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Bishops to Obama: No contraception compromise

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
Updated

When it comes to mandatory contraception coverage under the Affordable Care Act, the nation's Catholic bishops won't budge an inch.

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, initially said he would study President Obama's newest variation of the requirement.

That didn't last long. Now, it's no sale unless the mandate is lifted from any person of faith who objects to facilitating contraception coverage for employees.

The bishops' position is essentially unchanged from what they said in August through their general counsel Anthony Picarello when they blasted the requirement that private insurance plans cover contraception, calling the mandate "unprecedented in federal law and more radical than any state contraceptive mandate."

They criticized the narrow "religious employer" exception to the mandate, explaining that it provides "no protection at all for individuals or insurers with a moral or religious objection to contraceptives or sterilization," instead covering only "a very small subset of religious employers."

The bishops called the plan "nationwide government coercion of religious people and groups to sell, broker or purchase 'services' to which they have a moral or religious objection." They said the plan represents "an unprecedented attack on religious liberty."

After Dolan spoke with President Obama, bishops said:

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.

The rallying call is religious liberty vs. "government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions." The newest news release from the USCCB concludes:

The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for (Health and Human Services) to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services.

We will therefore continue — with no less vigor, no less sense of urgency — our efforts to correct this problem. ... 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.

So Obama is exactly where he was before with the Catholic leadership.

DO YOU THINK the Catholic faithful, including those who support the HHS mandate, are in line on this? Should that matter to the bishops or to Obama?

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