Archbishop Carlson issues pastoral message on health care mandate

Printer-friendly versionSend to friend

The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming health care for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in the complex process of providing that health care. That is why we object to the "preventive services" regulation issued by the Obama administration last August.

First, we object to the rule forcing private health plans to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion. All the other mandated "services" prevent disease. Pregnancy is not a disease. Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we call for the rescission of the mandate altogether.

Second, we object to the fact that the mandate imposes a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider such "services" immoral. We therefore urge the Obama administration, if it insists on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all who object to these practices -- not just the extremely small subset of "religious employers" that HHS proposed to exempt initially.

The Catholic Church joins with other faiths and with non-religious people throughout the United States in vigorously opposing the Obama administration's attempt to impose its values on others. If the government has the right to force people to violate their religious or ethical beliefs in this way, then we are no longer living in the United States of America. We have been kidnapped and transported against our wills to a land that is governed by dictators who care nothing for the values enshrined in the First Amendment. It is one thing for our government to permit moral evils like abortion, sterilization and artificial contraception. It is quite another thing to require organizations that find these practices morally offensive to provide these "services" to their employees and to require individuals who conscientiously object to these practices to pay for them (directly or indirectly).

President Obama has now 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 point: Those who object to such practices should not be required by their government to provide or pay for them -- whether directly or indirectly.

Second, the president has announced some changes in how the HHS mandate will be administered. These changes, which are still unclear in their details, require careful moral analysis, but we note at the outset that the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders (including self-insured religious employers, religious and secular for-profit employers, secular non-profit employers, religious insurers and individuals) is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage even when it is not described in the organization's list of benefits, 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 is simply a smokescreen designed to obscure the fact that the morally offensive practices are being provided as an integral part of the plan.

Those of us who object to the HHS mandate on fundamental moral principles will continue to press for the greatest conscience protection we can secure from the executive branch of our federal government. But in the final analysis, our opposition to the HHS mandate is not primarily about Church teaching on sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs or artificial contraception -- no matter how much the news media and the Obama administration try to spin it that way in an effort to suggest that the Church is simply out of touch with its people.

Our deeply seated objection to this act of moral dictatorship is, first and foremost, about government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions. It's about our government's effort to coerce religious people (and other people of conscience) to violate their most deeply held convictions. In a nation dedicated to religious liberty as its first and founding principle, American citizens should not be required to negotiate with government bureaucrats within these unacceptable, and ultimately unconstitutional, parameters. The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

We will therefore continue with no less vigor, and 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. We renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and all Americans, to join together to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all.

As Catholics, and as Americans, it is our deeply held belief that the First Amendment, and the fundamental principles of our American way of life, guarantee that we have an inalienable right to follow our consciences and to express our religious and moral beliefs without government interference.

Most Rev. Robert J. Carlson

Archbishop of St. Louis