You can find Notre Dame University's answer to this administration ukase at:
http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Garvey-Glendon-George-Snead-Levin-stmt-Feb-11-2012.pdf
February 10, 2012
Unacceptable
The Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious
institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortioninducing
drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all
insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services. Once a religiouslyaffiliated
(or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the
insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the
policy include coverage for these objectionable things.
This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the
assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is
certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s
insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that
covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government
still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the
very same services.
It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not “paying” for this aspect of the
insurance coverage. For one thing, it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not
pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers. More importantly, abortiondrugs,
sterilizations, and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the
religious institution or believing individual. They will only be made available to those who are
insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.
It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful
accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the
employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the
insurance contract purchased by the religious employer. It does not matter who explains the
terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer. What matters
is what services the policy covers.
2
The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions
who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs,
contraception, and sterilization. This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand.
It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews,
Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on
their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.
Finally, it bears noting that by sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches,
auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy
(like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty. The administration still
fails to understand that institutions that employ and serve others of different or no faith are still
engaged in a religious mission and, as such, enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.
Signed:
John Garvey
President, The Catholic University of America
Mary Ann Glendon
Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University
And many other signatures...
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