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should be more concerned about the pope protecting rapist.
I didn't see a thread about all the reaction over the issue of forcing Catholic Hospitals to provide birth control. What do you all think? Over reaching?
Uncons utional?
McCaskill: "if you really believe reducing abortions are important .. doesn’t work to keep putting up barriers to women getting birth control".
Something like 97% of Catholics use birth control and like 55% support having it made available and covered by insurance if I am not mistaken.
should be more concerned about the pope protecting rapist.
my turn......"zing"
does that include the priests?
It's a very dumb mandate, even though the hypocritical Catholics are dumber.
its more a rights issue than anything else.
I think that when the goverment begins regulating churches it will always have the stench of a violation of the first amendment. Rightly or wrongly. I think that the Obama administration believed that because the number of women, including catholic women, who believe are okay with taking contraceptives was so high, they could pass the regulataion with little resistance. What they overlooked is that the regulation looks as if the federal government is prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
How is insurance a religious exercise?
And the federal government has already legally prohibited the free exercise of religion if you have looked at the gay marriage/polygamy thread.
Obama will have to compromise and make an exception, IMHO.
I read today that 28 states have had this mandate in place for years; the Catholics are just speaking up now?
The Pope said birth control measures used for sodomy may be acceptable. I assume he meant when his bishops, cardinals and other priests molest young boys as well.
Higher authority leading humanity to the promise land.
Yes, 28 states require this, but 8 of those states allow exceptions for the Catholic Hospitals.
Still, this should be a States Rights issue. Not something mandated by the federal government.
Why do so few people believe in our cons ution?
Can you all sat Tenth Amendment?
5 Big Lies About the Phony 'War on Religion'
1. Catholic employers complain about having to provide birth control coverage with health insurance.
Republican politicians and religious-right leaders—particularly the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, known previously for its willingness to tank healthcare reform over private abortion coverage that women could purchase with their own money—are claiming, incredibly, that the Obama administration's ruling that birth control should be covered by health insurance without a co-pay infringes on their freedom of religion.
Santorum, a Catholic, pitched a fit over the contraception rule in Colorado on the campaign trail this week, calling Obama "hostile to people of faith, particularly Christians, and specifically Catholics."
And Mitt Romney, whose church explicitly permits birth control, nevertheless had to get in on the fun, writing an op-ed for the Washington Examiner claiming Obama is trying to “impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away.”
The Catholic bishops fought Obama's decision to provide birth control coverage at all, and then demanded an exemption that would have given religious ins utions sweeping rights to deny coverage. As Amanda Marcotte noted at RH Reality Check:
“Sensibly, the Obama administration did not grant the exception, following federal tradition of protecting the religious freedom of individual employees over claims from employers that their rights trump those of employees. You can’t cut someone’s salary because they don’t share your religious belief, after all, so why should you be able to cut their benefits?”
Not only that, but NPR reported that many Catholic hospitals and universities already do offer contraceptive coverage as part of their health insurance. And a new poll shows that a majority of Americans -- and a majority of Catholics – think Catholic hospitals and universities should indeed have to offer co-pay-free birth control coverage.
So how, exactly, is this a war on religion? If anything, it's another symptom of the war on workers—employers claiming that they have the right not to provide the same coverage mandated for other employees, because of their personal beliefs. (Note that the Catholic bishops never speak out on behalf of workers' rights, though the Pope has spoken out for economic justice issues many times. They're only interested in defending the rights of the boss to impose his religious beliefs on his female employees.) The only way it becomes an attack on religion is when right-wingers lie about it.
So what is a mandate for birth control becomes, in the words of Congressman Jim Jordan, “free contraceptives, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs.”
There'd be nothing wrong with this if it were true—abortion is in fact a legal healthcare procedure in the United States. But the fact is that it's not even close to true – it's just another dangerous elision between contraception—which prevents pregnancy—and abortion, which terminates an existing pregnancy.
While most pro-choicers would like to see abortion covered by health insurance, that's simply not the case and was a big enough point of contention in the fight over healthcare reform that the bill nearly went down. The fact that the right is continuing to lie about it simply shows that they know the American public isn't actually on their side when they tell the truth.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/154059
Despite the White House spin, advisors debated and then rejected any compromise with Catholics despite Joe Biden's warnings. Put an exception for religious ins utions and move on.
If the Catholic orgs don't want to obey the law, then they can refuse govt funding.
If I have understood correctly, it also includes the "Plan B" pill which is essentially an abortion pill. I'm not a pro-lifer but I can see their point.
the catholic church should be taxed out the ass, tbh.
Agreed.
A lot of different denominational churches should be taxed out the ass.
Bishops Were Prepared for Battle Over Birth Control Coverage
http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=910738&f=19
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Obama’s Conscience Protection Clause Has Been Upheld In Court
Julie Rovner has a good piece explaining how President Obama’s contraception regulation is modeled on existing state laws in 28 states, a December 2000 ruling by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — which ruled that “failure to provide such coverage violates the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act” — and has even been upheld in several court challenges:
In 2004, the California Supreme Court upheld that state’s law, in a suit brought by Catholic Charities, on a vote of 6-1.
The court ruled that Catholic Charities didn’t qualify as a “religious employer” because it didn’t meet each of four key criteria (which, by the way, are the same as those in the new federal regulation):
The organization’s primary purpose is “the inculcation of religious values.”
It primarily employs people of that religion.
It primarily serves people of that religion.
It’s a registered nonprofit organization.
Two years later, in 2006, New York’s top state court rejected a claim by Catholic Charities and several other religious groups that the state’s contraceptive coverage law discriminated against them because it exempted churches but not their religiously-affiliated groups.
“When a religious organization chooses to hire non-believers, it must, at least to some degree, be prepared to accept neutral regulations imposed to protect those employees’ legitimate interests in doing what their own beliefs permit,” the justices wrote.
Indeed, the government should not infringe on a house of worship’s religious doctrine, but it should also protect the liberties and rights of employees who work for religiously officiated ins utions that serve the public good. Colleges or universities are free to preach about the evils of contraception to their workers. Yet since 58 percent of women use contraception for medical reasons besides, or in addition to, family planning, the decision to swallow the pill should be left to the conscience of every employee and the employer should never be allowed to stand in between a woman and her doctor.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012...held-in-court/
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iow, this practice has been in place for 10 years. The Bishop choose now to make stink for other than this reason.
it's like this were i wonder why don't they just go to a different hospital. Especially plan B where they have 72 hours, seriously if you can't find a noncatholic hospital in 3 days you're an idiot.
do you even know what is being discussed?
This is about requiring employers to provide free birch control and abortion inducing drugs to employees.
didn't read
I read one Cons utional lawyer who said once an employer (Catholic org) refuses to provide insurance covergae that has been paid for by /is compensation to an employee on "conscience" grounds, then almost any org can refuse almost anything to any employee on whatever grounds.
iow, if the org isn't going to provide insurance coverage (for contraception), then it shouldn't sell the insurance in the first place.
Large Catholic Ins utions Offered Contraception Even Before Required To Do So
While Republicans and the United Conference of Catholic Bishops claim that the Obama’s contraception regulation represents an “unprecedented” attack on the religious liberties of organizations that oppose the use of birth control, ThinkProgress has chronicled the growing number of ins utions that are already providing the benefit as part of their overall health care coverage. For instance, Georgetown University in Washington D.C. and DePaul University in Illinois offer employees the option of receiving contraception and so do Catholic organizations across the country.
For instance, the New York Times reported in 2002 that the Catholic Archdiocese of New York extended contraception coverage before the state passed its requirement. Catholic universities, Marquette and Mount Mary in Wisconsin were also offering the benefit prior to enactment of the state’s contraception equity clause in 2010. “Marquette’s policy recognizes that a significant portion of the university’s employees are non-Catholic and that contraceptives are at times prescribed by physicians for purposes other than birth control, spokeswoman Mary Pat Pfeil said.” She stressed that “the choice to use a contraceptive is both a medical decision and a matter of conscience.”
“Our employees know what church teaching is. And we trust them to use their conscience and do the right thing,” said Brent King, spokesman for the Madison Diocese, which began covering prescription contraception Aug. 1. [...]
Diocese of Madison employees, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, sign a do ent when they’re hired vowing to abide by the laws of both Wisconsin and the church. He said employees would receive “strong pastoral recommendations against” using the contraception benefit, but that the diocese has no intention of policing it.
Significantly, the Obama regulation exempts churches from including the birth control benefits in their plans and would provide an a new layer of conscience protections for the state. But since most Catholic women rely on contraception, it’s likely that many may still offer the benefit.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012...ated-to-do-so/
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