Social conservatives are fighting Obama's new contraception mandate tooth and nail, under the guise of religious liberty. It's a laughably simplistic argument that doesn't hold water and can be destroyed in about thirty seconds. Since I haven't seen any do so...
The bill requires all insurance companies and health care providers to cover contraception services as part of routine health care. Conservatives say this violates their freedom of religion, since their religious view is that contraception is a sin.
Freedom of religion is, like all civil liberties, explicitly granted in the bill of rights to all individuals in this country. In this example, any woman who wishes to opt out of contraception services for religious freedom is free to do so.
Freedom of religion for each and every individual implicitly prohibits groups from interfering with individuals right to choose their own personal moral beliefs. So while it's perfectly legal for a woman to opt out of contraception for religious reasons, its not legal for her husband to decide on her behalf that she shouldn't take it. It's definitely not legal for her medical provider to make that decision based on his religious beliefs. Which is exactly what the conservatives are trying to argue they can do.
Comments (2)
Thank you.
Exactly! My (Catholic) parents got a notice in their bulletin from the local bishop, warning Catholics to be outraged that Obama would require birth control coverage. I noted (sarcastically) that the Church should have nothing to worry about because of course no good Catholic woman is going to actually use birth control, right? It seems like the Church is just not trusting their members to make their own moral choices. Wait, could it be that some employees of Catholic institutions are not Catholic themselves? Is the Church imposing its morals upon others and suppressing their freedom just as the government is supposedly doing to them? I am inclined to think the Church just doesn't want to pay up!
/rant by ex-Catholic ready to go back to blissfully "socialist" Europe