Contra-Contraception
“On August 2, Duquesne University, a private Catholic school in Pittsburgh, filed suit against Highmark Inc. because the insurer allegedly mishandled the school’s prescription drug plan over the course of three years. Duquesne’s contract with Highmark specified that the insurance could not cover contraceptives because they contradict the university’s Catholic faith, but Highmark went ahead and covered birth control (and other drugs it wasn’t supposed to cover) anyway.” - Mother Jones
This debate is not a new one, but it’s been stoked recently since the inclusion of the “conscience clause” in Obama’s health plan. It still seems to me that having one’s personal contraception determined at all by his/her employer’s religious beliefs is discriminatory and an infringement on an individual’s sexual freedom, not to mention the imposition of one individual’s faith upon another.
In terms of “conscientiously objecting,” there is a grave difference between declining to partake in an armed conflict, and denying one’s employees control over their own reproductive systems: Employers have not been called to fight a war in their employees’ bodies. (This may seem like an odd question, but if someone conscientiously objects to a war can he/she insist that his/her employees also refuse to participate?) Employers are not entitled to follow their workers home to watch their intimate activities, and yet strangely enough for matters of personal belief they may insist upon playing a super-visional role in them.
It is understood that religious institutions do not want their money to fund the taking of life, but if employees utilizing any form of birth control are on their payroll, then is it not just a matter of a *particular* dollar going to the health care provider? This one instead of that one? The employer’s denial of this specific aspect of health coverage, then, would seem merely a symbolic gesture — however, one that, while reminding their employees of their morals, also violates their employees’ freedom to develop and live by their own.
