I learn from
Diane at Te Deum Laudamus that the US Bishops have issued a powerful statement rejecting President Obama's HHS "compromise". He really must have some dumb CINO's in his Administration who think the bishops can be fobbed off so easily.
The Bishops'
complete statement is as follows (emphases as per the original):
February 10, 2012
Regulatory changes limited and unclear
Rescission of mandate only complete solution
Continue urging passage of Respect for Rights of Conscience Act
WASHINGTON – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have issued the following statement:
The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming
healthcare for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in
the complex process of providing that healthcare. That is why we raised two serious objections to the "preventive services" regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011.
First, we objected to the rule forcing
private health plans — nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat's
pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may
cause abortion. All the other mandated "preventive services" prevent
disease, and pregnancy is not a disease. Moreover,
forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal
conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate
altogether.
Second, we explained that the mandate would impose a
burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those
who consider such "services" immoral: insurers forced to write policies including this coverage; employers and schools forced to sponsor and subsidize the coverage; and individual employees and students forced
to pay premiums for the coverage. We therefore urged HHS, if it
insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders—not just the extremely small subset of "religious employers" that HHS proposed to exempt initially.
Today, the President has done two things.
First, he has decided to retain HHS's nationwide mandate
of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including
some abortifacients. This is both unsupported in the law and remains a
grave moral concern. We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty.
Second, the President has announced some changes in how that mandate will be administered, which is still unclear in its details. As far as we can tell at this point, the change appears to have the following basic contours:
·It would still mandate that all insurers must include coverage
for the objectionable services in all the policies they would write. At
this point, it would appear that self-insuring religious employers, and
religious insurance companies, are not exempt from this mandate.
·It would allow non-profit, religious employers to declare
that they do not offer such coverage. But the employee and insurer may
separately agree to add that coverage. The employee would not have to
pay any additional amount to obtain this coverage, and the coverage
would be provided as a part of the employer's policy, not as a separate
rider.
·Finally, we are told that the one-year extension on the
effective date (from August 1, 2012 to August 1, 2013) is available to
any non-profit religious employer who desires it, without any government
application or approval process.
These changes require careful moral analysis, and moreover, appear subject to some measure of change. But we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection
for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for
religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit
employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer's plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer. This, too, raises serious moral concerns.
We just received information about this proposal for the first time
this morning; we were not consulted in advance. Some information we have
is in writing and some is oral. We will, of course, continue to press
for the greatest conscience protection we can secure from the Executive
Branch. But stepping away from the particulars, we note that today's
proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the
internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten
government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most
deeply held convictions. In a nation dedicated to religious liberty as
its first and founding principle, we should not be limited to
negotiating within these parameters. The only complete solution to this
religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these
objectionable services. [emphasis added]
We will therefore continue—with no less vigor, no less sense of
urgency—our efforts to correct this problem through the other two
branches of government. For example, we renew our call on Congress to
pass, and the Administration to sign, the Respect for Rights of
Conscience Act. And we renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and to
all our fellow Americans, to join together in this effort to protect
religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all.
See
Te Deum Laudamus for further comments. The Bishops are to be commended for their swift and emphatic rejection of this "compromise". Let us keep them all in our prayers that they may be guided to teach not with a spirit of timidity, but with one of power and love and sound judgement. (2 Tim. 1:7)
