The controversy over the Obama administration’s issuance of regulations mandating employer-provided health insurance coverage for medications that fly in the face of Catholic teaching on the sanctity of life is as relevant to observant Jews as to Catholics. For one thing the issue serves as a clear reminder that the larger the bureaucratic state grows the smaller will be the realm of individual liberty including freedom of religion.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius had ample warning that the regulations issued under Obamacare would set off a storm. After being posted in the Federal Register for comment a multitude of religious groups and organizations as well as defenders of religious liberty commented negatively. Nevertheless the administration forged ahead without changing so much as a comma from the originally proposed regulations.
The regulations proposed various distinctions based on how many of the institution’s employees are members of the religion under whose aegis the institution is being run. But they all missed the essential point: Catholic hospitals funded by local archdioceses bear the imprimatur of the Catholic Church no matter what percentage of their employees are Catholics. To force the Church to pay for medications whose use — by any human being not just Catholics — it opposes is coercing it to contradict its most basic tenets.
At one level the infringement on religious liberty involved in forcing the Church to act in violation of its conscience and Catholic teaching is an even greater violation of religious liberty than would be the outlawing of shechitah (kosher slaughter). The latter would certainly be a major imposition on Jewish life and would prevent the optimal fulfillment of a number of mitzvos such as oneg Shabbos and simchas Yom Tov. But it would not require any Jew to act in contravention of halachah or to violate his religious conscience. Forcing the Catholic Church to underwrite the provision of medications whose use it condemns requires it to directly transgress its own religious teachings.
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