Showing posts with label contraception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contraception. Show all posts

Monday, January 21, 2013

JuridicsUSA: Christian employers: Lined up for exploitation by the Fluck Doctrine and Obama's Affordable Care Act

The advent of an active conflict between some advocates for women's rights and some advocates for the religious rights of employers is a sign of the times.  The women's movement, if it be that, which wants to charge the public purse and tax-payers for recreational sex expenses (the Fluck Doctrine) has gone to bizarre doctrines of law.  The original movement of Second Wave Feminism (1960s to 1980s)  in North America coud in its day come up with some corkers, but these activist women weren't entirely statist-minded, as I recall.  As more and more young women joined that movement and the Third Wave formed in the 1990s continuing into the present, they had an opportunity to found trusts, endowed funds, and foundations to provide abortions to any women who after considering her options, choose to abort her unborn without coercion either way.  This woud have been a radical non-statist approach, but beyond the social imaginary of the women of those times.  The willingness to form communal associations to secure to all women and any women free access to abortion, without coercion but really free choice, just wasn't present.  Besides being the period most likely to be considered a women's day in history, it was also saddled with the ethos of the Me Generation — which meant mature communal associations coudn't evolve under women's guidance to solve the abortion issue.  Instead, in Canada with no law at all to govern the situation, the freedom to exercize her sphere sovereignty over her own body and to take responsiblity for herself, with wise financial planning ($1 a month woud have endowed such foundations massively over time), thru sisterly organization for future exigencies, but that chance was lost.  There was no sense of sisterly communal calling in that regard.  Instead, go into politics and make the state omnicompetent over women's bodies and medical doctor's procedures.

So the responsiblity passed to the state, however reluctant, but before that possibility coud be made legal and realistic, the aborters for hire appeared on the scene.  In Canada, it was the mass abortionists under the leadership of the non-woman (must I say it?), Dr Henry Morgantaler, who found a managerdial-capitalist niche for himself.  In the USA, it was the agency founded on genocide of the poor, Planned Parenthood, that came to occupy that niche most widely.  They exemplify how it was determined, the structuration of what so many women woud have to resort over the decades afterward.  This put the means of getting abortions out of the hands of the broad spectrum of women and made them captive, lacking their own network of foundation-funded clinics, to Morgantaler Abortion Clinics and Planned Parenthood's one-way "counselling."  The latter soon learned in many places to get its money from state and Federal government.  So, the Fluck logic is simply vacuum-logic from the detritus of the statist solution to everything female.

Now comes a group of Christian employers who don't want to be absorbed into this alien logic; it seems thedy don't want solutions to the problem of accessible abortion care, but they certainly can't catch up with the enormity that the Fluck Doctrine enshrined in the Affordable Health Care Act now imposes on them.  They woud like help from the courts, but it's hi-ly unlikely they will get any.

— Lawt, refWrite Frontpage juridics newspotter, analyst, columnist

Washington Post (Jan22,2k13)

Christian employers challenging contraceptive provision of health care law, reject idea of any penalties


















Joe Raedle/Getty Images -    As Supremes refuse relief to Christian employers who don't want to pay for employee's contraception under Obama's Affordable Care Act, protesters hold signs and pray during a gathering billed as the “Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally” in MIami in June 2012.


Enjoy the festivities, President Obama, and while you’re on the grand stage Monday, it might be wise to make nice with the assembled Supreme Court justices.
The next legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act is moving quickly to the high court, and bringing potent questions about religious freedom, gender equality and corporate “personhood.”
Graphic
Challenges to ‘contraception mandate’
Click Here to View Full Graphic Story
Challenges to ‘contraception mandate’


The issue is the health-care law’s requirement that employers without a specific exemption must provide workers with insurance plans that cover a full range of birth-control measures and contraceptive drugs.
Inclusion of the no-cost contraceptive coverage for female workers has always been a controversial part of the legislation. It has now sparked more than 40 lawsuits around the nation involving more than 110 individuals, colleges, hospitals, church-affiliated nonprofits and private companies.
The cases involving those with religious affiliations are in limbo, as the Obama administration works on regulations that might provide a compromise. In a case involving two such institutions — Wheaton College in Illinois and Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina — a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is requiring administration officials to report by mid-February about the new rule, which is to be issued by spring.
At the same time, “the business cases are moving 


groups coordinating the challenges to the law. Duncan said he believes the cases will be decided in 

lower courts in plenty of time for the Supreme Court to decide whether to review the issue in its term 

that begins in October.

By Duncan’s count, there are 14 cases filed by business owners who say the law forces them to choose between running their companies and following their religious beliefs. In nine of those cases, courts have issued injunctions until the conflicts can be decided on their merits.
The cases differ by what the business owners say they are willing to provide — some say all contraceptives would violate their religious beliefs, others object only to abortifacients such as the “morning-after pill” and intrauterine devices. But all rely on protections in the First Amendment regarding free exercise of religion and in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
The 1993 act prohibits the federal government from imposing a “substantial burden” on a person’s exercise of religion unless there is a “compelling governmental interest” and the measure is the least-restrictive method of achieving the interest.
No court of appeals has reached the merits of the challenges, but two — the 7th and 8th circuits in Chicago and St. Louis respectively — have granted business owners injunctions, and two — the 6th in Cincinnati and the 10th in Denver — have denied them.
And along the way, those decisions give a pretty clear indication of the fight ahead.
The most promising for the challengers is a ruling by a three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit. Cyril and Jane Korte, owners of K & L Contractors, said the new law offends their Roman Catholic beliefs. They wanted to replace the insurance program they offered their workers, which they found provided contraceptive services, with one that did not.

Monday, January 23, 2012

PoliticsUSA: Healthcare-financed abortions: You will pay for it; Christian hospitals well do it

-

No Change to 
Contraceptives Mandate /
Narrow Exemption




The answer, delivered on Friday, was: No change

Religious groups of various faiths have been protesting ever since the federal 
government announced in the summer that all health insurance plans, except 
for those offered by churches, will have to cover a wide range of birth control 
measures. The mandatory drugs and procedures that must be offered by almost 
all health plans starting this August includes all contraceptives, including two 
abortifacient drugs, sterilization, and reproductive counseling.

The administration's exemption for religious employers was broad enough to 
protect from the mandate only churches and religious orders. But it was crafted 
not to protect religious organizations that serve the public (and not only 
co-religionists) or that offer material or psychological help (and not only prayer 
or preaching). Churches would be exempt from violating their consciences 
about paying for drugs and procedures they reject as immoral, but parachurch 
organizations (faith-based service organizations) would not be exempt. Also 
not exempt: individuals with a conscientious objection to paying for those drugs; 
owners of secular organizations with a moral objection; religious colleges and 
universities--they would have to include the drugs and procedures in the plans 
not only for their employees but also for their students.


Source: eNews for Faith-Based Organizations (IRFA)
(January23,2k12)  Editor: Dr Stanley Carlson-Thies, Institutional 
Religious Freedom Alliance

Re-posted here by Politicarp, 
refWrite frontpage politics columnist


general editor, refWrite frontpage


I don't oppose all abortion, and strongly maintain 
that Protestant Christian, Catholic, Jewish and other
faith-based hospitals shoud not be forced into the
abortion racket. — Owlb


Dr Carson's article continues below:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Note that the contraceptives mandate applies to all health insurance plans—
it is not a condition attached to federal funds such that a religious organization

can avoid the violation of its convictions by refusing a federal grant or contract.

Not only Catholic leaders, but also evangelicals and orthodox Jews, among 
others, protested the mandate, because it requires including contraceptives
because it

includes abortifacients, or because of the evil of forcing religious employers to  
pay for "preventive services" they regard as immoral. And they protested the 
exemption that essentially defines most faith-based service organizations as not 
being religious at all. That's a terrible precedent to put into federal law and 
practice.

On Friday the administration gave its answer to all of the protests is: No change! 
No budging. No accommodation. No change in the mandate, for example, by
eliminating the most controversial drugs, Plan B and ella, from required
coverage. No change in the exemption, not even to protect church-governed
charities.

The administration blandly assured everyone that it had carefully listened to the 
many protesting religious leaders. But it judged that no change was necessary. 
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services 
said, "I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting 
religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services."   

Oh, there was a concession, one change: the administration announced a
one-year delay in imposition of the birth control mandate for nonprofit 
employers who currently do not pay for contraceptives in their health insurance 
plans because of their religious convictions.
This delay, Secretary Sebelius said, "will allow these organizations more time and fledibility and flexibility to adapt to this new rule."

In other words, this is not a year to negotiate a change that would accommodate 
religious convictions. No, just a year for the organizations to learn to suppress 
their moral qualms.

A year delay, many observers noted, puts the deadline for these protesting 
organizations safely on the other side of the presidential elections.

Among the responses to Friday's announcement:

* Galen Carey, VP of Government Relations for the National Association of
 Evangelicals, said, "No government has the right to compel its citizens to 
violate their conscience.  The HHS rules trample on our most cherished
 freedoms and set a dangerous precedent."

* Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious  
Liberty Commission, called the decision "outrageous." "It's analogous to  
giving a man on death row a one-year stay of execution. You can follow your  
conscience for one more year."

* Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. 
Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, "Never before has the federal 
government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace 
and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn't happen in a 
land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights."

* Even the Washington Post blasted the administration, saying that it should 
have expanded the exemption and calling the one-year delay a "feint at a 
compromise."   

Remedies: Two religious colleges, Belmont Abbey College (Catholic) and 
Colorado Christian University (Protestant) have already sued the federal 
government. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represents the two 
colleges. Other religious institutions of higher education are contemplating 
lawsuits. And several bills have been introduced into Congress to deal with 
the religious-freedom and conscience concerns in the health reform legislation, 
including the problem of the birth control mandate.

Adding insult to injury, some defenders of the administration, to fend off 
charges that its actions diminish religious freedom, try to heap credit on it 
simply for upholding the law. For example, Sarah Posner, at Religion 
Dispatches, has written, "[T]he notion that the federal government has 
somehow discriminated against Catholics is rendered even more absurd by 
the hard numbers: in 2011 alone, according to the federal government 
database at www.usaspending.gov, Catholic Charities received over $753 
million in federal funding. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has not, as 
the president promised on the campaign trail, reformed faith-based funding to 
ensure, among other things, that groups receiving taxpayer aid do not
 discriminate in hiring." But, of course, the federal government awards funding 
to particular private organizations not as an act of favor but because those 
organizations appear to be the most cost-effective suppliers of services; and 
what critics term "religious job discrimination" in fact is a management practice 
that is undergirded by federal laws and court decisions.   

Take Note:  The Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance organized two 
letters from leaders of organizations of various faiths, protesting the mandate  
and narrow exemption.