Catholic Bishops Group GC Denounces Proposed Contraception Rule

Anthony Picarello Jr., the general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on Tuesday sent a 21-page letter to the Obama Administration denouncing a proposed rule to mandate insurance coverage for contraceptives.

The letter outlines six points of contention, and in essence concludes, “See you in court.” The conference of bishops is the official organization of Catholic leaders in the U.S.

The target of the GC’s anger is a set of proposed amendments to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would require insurance companies to cover contraceptive services. The deadline for public comment to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is June 16.

“No one (religiously affiliated or not) with a moral or religious objection to contraceptive coverage should be required to offer or provide it,” states the letter, which was also signed by associate general counsel Michael Moses. The full letter is here [PDF].

The letter goes on, “We believe that this mandate is unjust and unlawful—it is bad health policy, and because it entails an element of government coercion against conscience, it creates a religious freedom problem” under the U.S. Constitution.

The White House and its supporters have argued that the change is constitutional. They have said the rule would require no individual to use or prescribe contraception, but would mandate that insurance companies provide coverage for contraceptives to patients who want them, which is the recommendation of the nonpartisan Institute of Medicine.

Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) said at a press conference in February, “This is a fight to protect the rights of the millions of Americans who do use contraceptives—who believe that family planning is the right choice for them—and who don’t deserve to have an extreme minority’s ideology prevent them from getting the [insurance] coverage they deserve.”

But Picarello, the bishops’ GC, strongly disagrees. He sees it as forcing religious business owners and groups to pay for insurance that includes services they object to. He also attacked a four-part test the government will use to determine if a group deserves to be exempt from the rule. The letter states:

These moral and legal problems are compounded by an extremely narrow exemption that intrusively and unlawfully carves up the religious community into those that are deemed ‘religious enough’ for an exemption, and those that are not . . .

Reduced to its simplest terms, an organization is ‘religious,’ in the Administration’s view, only if it is insular, while organizations with a missionary or public outreach are deemed insufficiently ‘religious’ to qualify for the exemption.