Courts to Examine State Contraceptive Laws (State vs. Religion Alert!)

Yahoo! News (AP) ^ | 11/29/2003 | David Kravets

[Pyro7480]

Courts to Examine State Contraceptive Laws

By DAVID KRAVETS, Associated Press Writer

SAN FRANCISCO - If you don't believe in the law, do you have to follow it?

That's the question before courts in New York and California, which are being asked to exempt branches of the Catholic Church from state laws requiring contraceptives be included in employee prescription drug plans. Under church doctrine, contraception is a sin.

"The Catholic Church explicitly teaches that artificial contraception is morally unacceptable and, if knowingly and freely engaged in, sinful," Catholic Charities of Sacramento attorney James Sweeney said.

After California's law was enacted in 2000, the group unsuccessfully sought a court ruling to bar the law from being enforced on the church's charity outreach programs. A state appeals court also denied the church relief. Now the California Supreme Court is set to hear the case Dec. 2.

Versions of the law have been adopted in 20 states after lawmakers concluded private employee prescription plans without contraceptive benefits discriminated against women. Lawyers closely following the debate said the only other legal challenge is in the lower courts of New York, before a judge of the Supreme Court of Albany County.

California's case is years ahead of the New York litigation, and civil rights groups, health care companies and Catholic organizations have filed extensive position papers with the court.

"It certainly could be very persuasive on other courts," said Rebekah Diller, a New York Civil Liberties Union director who is following the litigation.

At issue is a collision of the right of a religion to practice what it preaches and the newly acquired rights of thousands of women employed by church-affiliated groups to be insured for contraceptives.

Catholic Charities directly employs more than 1,000 workers in California and New York, but a ruling favoring the charity could also prevent more than 100,000 employees at 77 church-affiliated hospitals in California and New York from benefiting from the laws.

State regulators point to U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) rulings in favor of a ban on polygamy, despite objections from Mormons, and against Native Americans who were denied unemployment insurance after being fired for using peyote during religious ceremonies.

"The church's claim that it is coerced into violating its religious beliefs by a state law requiring health insurance plans and disability policies to include prescription contraceptive coverage is nonsense," said California Deputy Attorney General Meg Hollaran.

The two states note that churches are exempt from having to provide contraception coverage for employees who work inside parishes and houses of worship. That is known as the "religious employer exemption" because the parishes generally serve worshippers and employ those with similar religious views.

Several states have no such exemptions for religious entities. Other versions exempt church groups and "qualified church-controlled organizations."

Catholic Charities had a $76 million budget in California alone last year and provided social services to persons of any religion or background. It does not demand that its workers are Catholic or share the church's philosophy.

The organization, however, says it is carrying out the work of Jesus, and by the law's definition, "Mother Teresa would be forced to offer contraceptives," said Carol Hogan, a spokeswoman for the California Catholic Conference.

Sweeney added that the law is "un-American and disturbing" because of its "disrespect of religious, moral views."

Sweeney pointed out that even the nation's military allows for the religious views of conscientious objectors by keeping them off the front lines, and that laws demanding certain traffic-safety markings on Amish horsecarts have been nullified because they treaded on the Amish lifestyle.

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) argued that siding with the Catholics would, in essence, impose the church's doctrine on thousands of non-Catholic women who work at the church's hospitals or social-service agencies.

"Catholic Charities' noncompliance with California law would injure three fundamental rights of the people who work for the social services agency: gender equality, reproductive autonomy and religious freedom," attorney Margaret Crosby told California's high court in briefs.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists views the dispute as a health issue. Contraception gives women a chance to plan for a pregnancy, which the groups say makes for healthier mothers and babies.

"To ignore the health benefits of contraception is to say that the alternative of 12 to 15 pregnancies during a woman's lifetime is medically acceptable," said Catherine Hanson, the groups' attorney.

The 20 states that require private-sector insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives include Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont and Washington.

[Pyro7480]

The outcome of this case could be very scary, if the ACLU had their way...

[Pyro7480]

Ping!

[hellinahandcart]

They can pay for their own damned contraceptives, nobody's stopping them. Men have to pay for condoms.

I really want the Catholic Church to stand firm on this. If they respond by promising to shut down every hospital and every charity office rather than submit to this, I may convert.

[pgkdan]

The two states note that churches are exempt from having to provide contraception coverage for employees who work inside parishes and houses of worship. That is known as the "religious employer exemption" because the parishes generally serve worshippers and employ those with similar religious views. That's not the point. The law is attempting to make the Catholic Church fund activities that it finds to be sinful...whether their funding them for folks who work on the parish property or at a Catholic Hospital is irrelevant. The only thing this suit will accomplish is the loss of a prescription drop plan to employees of Catholic institutions. And when that happens and the hospitals start closing and Catholic Charities can no longer operate...let the ACLU and the California state Attorney General's Office step up to fill the void.

[sojourner]

Amen! No one is going to stop these women from buying contraceptives, the benefit just won't be subsidized by the Catholic church. Personally, I don't see the big deal except for those who want to attack the church.

Also, what is this thing about 12-15 pregnancies being the alternative to contraception?? I could go on and on about how ridiculous a statement this is.

[Jacquerie]

This is another issue that belongs in the legislature, not in the courts.

Oh, the unintended consequences of judicial tyranny Griswold v Connecticut, the erroneous, so-called God given right to privacy.

[Tallmadge]

A friend of mine ran into a similar problem in Oregon, where a Catholic hospital was under the gun to provide "reproductive services" (typical orwellian-speak of the liberals) to their employees/patients. Last I had heard they were thinking about closing the hospital rather than submit. And I would hope they would.

Don't kid yourself folks, this is a legal and spiritual battle coming to the roughly 600 Catholic hospitals in the USA. And the opposition is organized. See the following link;


http://www.abortionaccess.org/AAP/campaigns/hospital/designing_a_campaign_to_increase.htm#Catholic%20Hospitals

[dsfiscool]

"Versions of the law have been adopted in 20 states after lawmakers concluded private employee prescription plans without contraceptive benefits discriminated against women."


...accent on the word, "PRIVATE"!!! If those women feel they are the objects of discrimination, then they should go buy different insurance plans! That is the beauty of capitalism...you don't like a certain type of one thing, go get another one instead. Stop whining to the government to step in and make private insurers accommodate your sexual behaviour!

*steps down from her soapbox*

[NYer]

I really want the Catholic Church to stand firm on this. If they respond by promising to shut down every hospital and every charity office rather than submit to this, I may convert.

The OFFICIAL position of the Catholic Church is very clear, and incontrovertible. Anticipating the future direction of contraceptives, Pope Paul VI noted:

"Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be more efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy. "

REFERENCE:

Humanae Vitae

Catholic Ping - let me know if you want on/off this list

[OpusatFR]

The Bishops will close down the hospitals.

[genghis]

good advice. We have to find a way to take power away from these judges and courts. Yours is a very reasonable start.

[Carry_Okie]

A real opportunity for Janice Rogers Brown to write an historic opinion.

[VeritatisSplendor]

I have not trusted Catholic hospitals since St Michael's in NJ invited Mikulski, Moseley-Braun, and one other pro-abortion female senator (a real tag team) to look at the daycare program with Lautenberg. They then proceeded to a PLanned Parenthood dinner in NYC.

I wrote the bishop but he said he did not have authority over the hospital - it is run by an order of nuns. The hospital's president never responded.

And then when I was pregnant with my fourth child my obstetrician who operates only in Saint Peter's in New Brunswick, asked if I wanted to be sterilized at delivery. ??? I never asked if she would do it in Saint Peter's or some space shared with Robert Wood.

Mrs VS

[Aquinasfan]

State regulators point to U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) rulings in favor of a ban on polygamy, despite objections from Mormons, and against Native Americans who were denied unemployment insurance after being fired for using peyote during religious ceremonies.

The principle is correct. But the principle is applied improperly. Unlike polygamy and hallucinatory drug use which violate the natural law, the proscription of artificial means of birth control corresponds with the natural law. The use of artificial birth control is an evil and does not represent health care. Artificial birth control is a means by which the proper operation of the body is impaired in order to prevent a good, the birth of a child.

The natural law argument for birth control was well understood not very long ago. No church recognized its licitness until the 1930s.