Genre

Monday, August 27, 2012

Religious Freedom #2 [essay]

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Lately, I started - and did not finish - a thought-piece discussing "religious freedom" in the United States, because one hears in the public discussion fairly often these days the charge - usually made with considerable anger - that religious freedom is currently "under attack."

The claim emerged prominently on the scene in response to a provision of the 2010 federal reform of health insurance, requiring religious institutions - like the Catholic Church - to offer the employees of its social-service agencies and universities health insurance covering such controversial therapies such as birth control.  Although the churches and other such institutions were exempted from this requirement, the other organizations operated by them are not exempt.

In my earlier essay, I reviewed the Constitutional provision for "the free exercise of  religion," pointing out that the individuals employed by these organizations were of course free to exercise their religious conviction that contraceptive is immoral, even if it is covered by their insurance policy, and that those employees whose religious convictions did not prohibit use of birth control methods remained as free to use it as the majority of American women who have it covered by their insurance.

Why, then, I asked, was there so much vitriol in the claims that this provision violates religious freedom?  And I simply couldn't think of an answer to my own question.

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One reader helped me out by explaining that perhaps a person opposed to contraception, for whatever reason, would resist paying insurance premiums, revenue from which would be used for others using birth control.  "My religious freedom," such an individual might claim, "will be violated if others use, in part, my money to use birth control."

That's the kind of explanation I was looking for, so I appreciate the coaching.  We could imagine that a person fervently condemning contraception of any "unnatural" kind (unlike abstinence) might even be moved to great anger by this impression, even if this individual were to realize that her or his opposition to anyone else's use of legal birth control methods is another matter, properly addressed by efforts to change the law.  Just because we disagree with a law, we do not have a right to ignore it. 

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Also, the way group insurance works is that every group-member pays the same premium for the same plan, even though the great majority of the conditions covered by the plan are never used by that individual.  Some of my premium, for example, would go to cover the treatment of a person seriously injured in a car accident that killed someone else, which was caused by the survivor's having been drunk at the time.  I do not approve of drunk driving, but a little of the money used to treat this jerk's injuries would come from my premium.


Finally, church-affiliated universities, hospitals and charities would not have to provide or pay for the controversial coverage. Instead, we are told, coverage for birth control could be offered to women directly by their employers’ insurance companies, “with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.”

Since there is no real issue actually threatening the religious freedom of the religious institutions involved, it is right and proper for all of us to support the freedom to choose contraception of women employees (or students) of the non-church organizations involved.

And anger and vitriol expended in this discussion by true believers is more properly directed at the law making the use of birth control legal.

I'm beginning to think that when people claim they value FREEDOM, they mean  their freedom to prevent other people from doing what they freely choose to do. 

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