USCCB: contraceptive mandate ‘unprecedented attack on religious liberty’
September 01, 2011
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has called for the withdrawal of the new federal mandate that will require private insurers to provide women with coverage for FDA-approved contraception, including sterilization and contraceptives that have an abortifacient effect.
“Such nationwide government coercion of religious people and groups to sell, broker, or purchase ‘services’ to which they have a moral or religious objection represents an unprecedented attack on religious liberty,” said Anthony Picarello and Michael Moses, the USCCB’s general counsel and associate general counsel in their formal public comments on the mandate, which is slated to go into effect in August 2012. In their 35 pages of comments, Picarello and Moses took particular aim at the mandate’s narrow conscience exemption for religious employers. They noted:
HHS [Health and Human Services] has concluded, for example, that a church is not a religious employer if it (a) serves those who are not already members of the church, (b) fails to hire based on religion, or (c) does not restrict its charitable and missionary purposes to the inculcation of religious values. Under such inexplicably narrow criteria—criteria bearing no reasonable relation to any legitimate (let alone compelling) government purpose—even the ministry of Jesus and the early Christian Church would not qualify as ‘religious,’ because they did not confine their ministry to their co-religionists or engage only in a preaching ministry. In effect, the exemption is directly at odds with the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which Jesus teaches concern and assistance for those in need, regardless of faith differences.
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Further information:
- USCCB Urges Rescission of HHS Contraceptive Mandate, Criticizes ‘Inexplicably Narrow’ Definition of Religious Freedom (USCCB)
- Full text (USCCB)
- US: private insurers must offer free contraception under new mandate (CWN, 8/2)
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