WASHINGTON — Since the contraception mandate was approved on Jan. 20 with a narrow religious exemption, opponents have called it an unprecedented threat to the “first freedom.”
Even as Democrats sought to redefine the issue as an attack on women’s access to contraception, Catholic leaders and their allies have mostly stayed on message during congressional hearings and media interviews.
But at a March 23 Georgetown University forum on the contraception mandate, Helen Alvare, a pro-life leader and law professor at George Mason University, took direct aim at the claimed health effects of government sponsored contraception programs, and other arguments the Obama administration has employed to blunt criticism of its controversial policy.
To be clear: Alvare did not advocate legal restrictions on contraception. Rather, her argument attacked the government’s assertion that the contraception mandate, which includes abortifacients and sterilization, is necessary for women’s health.
Like any legal scholar addressing religious-freedom issues, she began by asking several questions likely to surface in any legal challenge to the mandate:
What is the state’s compelling interest in advancing a contraception-promotion policy that poses a threat to religious freedom?
What is the nature of the burden being imposed on religious institutions?
Finally, if the state’s interest is justified, what is the least burdensome means to compel conscientious objectors to comply with said policy?
While many scholars who oppose the mandate have focused on the narrow exemption it provides, Alvare also drew attention to the continuity, prescience and institutional witness of Catholic teaching and practice on contraception.
“I will be talking about how the Catholic Church understands the burden placed on it by the mandate … and the interference with internal religious affairs it represents,” said Alvare, speaking at the panel discussion on the mandate sponsored by the Religious Freedom Project, a program of the Berkley Center at Georgetown.
She sketched a timeline that began with the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of oral contraceptives in 1960 and included Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, which warned that birth-control use would fuel exploitive treatment of women, dissolution of marriages and coercive state population-control efforts.
She briefly noted Blessed John Paul II’s theology of the body and fresh efforts to bring that teaching to mainstream Catholic life. And she argued that the on-going exclusion of contraceptive services from Church health plans was deeply significant.
“The continuing refusal to insure for contraception services is possibly the most visible way Catholic institutions have expressed the continuing Catholic position” on birth control, she asserted, thus underscoring the heavy burden the mandate imposed.
Any break from that practice would likely be a source of scandal and moral confusion, she said, suggesting the broad scope of the burden placed on Church-affiliated universities, hospitals and social agencies required to cooperate with the provision of services they strongly oppose.
If Catholic institutions offer health plans that include these services, she added, “it’s likely to give the appearance that the institutions lack commitment to the critical values at stake — especially marriage, chastity and life.
“It therefore interferes with the solemn obligation of Catholic institutions to bear witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and his teachings,” she added.
Alvare contrasted the development of Catholic Church teaching on contraception and sexual ethics with the culture’s struggle to make sense of the social consequences of contraception use.
When oral contraceptives were introduced, non-marital births were just 5% of all live births. By 2010, non-marital births had steadily increased to 40% of all live births — despite an explosion of federal and state programs providing free or subsidized birth control.
In Alvare’s judgment, the social pathologies associated with non-marital sexual relationships — facilitated and fostered by artificial birth control — raise questions about the administration’s reasons for establishing the mandate: securing women’s health and reducing both unintended pregnancies and the associated financial impact on government-assistance programs for such families.
The administration has offered no solid “rationale — let alone a compelling government interest in making contraception marginally easier to access as a claimed response to women’s health needs,” Alvare charged.
She thus challenged the mandate’s constitutional standards, suggesting that it would fail both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
First, the ineffectiveness of government contraception policies designed to stem unintended pregnancies cast doubt on the ‘state’s compelling interest’ in advancing access to contraception.
Second, the ‘burden’ imposed upon the free exercise of objecting religious institutions was too great to justify the modest increase in access to contraception—already widely available through state and federal programs.
At the Georgetown forum, the other panelists on both sides of the debate set aside Alvare’s points about whether the state should be promoting contraception and the full scope of the burden imposed on church-affiliated institutions. Instead, they primarily addressed whether the mandate’s narrow exemption met constitutional or statutory standards.
However, Thomas Farr, the director of Georgetown’s Religious Freedom Project, welcomed Alvare’s contribution.
“I believe the conversation revealed that the HHS mandate is about religious freedom in full — that is, the mandate certainly implicates the particular legal questions surrounding the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution and conscience exemptions, but it also raises the issue of libertas ecclesiae: the Church’s right to present its teachings on contraception, abortion and sterilization and how those activities affect the common good.”
“It seems reasonably clear that the bishops are going to fight to carve out conscience exemptions for religious institutions and religious individuals. It is less clear whether they or other Catholics will see a responsibility to exercise the right (some might call it a duty) to make the Catholic case on contraception in the public square,” Farr added.
The mandate has prompted a slew of legal actions, with a growing number of religious institutions and states challenging the narrow religious exemption in court.
However, while some scholars predict that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act provides a high standard to bolster the bishops’ case, some panelists at the Georgetown forum predicted that any legal challenge would end badly for conscientious objectors.
“What the courts will decide is difficult to predict. There is a broad, secular, cultural belief that opposition to contraception is madness and that it cannot be defended except on some inaccessible theological ground,” said Farr.
But he noted that when Alvare disputed the state’s interest in promoting contraception, she moved beyond Catholic moral principles to address the practical legacy of birth-control use over half a century.
Farr observed, “The meaning and value of religious freedom in full raises many issues. The most immediate is whether the Obama administration will protect the conscience rights of Catholic and other religious institutions and individuals — and, if it does not, whether the courts will mandate their protection because of the Free Exercise Clause.”
But, he added, “a broader, more Catholic-specific aspect of the question is this: Will Catholics publicly defend — with patience and charity — their teachings on contraception as a matter of the common good? Will they do so less as a matter of changing the laws, but changing the culture? Put differently, if those teachings are true, why are we not defending them?”
Register senior editor Joan Frawley Desmond writes from Chevy Chase,Maryland.
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Yes. Both. But each objection is mutually supportive although directed towards different concerns. The religious freedom objection has far-ranging impact for if the mandate stands, every element and aspect of the freedom of religion guarenteed by the First Amendment is shredded—a horrific idea. The availablity of contraception is not really an issue: there are many intrinsically evil substances in the world. The social and physiological effects on society at large from the use (not availability) of contraception is necessarily a different debate which belongs in the realms of social and medical science, where with a clear argument, such use cannot be justified because of the profoundly negative effects on the woman, families, and society, irrespective of the moral question. We must be clear in our language and rhetoric; mixing the arguments between the two principles weakens both.
It is important to note that the Catholic Church’s teachings on contraception and abortion go back to the Didache in 1 A.D. They did not originate with Humanae Vitae in 1968. The latter came about, I believe, to address questions about the morality of the birth control pill.
There is 2000 years of consistent teaching to point to on contraception per se.
At best oral contraceptives are a recreational drug, at worst they are a carcinogenic medication contributing to the breakdown of family and society. A woman is fertile on average 10 days a month. Why is the government taken an interest in forcing the Catholic Church to provide contraceptives? The answer is ideology, not science or the health of women.
Neither. It is about buying the votes of young women with a proposed benefit (which will almost certainly be struck down by the courts) and scaring them to the polls by demonizing the opposition.
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Any woman who is working for a Catholic employer with benefits should be able to afford her own contraceptives. They are not that expensive. This is purely cynical political move and nothing more.
Mr. Farr stated, “if those teachings are true, why are we not defending them?” Has he not heard of the quiet demonstrations, with “patience and charity” that have been on-going for forty pluss years? Has he not heard or seen the annual right to life events in Washington D.C.? Did he not hear about the protests in 130 or more cities nation wide just last Friday?
Such is our life, our protests and views will not be reported by the national media because they are done with patience and charity. It just isant the fodder for sensational headlines.
There will be another rally at the Missouri Capital tomorrow, all are welcome, including the media.
The LEFT continues to claim that it will “decrease” the number of abortions and it will “decrease” poverty if we continue to hand out abortions. Yet, since the inception of contraception it’s actually: 1) increased out-of-wedlock pregnancies, thus increasing poverty; 2)increased out-of-wedlock sexual behavior, thus increasing the sin of adultery; and 3)it has increased abortions, because abortion is “Plan B” when contraception fails. NEWSLFASH TO THE LEFT: Contraception is not 100%. I think they know this. But by continuing to push this false sense of “security”, you thus increase the behavior, thus increasing the likelihood that it will fail. In other words, the more you do it, the HIGHER the risk of it failing. Before the use of contraception, there was ALWAYS the risk of getting preganant - or catching an STD. What contraception attempted to do was decrease or eliminate the FEAR of pregnancy from engaging in sex. But, even with contraception the chances of getting prgenant are ALWAYS there because it’s not 100%. The ONLY 100% chance of not getting pregnant is: Abstinence.
And I would argue that by taking the fear away, you give people the license to be more promiscuous. But, contraception DOES NOT PROTECT you from the consequences of adultery, from sin. The guilt is still there. Just because I’m wearing a condom does not mean that I have “absolved” myself from sin. I still need to go to confession. I’ve still broken God’s commandement - even for married couples.
“The guilt is still there. Just because I’m wearing a condom does not mean that I have “absolved” myself from sin. I still need to go to confession. I’ve still broken God’s commandement - even for married couples.”
OK, so why does any of that matter to any of us who are not concerned with ancient myths and gods of desert tribes that died out 2000 years ago?
It is not the states role to enforce your religion particular obsessions.
The notion that making contraceptives free is going to help contain healthcare costs is laughable on several levels. I am not going to repeat the large number of compelling (and in my mind convincing) moral arguments already stated. Lets look at it from purely an economic argument.
1. If making contraceptives free will reduce health care costs (and I don’t buy that, for the reasons already stated), then shouldn’t other sort of drugs be made free as well. Cholesterol and high blood pressure medication prevent thousands if not millions of heart attacks and strokes every year, along with all the associated costs (And if you think a birth is expensive, that is peanuts to what bypass surgery costs). How come they are not going to be free?
2. The reason most health plans require copays for drugs and more for non-generic drugs, is to make patients more pro-active in their health care choices. By making birth control free, we are providing no incentive to women to choose lower cost birth control options. Further, we are encouraging them to remain on the pill even when they might not be sexually active so that they are ready. (And lets not forget all the health risks associated with long term pill use).
Reading this article again, we really need to go on the offensive, instead of almost always playing defense with the culture of death.
I believe that if we get the word out that 1-The Church does not Teach against the regulation of births, and 2-That NFP, especially STM is highly effective, requires no drugs and is healthy–
The Obama Administration’s push for contraceptives in all corners, ignoring religious liberty will fall like a house of cards, as will the Administration.
I also think that the people at Planned Parenthood – know this better than we.
We need to provide a way for people to say Yes, not just No.
They want the Catholic Church out of the public square, what better way then to “be in the public square”, especially lay men and women. The Bishops cannot and should not do everything.
Write a letter to your newspaper editor!
The rate of abortions reached a peak in the U.S. in 1981. Then they declned in number until 2005, and have remained fairly level since. The abortion rate among the poorest women is the highest.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/25/study-u-s-abortion-rate-drops-except-among-poorest-women/
“Between 2000 and 2008, abortions among American women aged 15 to 44 fell 8%, reaching a low of 19.6 abortions per 1,000 women. The decline applied to most groups: notably, the abortion rate declined 18% among African American women over that time period and 22% among teens aged 15 to 17.
“However, women living in profound poverty were the one exception. Women whose incomes fell below the federal poverty level ($10,830 for a single woman with no children) accounted for 42% of all abortions in 2008. Between 2000 and 2008, the abortion rate among the lowest-income women climbed from 44 to 53 abortions per 1,000 women — an increase of 18% overall.”
So there is good reason to assume that increasing our efforts to provide the poorest women with easy, free access to contraception would lower the U.S. abortion rate and the unplanned pregnancy rate. But of course there will always be failures of contraception and people who fail to behave responsibly.
Will Catholics publicly defend the Church’s teachings in this matter, with patience and charity? I think they will PROVIDED that the parish priests do so. One cannot defend something one knows nothing, or very little, about. Many priests have yet to speak up on this matter. They either lack the courage or disagree with it. Faithful Catholic parishioners need to confront them with this.
@ dch: You’re right, the post that you quoted does not address your particular concerns. But why does it need to? The respondent was replying to an article in a Catholic newspaper, aimed at Catholics…not the New York Times. But since you want secular reasons, let’s start with the First Ammendment. Then, let’s take a look at what would constitute a grave act against conscience for Catholics (whether or not you agree with it is not the issue), and fairly grant the Church a religious exemption - all of the information is there about what the Church teaches and has always taught, and it is easily accessible to anyone. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear can figure this one out.
Another fact: The widespread availability of oral contraceptives and abortifacients does not warrant including them in the Affordable Healthcare Act. Any woman who wants to use them can get them, from the richest to the poorest (especially the poorest - Planned Parenthood sees to that in its clinics that target poor and minority neighborhoods). Title X provides free contraceptives to women at 100% of the poverty level and below, and provides reduced-cost ones on a sliding scale for women up to 250% of the poverty level (which they call a moderate income). As Helen Alvare said, the supposed “need” to include them in the Healthcare act is incredibly slim compared to the huge problem it creates for religiously-affiliated institutions (and individuals) who conscientiously object to the use of these drugs. There is much more that can be said, but let’s just start with that.
@ cowalker: The evidence that contraceptive use has actually INCREASED abortions since their legalization in 1960 is overwhelming. You are drawing too facile a conclusion from your statistics. One reason might be the newer abortifacient drugs that, according to those who believe that life begins at conception, “terminate” pregnancies, and are not included in the statistics as “abortions” according to the definition of some others. (That is whay it is so important for those in power to understand the Catholic belief on when life begins, and to at least grant conscience exemptions due to this fact alone). Even some regularly used oral contraceptives can impair implantation, terminating the new life that has been begotten. Since the legalization of abortion 37 years ago, there have been at least 18 MILLION abortions in the U.S. The statistics show a clear corollary between contraceptive use and abortion. The very contraceptive mindset itself does not welcome a new life if the drug “fails”, and there is a great increase in sexual activity and infidelity due to the false sense of security it engengers, resulting in more unplanned and unwanted pregnancies.
cowalker,
The only statistic that you need to concern yourself with is that 1.5 million abortions happen yearly, 4,000 daily. And most of them are by Planned Parenthood, which specifically targets blacks and hispanics. And based on the evidence, they’re still poor. I guarantee that if people living in poverty would get married before having sex, there would be a decrease in poverty.
So contraceptive couples and non contraceptive couples have their insurance plans pay for contraceptives it should have an opt out plan for couples that use NFP and couples that use contraceptives can pay for the stuff they want extra.
I think the leaders of Congress should submit their choices and see what the results are and then go from there and pay for it for themselves out of their salary. See how they would like it.
This is just my opinion.
I would not use the pill ever its a horrible drug kills your eggs and babies if fertilized.
The story of Mary and Elizabeth should teach us a lesson that the women barren Elizabeth became pregnant and young Mary stayed to help her as she was also found pregnant with Jesus but could not tell anyone until she returned home to marry Joseph. They had to flee to Egypt after that too because of the culture of death from Herod wanting to kill all male babies. How sad it is the same today women have to flea from family members, the state and others to prevent abortion and keep their sacred life in the womb.
May we pray for the conversion of all and that we may have life respected and treated as sacred in the womb till natural death.
“OK, so why does any of that matter to any of us who are not concerned with ancient myths and gods of desert tribes that died out 2000 years ago?”
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It doesn’t, and that is why many Catholics do a poor job in articulating the Church’s position on the issue. Threatening nonbelievers with the wrath of a God they don’t believe in never works.
Still, the Church’s teaching is sound and well supported by science and reason.
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Abortion is the deliberate killing of a human being before birth. I will leave the bona fide hard medical cases to the medical ethicists, but if you think it is OK to kill someone simply because they are inconvenient, then I don’t think we have much more to talk about.
Sterilization involves altering the reproductive system so that it is incapable of reproduction. This can be done surgically (vasectomy, tubal ligation) or chemically (hormonal contraception, copper IUD).*
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The Catholic Church teaches that it is morally wrong to turn a healthy body into an unhealthy one. If someone wanted to put their eyes out so that they could become blind, he would be put in a mental institution.** Yet, it is considered responsible to “put out” our reproductive system through surgical mutilation, high doses of artificial hormones, or placing a mildly toxic foreign body in the uterus.
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But this mutilation cannot be done without physical side effects and often psychological side effects as well. Hormonal contraception literally changes women’s brains by altering their hormone levels. Other methods have their own negative side effects. This isn’t the pronouncement of Churchmen, this is science. The Church merely says that we should not harm our bodies for sex. Hardly a radical proposition.
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**Yes, Jesus did mention doing just that if your eye causes you to sin, but he was speaking figuratively about the importance of avoiding sin. If bodily integrity were not intuitively so important, the passage would lose its meaning.
The decision facing the Supreme Court may well prove to be the defining nature of America’s moral future. How can we have much confidence in a court that defied the Declaration of Independence, one of our founding documents, and denied the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to unborn children that has resulted in massive genocide. FDR failed in his attempt to stack the Supreme Court, but Clinton and Obama have succeeded in making a 5/4 decision favor the Democrat Party of death. We can’t ask God to bless a nation that allows women to kill their own children, but ww better pray fervently that the 5/4 decision goes against Obama. The next election will define our nation as a Republic or a socialist state at the hands of the tyrant it always provides as a replacement for God.
As for barrier methods, withdrawal, and, umm, other sexual acts, the reason why these are prohibited is because of what the Church teaches is the nature of sex. The sexual act is not wrong or dirty, but a gift from God to married couples. It is designed not just for procreation, but for the unity of the couple. Barrier methods involve a barrier and withdrawal involves withdrawing, all of which are contrary to the unitive aspect of sex. As for other sexual practices, Bill Clinton was right in that they are simply not sex. As such, they are a poor substitute for the real thing.
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Fertility awareness (aka Natural Family Planning), on the other hand, involves learning the woman’s body (assuming the man is always fertile) and planning the relationship around it. It is safe, highly scientific, and highly accurate at predicting possible fertility. All women can benefit from learning how their own body works and there are no negative side effects.
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The Church’s teaching is simple, straightforward, scientific, and neither arbitrary nor capricious.
@Bob Roland: Actually, there are five Republicans (Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, Roberts, Alito) and four Democrats (Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan) on the Court.
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Scalia and Thomas consistently oppose abortion rights.
Roberts and Alito are presumed to oppose abortion rights, but have not made any major rulings on the issue.
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Breyer and Ginsburg consistently support abortion rights.
Kagan and Sotomayor are presumed to support abortion rights, but have not made any major rulings on the issue.
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This leaves Anthony Kennedy as the swing vote. Kennedy will support most restrictions on abortion short of making it completely illegal. Neither side claims him.
cowalker, your article fails to establish any firm connection between the two things. The folks at the AGI are THEORIZING about the cause of the drop and, as is their wont to do (their numbers I have no issue with, but I will never bet the farm on their analysis), they will theorize in favor of contraception because, let’s not forget it, they are still basically an arm of Planned Parenthood in everything but name. They will discount the influence of efforts like 40 Days for Life—not that I attribute it all to them, they only started within the decade—that result in 1,000 women a year changing their minds and not choosing abortion. It’s essentially “my study can beat up your study.”
Posted by Sally on Monday, Mar 26, 2012 11:42 AM: Will Catholics publicly defend the Church’s teachings in this matter, with patience and charity?
Well on the issue of school vouchers the bishop of Harrisburg said that Adolf Hitler would be proud of the public school system, so the answer is probably no. Shocking words from a bishop considering the similar Nazi slurs used against the pope. How ridiculous since many parochial and public school teachers are friends and colleagues in the same professional organizations, and have taught in both settings. In Texas the elected board of education wanted to teach that humans and dinosaurs walked on earth together, perhaps the bishop would be happier there. Of course the elected local board in San Francisco might design a different curriculum, and the same with the elected board members in predominately Catholic Harrisburg.
Last month a student from a Catholic law school testified before the United States Congress and the world that she and her friends must pay upwards of $1,000 for contraception each year. If there is an appearance that Catholic institutions lack commitment to the critical values at stake then this happened long before any healthcare bill, and Catholics did it all on their own.
Well, we couldn’t seem to stay on message here in CO at the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally last Friday. I guess that’s what happens when the event is put together on short notice. Now, the representatives of the various bishops (not one there in person) all had remarks that stayed on the “religious freedom” message. But, there were no signs (as promised), and those who brought signs after being requested not to all had signs about contraception and abortion. So, once again, we liberty-minded have a deficit of organizational and messaging prowess.
It’s interesting: How do you explain the poverty in a country like Cuba, which has abortions and gives out contraception? Or how about the poverty in China? They have a “one child” policy and yet that does not seem to put a dent in their poverty.
Food for thought…
“Helen Alvare, a pro-life leader and law professor at George Mason University” hit the nail on the head, as I understand it. It is not a matter of importance, whether the Obama administration or the Reagen administration, brought the matter of contraception and birth control as imposed upon religious institutions, but rather that either administration wishes to enforce such an issue upon those who wish not to have their religious freedom restricted.
If any administration can impose such damnable obligations upon religious institutions or conscientious individuals, then why have a Constitution or Bill of Rights at all?
As I see it, the government agency, HHS, is wanting religious institutions to help defray the cost of Contraceptive Mentality that it says it’s providing for women’s health. It adds nothing to the health of the woman or man, except the free exercise of sex and any inclination that couples would like to disregard when it comes to being mature and responsible for the human life they procreate.
The sad thing that is at the heart of the matter, is the govenment’s desire to enforce population control on all aspects of human life in America. Population control in China has not worked. What makes America think it will work here?
The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights
(((Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;))) or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”... Maybe HHS should go back and reread the Bill of Rights. It is in direct violation in the first two parts of the First Admendment. It is trying to establish a “religion of Contraception” and “prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” of already established institutions which clearly have in their system of belief that they are opposed to abortifacients or any techniques that restrict the life of the individual from the moment of conception to natural death.
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