In a remarkable about-face late today,
the Catholic Health Association
released a
letter it sent to the Department of Health and Human Services voicing its
objection to the mandate attached to the Affordable Care Act that requires employers
to pay for contraception. Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the CHA, had
previously
expressed approval of the accommodation for religious employers announced
by President Obama in February, saying it “protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic
institutions.” The US bishops, of course,
have
quite vocally disagreed with Sr. Keehan’s assessment of the administration’s
move.
Today’s
letter from the CHA—signed by Sr. Keehan as well as the past and present chairs
of the organization’s board—echoes many of the bishops’ stated concerns about
the mandate and the accommodation for religious employers, saying that it is “narrower than
any conscience clause ever enacted in federal law and reflects an unacceptable
change in federal policy regarding religious beliefs.”
The CHA’s reversal is all the more
remarkable given that the accommodation was, according to a New
York Times report, put in place
by the Obama administration in large part to secure Sr. Keehan’s continued support
for the ACA, for which she had strongly advocated.
The CHA letter alludes to the
organization’s previous optimism about the HHS regulations:
While [the accommodation for churches] seemed at the time to be a
good first step, our examination and study of the proposal as outlined then and
in the ANPRM has not relieved our initial concerns. Accordingly…we continue to
believe that it is imperative for the Administration to abandon the narrow
definition of “religious employer” and instead use an expanded definition to
exempt from the contraceptive mandate not only churches, but also Catholic hospitals,
health care organizations and other ministries of the Church. If the government
continues to pursue the policy that all employees should have access to
contraceptive services, then it should find a way to provide and pay for these
services directly without requiring any direct or indirect involvement of “religious
employers,” as broadly defined.
The CHA letter does not directly
address the questions of the constitutionality of the HHS mandate or of
conscience protections for non-religious employers who object to funding
contraception. But the letter acknowledges those concerns, stating, “The United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops has persuasively addresses [sic] these
points it its comment letter.”
The CHA does share the USCCB’s objection
that the mandate imposes an unacceptable divide between the Church’s mission to
spread the Gospel and its obligations to help those in need, calling on the HHS
to broaden its definition of a “religious employer” to include all church
ministries:
Making this change could help address the serious constitutional
questions created by the Departments’ current approach, in which the government
essentially parses a bona fide religious organization into secular and
religious components solely to impose burdens on the secular portion. To make
this distinction is to create a false dichotomy between the Catholic Church and
the ministries through which the Church lives out the teachings of Jesus
Christ. Catholic health care providers are participants in the healing ministry
of Jesus Christ. Our mission and our ethical standards in health care are
rooted in and inseparable from the Catholic Church and it's teachings about the
dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life from conception to
natural death.
The
CHA letter concludes with the suggestion that “if the government insists that all employees have access to contraceptive
coverage without cost sharing, then it should provide and pay for these services
directly,” presumably with tax-payer funds. The letter points out that the
federal government already foots the bill for contraception through Title X and
Medicaid legislation.