This week the United State Supreme Court will be taking up some crucial cases involving freedom of conscience of employers in our country.
As Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, points out in his guest column in this week’s Catholic Herald, the court’s justices will be considering whether employers must provide health insurance for drugs and services they find morally objectionable under the Affordable Care Act.
Over 56,000 people joined me in contacting their members of Congress about the importance of protecting conscience rights in health care. We were responding to an appeal from the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment (NCHLA).
The NCHLA is urging us to continue to fight for conscience protection under the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010 and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2012.
Catholic dioceses, as well as Catholic and other religious nonprofit organizations and businesses, have filed lawsuits challenging the mandate that is part of the Affordable Care Act.
Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said in a statement reported by Catholic News Service (CNS) that the goal of these litigants is “nothing less than securing the freedom of the Church to continue to obey the Lord’s command — and, in turn, to serve the common good — by providing charitable ministries in health care, education, and service to the poor, all without compromising Catholic beliefs.”
Normally this column addresses state policy issues. This time it speaks to a national question — the scope of religious liberty in our national health care reform legislation.
Is pregnancy a disease? Should Catholics, purchasing insurance for themselves or their employees be forced against their consciences to subsidize its prevention?
These questions lie at the heart of new regulations just issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which will administer President Barack Obama’s new health care law.
The regulations include a list of “preventive services” that all group health plans must provide without any co-pay. The list includes female surgical sterilization, plus all FDA-approved contraceptives, including some (like the prescription drug ella) that can act as abortifacients.
