Free Exercise Stops at Contraception
by Sandeep Rao

On March 1st, pro-choicers celebrated with a California Supreme Court ruling that found contraceptives must be included if a Catholic charitable organization offers prescription drug coverage.

While the lobbying efforts of abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood have helped sustain reproductive choice for many Americans, the pro-choice lobby has now embraced the decidedly anti-choice position of forcing individual employers and religious organizations to subsidize contraception.

The 6-1 decision, the first state high court ruling on the subject in the country, found Catholic Charities of Sacramento to engage in the “secular” practice of counseling, feeding, and housing the indigent. Moreover, the charity did not limit its employment rolls or service base to Catholics alone.

The charity was practicing—though not directly preaching or proselytizing—Catholic values. While this might make Mother Theresa proud, the high court found the setup not Catholic enough and, thus, liable under California’s mandatory contraceptive coverage law for health insurance companies.

Based on religious beliefs, many private businesses and non-profit religious organizations do not cover contraception, classified as birth control drugs, devices and all associated medical services.

The California court cited a 2000 U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission finding that private health insurance plans excluding prescription contraceptives constitute discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In a democracy governed by the rule of law, controversies are bound to rise between conflicting freedoms. Apparently, according to the EEOC, the notion of equal protection in the workplace trumps the dearly held right to free exercise of religion.

Thus far in this fight, contraception coverage advocates may have allowed for exemptions for “qualified church-controlled organizations,” as determined by the state. But, while the state may have no intent in meddling with the church as they define it, they obviously have no problem meddling in the religious beliefs of private businesses and insurers—even at the expense of forcing businesses to subsidize services blatantly flouting their own religious beliefs.

The EEOC interpretation put all employers on notice that health insurance coverage decisions, based in some cases on privately held religious convictions, may now fall under the purview of federal anti-discrimination law.

Title VII, as amended under the 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act, requires equal treatment of “women affected by pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions” in all aspects of employment. According to the agency, benefits, such as prescription drugs, fall within the jurisdiction of the powers of the act.

In yet another notch against the freedom of religious expression, the EEOC concluded that exclusion of birth control constitutes discrimination since contraceptives are exclusively for women.

Proponents of mandatory contraceptive coverage hail “conscience clauses” as allowances for religious organizations to opt out of mandated coverage in violation of moral convictions. However, in reality, conscience clauses, fail to provide sufficient protection for religious expression, while only presenting an illusory apparition of respect for private moral sensibilities.

California’s law includes the ostensible safeguard of a conscience clause. Unfortunately, the California conscience clause serves as nothing more than a postage stamp-sized thong inadequately covering the cracks inherent in the birth control law.

As Catholic Charities already found out, when the government enters into the business of defining who qualifies as a member of a recognized religious group, you may find yourself in the inherently un-Catholic position of having to fund birth control.

The words “reproductive choice” and “individual rights” may have been the clarion call of pro-abortionists for the 31 years following Roe v. Wade. Now, having won that hard fought right, the abortion lobby has begun to engage in what was previously unthinkable in their minds.
They have now begun to impose their choice on the rest of us.

Sandeep Rao is a fourth year MD-MBA joint degree student from Houston at the Texas Tech University School of Medicine, and frequent contributor to the Austin Review.

–From the May 2004 Austin Review