard. Thus, parishes and “houses of worship” qualify (see here), but universities, hospitals and soup kitchens do not.
This is an ecclesiology defined and enforced by the state: The Church cannot be a university or a hospital or a social service organization. It can only be a place of worship. What was once the splendor of our country, a capacious and vibrant freedom of religion, is now severely truncated – reduced to a well-circumscribed freedom of worship.
Truncated is an understatement. Under this regime freedom of religion is now mutilated. The arms of the Church – the parts of her body acting in the world – are now severed. She can still speak (for now) but she is precluded from bearing witness to the integrity of the Gospel through her actions.
It is no exaggeration to recognize this move as a form of oppression that may – remarkable as this may sound – presage a coming tyranny. Having said that, we would be wise to take note of John Allen’s perspective (here): “In the States, a threat to religious freedom usually means you might get sued, while in many parts of the world, it means you might get shot. Surely we can all agree that’s a more dramatic set of circumstances.”
Fair enough. Doomsayers predicting a coming era of Christian persecution in the U.S. might be criticized for their hyperbolic assessment of the present day and even perhaps for crying like Chicken Little “The sky is falling.” Surely we can distinguish between the situation where a frog is thrown into a pot of rapidly boiling water from the one in which the frog is submerged in a pot of tepid water that is gradually heated. The prudence of avoiding hyperbole should not prevent us from acknowledging that the heat is on! By contrast, the letter signatories from John Carroll are saying “Come on in, the water’s fine!”
Fourth, the letter says that while the bishops “accused the Obama administration of attacking religious liberty” that “[o]n the contrary, we believe the insurance mandate is driven by a concern for women’s health.” Even assuming, arguendo, that “health” is at stake (see Part 1 of this post for a different view), the letter’s statement is a bit of a non sequitur. It is entirely possible for both statements to be true: that the administration is earnestly driven both by a concern for women’s “health” (so defined) and by a desire to marginalize religious voices in the public square even at the expense of the First Amendment. The two are not mutually exclusive.
There are, however, reasons to doubt that the current policy is all about women’s “health” as secured through access to contraception. Given these facts: that the generic contraceptive pill can be purchased at Target for $9 a month (here), given that many metropolitan areas have massive free condom distribution programs (here), that the Center for Disease Control’s own report (here) on the use of contraception indicates that 99% of sexually active women had used some form of contraception and that questions of “access” and “affordability” didn’t even rank among the reasons surveyed by the CDC as to why women do not use contraception in a given instance – are all facts that show that the current push for contraception is a ruse. That is, something other than a heartfelt concern for “access” is driving the train.
Certainly the strategy employed by the President and his allies has been to lie in a brazen fashion – and the press unfortunately goes along. For example, no one is suggesting that contraception be outlawed or otherwise prohibited – but this is precisely what Senator Chuck Schumer said of those seeking to overturn the HHS mandate (here).
What does this portend for the future? Abortion as a mandated “preventive service”? (see here). Certainly abortion, no less than contraception, is legal. If the current version of the mandate stands, there is no reason in principle why this could not be the case. Would this trouble the faculty at John Carroll?
Fifth, the authors claim that without the insurance mandate for contraceptives there will be more unplanned pregnancies and “more abortions.” Here the letter reflects another secular dogma, namely, the belief that what is needed to lower the incidence of abortion is greater access to contraception. However, the authors of the letter seem wholly unaware of the growing body of literature that calls into question this article of secular faith (see here, here, and here). As sociologist Michael New observes (here),
separate studies from Guttmacher and the CDC have both found that a very small percentage of sexually active women forgo contraception due to either cost or lack of availability. Considering the government programs already in place, it is by no means clear that additional funding would increase contraceptive usage. Furthermore, there is no peer-reviewed research, analyzing actual data on contraception spending and abortion rates that finds a negative and statistically significant correlation between the two.
Indeed, there is no consensus on the correlation between the availability of contraception and the incidence of abortion as, for example, the 2003 Guttmacher Institute referred to “showed simultaneous increases in both contraceptive use and abortion rates in the United States, Cuba, Denmark, the Netherlands, Singapore, and South Korea” (see here). Moreover, this same study “failed to consider how the availability of contraception affects sexual behavior and how a more permissive sexual culture will result in a higher incidence of abortion” (see here). Where contraceptive use is the socially accepted norm but where contraception fails, abortion can become not a separate moral decision but the next logical step – the sensible thing to do. By contrast New notes (here) that “there exists a very substantial body of peer reviewed research from public health and economics journals which shows that public-funding restrictions and parental-involvement and informed-consent laws do the same but that “these studies typically receive scant attention from mainstream-media pundits.” Sadly, this “scant attention” is also in evidence on the faculties of schools like John Carroll.
Sixth, the letter closes by urging the President of John Carroll, Rev. Robert Niehoff, S.J., “along with the presidents of other Catholic and Jesuit universities” to “endorse a policy of insurance coverage of contraception that respects the religious liberties and health of all who teach and work at Catholic colleges and universities.” But the policy called for by the U.S. bishops – a reversal of the HHS mandate – does precisely that. It respects the “religious liberties” of those who work at Catholic colleges and universities and social service organizations by allowing them to make their own moral choices regarding the use of contraceptives, abortifacient drugs and sterilization procedures. Moreover, it does so by simultaneously respecting the “religious liberties” of the institutions themselves by freeing them from the burden of paying for, promoting, or making available these morally objectionable drugs and procedures. Indeed, the only guarantee of religious liberty is a policy that repudiates the very thing that the letter signers hope to achieve.
In recent months a number of law schools have been accused of failing to prepare their students for the practice of law and some have even been sued by their recent graduates (see here and here). If the letter above exemplifies the kind of intellectual rigor that John Carroll students typically see from their teachers in the classroom, then they may wish to consider filing a similar lawsuit demanding that their tuition be refunded.
And if they then use this money to purchase contraceptives, we’ll know what they’ve been thinking with.
