Carter Snead, law professor, e-mails:
President Obama’s proposed adjustments to the new Health & Human Services rule requiring Catholic institutions, including the University of Notre Dame, to provide health care plans covering contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs continue to violate religious liberty, according to O. Carter Snead, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame.
Today’s ‘compromise accommodation’ is nothing of the sort.
The original uproar across the ideological spectrum was in reaction to the administration’s requirement that virtually all religious employers cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization in violation of their strongly held beliefs.
Today’s rule still requires religious institutions (on pain of ruinous treasury fines) to purchase insurance that covers these same objectionable services. It is irrelevant that the rule requires the insurance company (rather than the religious institution) to explain to employees that the policy purchased for them by their employer includes the 5-day after pill. For institutions that self-insure, the situation is even worse; they will be forced to contact their employees and pay for such services themselves.
It is no answer to suggest that the religious liberty of such employers is being accommodated because they are not “paying” for the objectionable services. First, it is naïve to imagine that the services are truly cost-free and that these costs will not be passed along to the employers who purchase these plans. More importantly, the simple fact is that under this policy the government is coercing religious institutions to purchase a product that includes services that they regard as gravely immoral.
We should ask ourselves why President Obama has sustained the narrow exemption for churches, religious orders, and auxiliaries? This is tantamount to the admission that this policy, just like the previous one, runs afoul of religious liberty.
Snead was general counsel of the presidential Council on Bioethics and will be director of the Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame later this year.
Editor’s Note: The title of this post has been amended since initial posting.
The news coverage on this seems to indicate that the mandate only applies to female contraception. Isn't that discriminatory against men?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWon't just ONE major news organization point out the tragedy that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, apparently believes that if you get insurance to pay for something, it's free?
It explains so much of Obama's economic policy -- "you buy insurance, and then nothing costs anything!!!!"
How naive, stupid, or just a plain liar does Obama have to be to say with a straight face that the person who pays for an insurance policy isn't "paying" for the things that are covered by that insurance policy? Who does he think is paying for those things?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, according to the WPost: "A senior White House official said that the impact of the change on insurers would be cost neutral--and even potentially cost-saving--because on balance it would reduce the need to provide medical coverage related to unwanted pregnancies and other conditions that can be avoided with birth control."
So it's "free" in that sense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's like saying that euthanasia is cost-neutral because it will reduce Social Security Costs. Come on!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe Notre Dame should invite Obama to their commencement this year, that will help moderate his radical, secular progressivism. Oh wait....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama is now in a real corner. If he completely caves in then two things will definitely happen:
1. The fanatics who comprise his base will go absolutely ballistic--with a corresponding negative effect on his campaign donations.
2. When it comes emboldening opponents of ObamaCare, President Downgrade will be like the proverbial little Dutch boy frantically trying to plug erupting leaks in the dike...and realizing he's quickly running out of fingers.
May the above come to pass.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo Notre Dame, as an organization that employs people, wants to determine for itself what will be included in the pay/benefits package it offers its employees.
Tell me again why any outsider has power to micromanage any part of those decisions?
My question precedes any violation of free exercise (which this reg does); my question challenges the validity of the law as outside the scope of the federal government's enumerated powers.
Let's get some first principles back onto the table.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDoesn't this new fiat "accommodation" from Obama violate his own Executive Order barring federal funding of aborations? You know, the Bart Stupak deal? If Obama is mandating insurers provide these services, then he (by definition) is mandating that Medicare/Medicaid provide them. Otherwise, these two insurers will be afoul of the government's own regulations.
I wonder.
And I wonder how the Supreme Court would view that kind of action given that the Affordable Care Act was passed with this Executive Order as the defining compromise. A law was passed under one set of conditions, but those conditions have been supplanted by new conditions that allow the Administration to do whatever it wants.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOf course the most vocal critics aren't happy with the President's announcement, even though it means religious-based employers don't have to pay a dime toward contraception or what they term "abortificants," either directly or directly.
Because this isn't about contraception, religious liberty, or health care. It is, and has been, about abortion, and the Right's desire to deflect attention away from an improving economy to a social wedge issue. Same old playbook.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBlow-hard:
A little harder, why dontcha?
Who forced Obama to pick a nasty fight? He walked into this one willingly.
So, if you don't like being stuck within the convergence of the wedge, don't wedge yourselves into every nook and cranny of everyone's existence with your increasingly burdensome regulations and directives.
The law, as written, requires them to violate their consciences. It needs to be promised that it will be excepted in order for that not to happen. So, the law, as written, is just as problematic today as it was yesterday.
And given Obama's actions toward religious institutions that don't share his thirst for infanticide, you'd have to be a fool to think religious institutions would trust this "compromise" as binding.
Why should they trust that Obama will live up to this non-binding compromise?
It's his administration that urged the passing of this unpopular law, and it's his administration that issued the regulation in question.
Only a leftist sociopath would act however one chooses, and in the face of criticism and blowback, blame the critics for causing a disturbance. You think you can act however you want, and face no consequences.
Thank you for proving that leftist thought is merely a sociopathology.
As for an improving economy: a perpetually diminishing labor force -- where more and more long-term unemployed people become so discouraged that they give up looking for work -- is hardly anything to brag about.
And the shrinking labor force is the only reason the unemployment rate has gone down.
Only a regressive leftist would look upon the deconstruction of our labor market as "progress".
CAPTCHA: "Rose bud"
Can say THAT again!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe University of Notre Dame has ZERO credibility to be complaining.
They embraced this agenda when they embraced Saul Alinsky's acolyte, Bill Ayres's protege, Jeremiah Wright's parishioner, and Rashid Khalidi's friend.
Like Jacob, they now reap what they sow.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAbsolutely correct madisonian! Notre Dame gave up it right to indignation when they had Obama as a Commencement Speaker, awarded him an honorary degree and listened to him speak about abortion.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI hope the country opens their eyes to see what this guy is doing to our freedoms!!! I keep thinking with every, in our face, decision this guy makes more and more people will wake up. This guy and his cronies need to be defeated just like in 2010
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt is just as much a violation of free exercise for any employer, whether officially a church institution or not, to be required to provide these services if they believe them to be fundamentally morally wrong. WE are not talking about the fact that the Bill of Rights was instituted for the sake of individual rights as much as for the sake of institutional or states rights. This is a violation against all of us, not just Catholic institutions.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseProfessor Snead is truly one of Notre Dame's shining lights.
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