by Doctor Science
I didn’t post about The Great Komen Foundation vs. Planned Parenthood Clash of the Titans last week, mostly because D & I both had viral gastroenteritis. It was vile, but at least the kids didn’t get it.
Ta-Nehisi Coates noted that Planned Parenthood has a very deep bench:
I don’t think that Handel, or her allies, quite understood the nature of their adversaries. I mentioned this in comments the other day but it’s interesting to look at how Planned Parenthood has weathered under targeting from the Right, as compared with other groups. This is not like ACORN. Whatever their significant work in poor communities and black and Latino communities, Planned Parenthood has touched women across race and across class, and thus indirectly, touched men across race and class too.
I am one of those women.
I don’t have a story as dramatic as many in the Planned Parenthood Saved Me tumblr, but for most of my 20s PP was my primary-care physician. I was self-employed and scraping by, medical insurance was unaffordable. But because I needed reliable contraception, I had to see a doctor at least once a year. And the only doctors I could see easily and affordably were at Planned Parenthood. The people there were always professional, respectful, knowledgeable, and helpful, though sometimes the waits were rather long.
(For a few years I went to a “breakaway” clinic on the same block as the Philadelphia PP, the Elizabeth Blackwell Center — which I now see been rolled back into PP proper. The Blackwell Center’s motto was “Warm Speculums and Time to Talk” — during a period when the former was not yet standard gynecological practice.)
My guess is that I was PP’s average client: no abortion, no cancer, no STDs, I just went there for contraception and got basic primary medical care along with it, at a price I could afford. PP’s core mission has always been giving women access to contraception. In Canada (for instance) they concentrate on information and education about all aspects of “sexual health”, because lack of knowledge is the biggest barrier to birth control. In the US lack of knowledge is only part of the problem, the difficulty and expense of getting a doctor and prescription is another one.
In the last abortion discussion we had around here, a number of people said
Contraception is easily available in the United States.
This is not actually true, if we’re talking about *effective* contraception.[1] The most effective contraception methods will always be ones that don’t have to be deployed every time you have sex, but only checked up or re-deployed occasionally — injections, IUDs, patches, etc. Such methods are not going to be over-the-counter, they will always require seeing a doctor and getting a prescription. For women who are poor, uninsured, or transient, this is not at *all* easy, and in many areas it would be almost impossible without PP.
People may swear until they’re blue in the face that their desire to defund PP and put it out of business is only about abortion, but it *clearly* isn’t — or at the very least, reduction in abortions wouldn’t be the major effect. On the contrary: Planned Parenthood prevents abortions, because it gives even poor women the ability to avoid unplanned pregnancies, the cause of almost all abortions.
Dianna Anderson wonders why is it so hard to be truthful about Planned Parenthood? in the Christian community, why myths about what PP does are so pervasive and hard to let go of. Is it a “bubble” thing, where they don’t hear from enough people with countervailing evidence and experience, so that anything like Planned Parenthood Saved Me doesn’t seem plausible? Or I wonder if “pro-life” Protestants are starting to become anti-contraception? The most striking graph of the week on this topic:
which shows that the only group of Americans who agree with the Catholic Bishops about whether contraception must be part of any employer health plan are White Evangelicals. Actual Catholics are much less likely to toe the Catholic hierarchy’s line.
Altogether, I feel that those of you who were saying that there’s no way serious numbers of Serious People are seriously trying to get rid of birth control have to bring up some more actual evidence, something that would prove that e.g. Richard Santorum winning Republican primaries doesn’t mean anything.
[1] Before you get up to argue that the fact that condoms are sold all over proves that contraception is easily available, note that for a woman to carry condoms is
used as evidence of prostitution by the NYPD, among others.
I am both a pessimist and a cynic. Pperation Komen may have failed and Komen may perish as a result but that will not stop the enemies of PP and all what it stands for to try again and again. As with terrorism*, they have to be lucky just once and are willing to sacrifice for it (preferably the sacrifice will be someone else’s of course). Just wait for the next appropriations bill in Congress, the next ‘debate’ about the payroll tax cuts, the next ‘I read in the newspaper (=The Onion) that PP is going to open a 7 Billion $$$ abortionplex’ ‘scandal’… (not to forget the funny ‘not intended as a factual statement’ episode).
*Any bets against there being a terrorist attack against a PP facility in the US within the next 6 months? I doubt that all ‘pro-life’ extremists are fully occupied with the current WANTED poster for one of the few surviving abortion providers in the South. My bet is that at least one will find time for a little firebombing soon.
Not being in the Land of the Free, I find it hard to make sense of all this. Free access to contraception is a social good, so the state should pay for it. Why make employers pay? Isn’t it a bad idea to make it more expensive to hire women of childbearing age?
That is, I am in favour of free access to contraception, but would have been on the side of the White Evangelicals in that poll. (Why are they categorized by skin colour?)
“[1] Before you get up to argue that the fact that condoms are sold all over proves that contraception is easily available, note that for a woman to carry condoms is
used as evidence of prostitution by the NYPD, among others.”
That? That is fncked up, that is.
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I’m not sure why the Catholic Bishops (or Protestant Ministers, or Wiccan Witches, or the Jedi, or Dead Heads) think that if they’re going to operate in the marketplace they should receive an exemption from the generally applicable rules because they’re a religion.
Sure in your houses of worship do whatever the fnck you want, other than that, no so much.
This might have been off topic.
Thanks for the great post. In addition to the fact that women should have ready access to contraception, a lot of women use birth control pills for non-contraceptive health purposes. Planned Parenthood has stood by women for a very long time.
Perhaps Sara is a shepherd involved in illegal gambling?
This is a great post Doc S. I hardly know what to say in reply. I find that happening to me more and more.
It’s a tsunami of stupid, and we’re all just along for the ride.
Politics have no place in health care
If only.
1. I’m very, very, very pro-birth control access, so I’m already inclined to be on the side of the government here.
2. I have no love of religious dogma, either.
3. The Catholic Church thinks it has moral authority when it comes to sex? Hahahahahahahahahaha! Isn’t there something about motes and beams that might be applicable here?
As for the religious freedom argument: if we were discussing an institution that was staffed by Catholics only and served Catholics only, I’d side with the Church here. But that is not the case.
Agreed, politics do have a place in healthcare. For example, if one private organization decides to not give its money to another private organization that enjoys political favor in a powerful quarter, well, that’s a big mistake.
And sure, that simple little 2500 page health care law that we were assured would not violate any religious liberties; well, it now seems that by administrative fiat, a dissenting entity that offers healthcare, or other privately funded social services, must act contrary to its own views to continue doing as it has done for, well, forever.
No one is compelled to work for a Catholic charity or hospital, nor to seek treatment or any other service from that charity or hospital, yet the feds would tell that charity or hospital: to continue as you always have, you must comply with such rules as we impose.
Conscience clauses, it seems, are a one way street. The only conscience allowed is that of the progressive left.
Santorum in reverse.
Ugh nicely frames the debate:
I’m not sure why the Catholic Bishops (or Protestant Ministers, or Wiccan Witches, or the Jedi, or Dead Heads) think that if they’re going to operate in the marketplace they should receive an exemption from the generally applicable rules because they’re a religion.
So, if the feds come up with “a generally applicable rule”, everyone has to fall in line with it, regardless. Religiously funded hospitals must then offer abortion and abortion counseling, because HHS decrees that to be a “generally applicable rule.”
Let’s put the shoe on the other foot: a Santorum HHS decrees that no entity may offer abortion counseling or abortions and no insurance may cover birth control. Its “a generally applicable rule”, so, no problemo, right?
if we were discussing an institution that was staffed by Catholics only and served Catholics only, I’d side with the Church here. But that is not the case.
See how easy it is to find a way for a dissenting voice to function in America? Because, currently, Catholic hospitals compel non-Catholics to work there and to seek services there.
Or, more practically, Catholic social services and job opportunities should, going forward, only be limited to Catholics. All others should be turned away. Want to feed the poor? Want to employ someone? Only if you offer birth control.
McTex, maybe you can explain something that’s been confusing me. As I understand it, the Catholic church claims that using birth control is a sin; they don’t claim that offering insurance for your employees that covers birth control is a sin. So why the issue? The government isn’t forcing anyone to use birth control, which is an act that the church claims to be sinful. It is only requiring them to give people the option.
No one is compelled to work for a Catholic charity or hospital, nor to seek treatment or any other service from that charity or hospital, yet the feds would tell that charity or hospital: to continue as you always have, you must comply with such rules as we impose.
Catholic hospitals and charities are employers who can opt out of providing insurance under the ACA: “A business with 50 or more full-time employees (excluding seasonal workers, but including part-time employees whose hours have been aggregated into full-time equivalents) must generally pay a penalty if at least one full-time employee requires a public subsidy for insurance. When an employee must find his own coverage because the company offers none, the penalty is $2,000 for each full-time employee in the company, but with a 30-employee deduction. When the business does offer coverage but an employee turns it down because it is unaffordable (defined by the law as costing more than 9.5 percent of the employee’s household income), the penalty is $3,000 for every employee who buys insurance on the exchange with a subsidy. This affordability penalty is capped at the total penalty the company would pay if it did not offer insurance at all. One last complexity: Though these are annual numbers, the penalty is in fact calculated each month.”
If the Catholic institution were staffed by clergy and parishioners, and received contributions without charging fees for services, you might have a point, McKinney. But as long as the institution is a business, they need to be a business. Rachel Maddow described it well as the “Amish bus driver rule.”
1. Hey, McK, if I start a religion today, what laws am I permitted to no longer follow if I say they violate my religion’s tenets? Can I get a list? (And don’t quote Lemon or Smith or the RFRA at me. I want your opinion on under what circumstances claimed religious tenets are blanket permission to ignore the law. Which, you know, essentially gives religion primacy over the Constitution.)
2. Should this “I’m religious so I don’t have to follow this law infinity no takebacks!” stance apply to Taco Bell? (Or, to use an even more relevant example, Chik-Fil-A?)
3. I bet you think that was pretty deft, how your comment uses the word “abortion,” which is not at issue here, four times; but does not use the word “contraception,” which is at issue, once? You’re a sneaky one, you are. (Oh, you slipped in “birth control” at the very end as part of a silly counterfactual.)
4. Turns out the rules being proposed here, which are largely modeled on (surprise!!!) a Republican bill from 1993, are actually less restrictive than those in place during (surprise!!!!) the Bush years.
they don’t claim that offering insurance for your employees that covers birth control is a sin.
They believe, as I understand it, that requiring insurance that covers birth control is the same as requiring the Church to pay for birth control, which they believe is a sin.
I don’t agree with the Church on this and many other topics. What I believe is immaterial to what others believe.
Where do you draw the line regarding a general rule, McTex?
Let’s not pretend there is a bright line here. There isn’t.
Hence the debate.
See Rachel Maddow’s Amish bus driver rule. (An Amish person can apply for a job as a bus driver, and he can’t be discriminated against in hiring, but if he gets the job, he has to drive the bus. If the Catholic Church wants to be an employer and offer health insurance, it has to offer contraception, because that’s part of women’s health.)
Also, the ACA allows employers to opt out of offering health insurance coverage. It costs a lot, but they can do it.
McTx: So, if the feds come up with “a generally applicable rule”, everyone has to fall in line with it, regardless. Religiously funded hospitals must then offer abortion and abortion counseling, because HHS decrees that to be a “generally applicable rule.”
I think SCOTUS ruled on this question in Smith, no?* In Scalia’s words, the statute was a “neutral law of general applicability,” or, some might say, a “generally applicable rule,” and thus that it burdened the free exercise of religion didn’t matter.
*Not that that necessarily settles everything, of course.
McTx: Let’s put the shoe on the other foot: a Santorum HHS decrees that no entity may offer abortion counseling or abortions and no insurance may cover birth control. Its “a generally applicable rule”, so, no problemo, right?
Well that would (likely) violate both Roe and Griswold, so, no. You’re free to argue that they’re both wrongly decided, of course.
Where do you draw the line regarding a general rule, McTex?
Let’s take Sapient’s last comment as a starting point: “it has to offer contraception, because that’s part of women’s health.”
No, birth control is not part of women’s health. It is an option that women may or may not exercise.
Like abortion, in the vast majority of observations. As pro-choice advocates like to say: it’s a choice.
So, offering health insurance, which until the last several months has rarely, if ever, included birth control, was never a religious issue for anyone. It is only a very recent addition to the scope of insurance, now mandated by the feds, and imposed on all.
The line, in this case, is the status quo ante.
The progressive left and the Obama administration have decided that healthcare, and now birth control are rights, the vindication of which will be imposed on every member of society who functions as any kind of economic entity, regardless of what beliefs individual members or groups might have.
If the Catholic Church wants to be an employer and offer health insurance
This is semantic sleight of hand. The Catholic Church has always been an employer and has always offered health insurance. The change is the addition to ‘health insurance.’ Under the Maddow rule, participation in any economic activity can be conditioned on compliance with whatever ideological bent happens to have won the last election. That’s why we have a constitution: to limit the power of electoral whim.
McTx: Because, currently, Catholic hospitals compel non-Catholics to work there and to seek services there.
The hospitals themselves? No. The way the U.S. functions today? Yes. Hence the tension, I guess.
Want to feed the poor? Want to employ someone? Only if you offer birth control.
This is incorrect, as I understand it (i.e., you can offer employment without health insurance, or you can offer employment with non-birth control health insurance, but you/your employees forfeit certain tax breaks).
Does this complicate the simplicity of the choices people have in what hospital or health-care system they use?
Or, from the same link, the “choice” of employer?
These church-run or church-affiliated institutions are not islands unto themselves. They are part of our health-care and economic systems.
The priests can say whatever they like to their adherents in church, and the adherents can follow those teachings as they see fit. It’s their choice to work for a health-care provider or insurance company, Catholic-affilitated or otherwise, as much as anyone else’s.
McTx: This is semantic sleight of hand. The Catholic Church has always been an employer and has always offered health insurance. The change is the addition to ‘health insurance.’ Under the Maddow rule, participation in any economic activity can be conditioned on compliance with whatever ideological bent happens to have won the last election. That’s why we have a constitution: to limit the power of electoral whim.
Well I agree with your last point there, of course. But…even assuming that the Catholic Church has “always” been an employer and “always” offered health insurance, so what? I mean, assume the Pope discovers an ancient text in the Vatican archives that prohibits the church from withholding taxes and reporting wages to secular governments, is it now exempt from withholding and paying over federal payroll and income taxes and filing W-2s?
No, birth control is not part of women’s health. It is an option that women may or may not exercise.
Oh come off it. An overwhelming majority of women use contraception. Some of them even use it for reasons unrelated to sex (gasp!).
By the way, do these plans cover Viagra? How about other “options that men or women “may or may not excercise?”
My wife was put on birth control for a while for (I think) an ovarian cyst. And some women can’t get pregnant without it causing serious complications. (It’s almost like this stuff matters to people, and it’s not just some ideological preference.)
Let’s take Sapient’s last comment as a starting point: “it has to offer contraception, because that’s part of women’s health.”
No, birth control is not part of women’s health. It is an option that women may or may not exercise.
This is argument by assertion and it ain’t gonna hunt. Controlling when and under what circumstances they have children is probably the #1 women’s health care issue.
So, offering health insurance, which until the last several months has rarely, if ever, included birth control
My vasectomy was nearly 100% covered by my health insurance, and I bet that’s true for most major insurance plans.
I’m gonna need a cite for “rarely, if ever,” please.
Regardless of how this turns out (whether the Obama administration caves or not), I really hope the RCC Hierarchy decides contraception is the hill to die on. BRING IT. PLEASE.
Meanwhile:
And, as I’ve mentioned, most abortions take place during the period where an external sonogram is unrevealing, meaning these women have to have transvaginal sonograms.
I bet all of this bother McK not a whit.
Dr S. this is a great post. Couldn’t agree with you more regarding all points. PP is one of the finest and most effective organizations providing healthcare services in this country and contraception is probably the most effective service it provides.
I certainly have nothing to add or detract from your post. On a side note, I have always been puzzled by the seemingly unexamined great value placed on procreation, especially by religious groups and adherants. I mean 5,000 years ago it probably was a virtue. But today? Then again, I have met so many who feel that their greatest achievement, nay, their reason for existance, is to have children. Weird because there is so much lower tier DNA being passed along. Why is it a good thing?
McTx, “No, birth control is not part of women’s health. It is an option that women may or may not exercise.”
I couldn’t disagree more with this assertion of yours. It is simply Wrong. I have worked on the payer/insurance side for 20 years and the plans that have employed me have always covered contraception and always considered preganancy to be a major, if not the most important, health care issue facing women (viagra is not covered). It isn’t about sex. It’s about health and general welfare.
So, offering health insurance, which until the last several months has rarely, if ever, included birth control, was never a religious issue for anyone. It is only a very recent addition to the scope of insurance, now mandated by the feds, and imposed on all.
This is absolutely false. Health insurance plans have long offered coverage for contraceptives, although under some plans it was optional for the employer, and more expensive (one of the many aspects of health insurance that was discriminatory against women).
There are a lot of “options” in health care. You can “opt” to get pain relief instead of endure pain, for example. I mean, if God didn’t want us to suffer, we wouldn’t have nerves, right?
I’d like to know what the distinction is between a woman being paid a salary by a Catholic institution, a part of which she chooses to spend on birth control, and a Catholic hospital providing health insurance that she chooses to have cover birth control. The money came as a remuneration from the Catholic institution. The health insurance came as a remuneration from a Catholic institution. The woman herself decides whether or not to use it.
This entire issue is a ploy by conservative Catholics to oppose the ACA, and it’s working to persuade the gullible.
Phil:
This is your warning.
I bet all of this bother McK not a whit.
That is skating way too close to the ad hominem line. It’s also way too close to shifting the discussion toward being about each other (=>personal attacks), and away from being about the *issues*.
Do it again and I’ll ban you from commenting further on this post.
“Health insurance plans have long offered coverage for contraceptives, although under some plans it was optional for the employer, and more expensive (one of the many aspects of health insurance that was discriminatory against women).”
Sapient, actuarially speaking, it is more cost effective in the medium to long run to provide contraception as a bene, than to offer it at a higher price, for most risk pools.
Sometimes a plan gets greedy and figures that a demographic – say young professional women – will purchase their own contraception because they are that motivated and able, financially, to do so. So the plan avoids the set monthly cost per adult female member. Other plans cover some contraceptives (the cheaper and time proven ones) at no extra charge, but don’t cover newer more expensive and less proven products. It really depends and it is a mixed bag. That said, I think all plans do cover *some* form of contraception as part of the basic package.
It really isn’t about discrimating against women. It’s just an attempt to do business in a way that maximizes profits and/or allows the plan to remain competitive in the maket place – or to simply not price employer groups out of the market; which would leave many with fewer or no HC insurance benefits.
Many plans do not cover procedures, etc that are for males only, either. For example, penile implants that permit a psuedo erection to be obtained post prostate surgery.
Not to nitpick, just saying……
Thanks, avedis. Interesting.
Also, something I didn’t know when writing my previous comments is that:
It’s more of an issue now because the Catholic bishops are Republicans and oppose the ACA on general right-wing principles. This religious liberty issue is just something to hang their hat on.
Let me correct: something deceptive to hang their hat on. The Maddow Amish bus driver analogy still hasn’t been distinguished by anyone here who may be in support of the Catholic bishop position.
It is only requiring them to give people the option.
It’s not even doing that.
It’s requiring them, if they are going to provide health insurance at all, which they are not actually obligated to do, to provide health insurance that includes coverage for birth control, if that is something THE EMPLOYEE should decide as a matter of their own private conscience that they need.
That is what is being required.
There are approximately eleventy-billion things that public laws and regulations require people to do, which some religious group somewhere objects to. Folks who participate in those religious groups *are not forced* to do anything they don’t want to do, nor is the Catholic Church, as an employer, being forced in this case to do anything it doesn’t want to do.
It is virtually impossible for public policy to be crafted in such a way that the particular quirks of every religious community – or any conscience-based community for that matter – are accommodated.
Some religious groups are pacifist. Should we shut down the Dept of Defense?
Some religious groups are vegetarian. Should all government-sponsored entities that serve food stop serving animal protein?
Some very conservative or orthodox religious groups do not allow men and women to socialize or meet together. Should all public events and institutions be segregated by gender?
Christian Scientists don’t believe in medicine, period. Should all medical insurance be outlawed?
I appreciate that *as a matter of conscience* the Catholic Church would prefer to not fund birth control, even if indirectly via a third party such as an insurance company. And *in the context of specifically religious institutions*, they will not be required to do so.
In the context of institutions that they sponsor and operate that *are not specifically religious*, that exemption will not apply.
A perfect solution? No, not really. Is everybody happy? No, not really.
But it’s probably about a good a solution as we are likely to find.
It’s impossible to operate in any kind of public context without drawing lines like this, because it’s a very large country with lots of different kinds of people in it. Although I might not agree, I don’t really have a problem with the claim that this particular line was drawn at not quite the right spot. But the idea that it represents some kind of anti-religious statist oppression is, to me, absurd.
It’s a simple rule: if you offer health care as a benefit, it has to include certain things. One of those things is birth control. The Catholic Church objects.
Well then it is the Catholic Church’s job to figure out how to do what they want to do, within the framework of the law. Just like every other group with non-mainstream convictions about things that touch on public life.
It’s not everyone else’s job to accommodate them in every particular of their institutional conscience.
Suppose insurance companies all decided that it was more cost-effective to offer birth control in their health plans than not. Then there would simply not be any birth-control optional plans on the market. Then what?
Nice job Sapient of pointing out the difference between “the Catholic position” and “the Catholoic Bishop position”. You should change your monicker from Sapient to Salient!
Imagine the plight of Christian Scientist employers, let alone the Church itself, being required to either provide health insurance *at all* or kick dollars back to Uncle.
A clear example of oppressive anti-religious statist tyranny.
Thanks, Oyster Tea. 🙂
Gail Collins has a good article too, on the 98% (of Catholic women who have used birth control), and the bishops they contend with.
The other thing to keep in mind is that many women take oral contraceptive pills for medical reasons NOT RELATED to contraception (for example, PCOS, endometriosis, some pituitary disease, etc).
For a long time,insurance wouldn’t cover contraception even when prescribed for these medical reasons. Thankfully, that has changed in recent years, but it is no way universal if my sibling’s experience is anything to go by.
PaulB: Not being in the Land of the Free, I find it hard to make sense of all this. Free access to contraception is a social good, so the state should pay for it. Why make employers pay? Isn’t it a bad idea to make it more expensive to hire women of childbearing age?
It may be hard to fathom from abroad, but the battle overcontraception, like the battle over abortion, is not actually related to the nominal issue. It’s strictly related to sex. end of discussion.
In the minds of those opposed, sex is a Bad Thing except in very narrowly defined circumstances. As a Bad Thing, it should not only be discouraged. Anything which reduces the negative consequences must also be discouraged. If you have contraception, you can engage in this Bad Thing without chancing getting pregnant. If you have abortion available, even getting pregnant doesn’t necessarily mean having to bear and raise the child. And the effort of having to bear and raise the child in the negaitive consequence that must be maintained to keep people from doing Bad Things.
Once you grasp the motivation, the rest follows inevitably. But if you don’t grasp where the opponenets are coming form, it makes no sense whatever. (Note this is separate from whatever sense the motivating assumptions may or may not have.)
You know, we don’t even need hypothetical examples like the Amish bus driver up there. We already know that Muslim cab drivers can’t refuse to carry passengers carrying alcohol, and Orthodox Jews who operate a numbered bus line for the city of New York can’t make women sit in the back.
“In the minds of those opposed, sex is a Bad Thing except in very narrowly defined circumstances. As a Bad Thing…….”
yep.
and it’s NOT a patriarchal plot either.
Just as many women identify with the anti abortion/anti-contraception movement as men. The women derive a sense of self worth from carrying, bearing and raising children and maintaining a happy home and all of that and are threatened by women who live lives outside of that meme. Being threatened, they wish to eliminate the threat, as wj says, by imposing their beliefs on others. This is where religion and “morality” clashes with the Consitution and where political leadership should call a spade a spade and be done with such nonsense.
OK, now the issue has broadened, and now it’s any Catholic employer. Not just the church, but any Catholic lay person, anywhere in the US, who employs other people and provides health insurance as part of their compensation.
Open a Taco Bell as a Catholic, and you are subject to the tyrannical thuggish brownshirted godless bootheel of Obama’s fascist / socialist / sharia-ist / whatever-ist state.
There are a lot of people in this country, Catholic and non-Catholic, who hold personal religious or ethical beliefs that are in conflict with mainstream values.
It *is not* the responsibility of the population at large to accommodate those beliefs at every point at which they come into conflict with the mainstream of public life.
It is the responsibility of people who hold strong positions of conscience to figure out how to live in such a way that they neither violate their conscience, or the law.
Sometimes that may actually cause them some inconvenience. Sometimes they may have to, and many quite often do, accept that there is a boundary beyond which their preferences will not apply.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 7th Day Adventists, Mormons, Quakers, orthodox Jews, conservative Evangelical Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Zoroastrians. Atheists and secular humanists, for that matter, who are often required to sit through public prayers that mean nothing to them, and which may in fact be offensive to them.
If you want to live where everything is exactly the way you think it should be, you need to go find a different country to live in, because this particular country is not going to be it.
This whole controversy is a pile of partisan crap intended to give Republican candidates something to beat Obama over the head with.
The PPACA is chock full of exemptions for religious practice and conviction. Employers who happen to be religious organizations operating or supporting non-religious institutions don’t happen to be one of them.
If the Catholic Church needs to make adjustments to how it deals with providing health insurance to its secular employees, then they will have to deal with it.
Like every other religious community in the country. Everybody’s got something they don’t like.
Seriously, claims of statist anti-religious oppression make me laugh. People have no idea how freaking good they have it.
Seriously, claims of statist anti-religious oppression make me laugh.
yep.
but, they’ve been waiting so long for some evidence to back up their assertions of Obama’s tyranny that they can’t help but pile on this one.
confirmation bias is a hellof a fallacy.
There was a situation in Arizona wherein a relgious nut who thought the earth was created on a certain date not too long ago claimed she was the victim of persecution because the geology dept. of the universtiy she attended offended her sensibilities by teaching science. At about the same time religous nutcases succeeded in imposing religously based literature about the formation of the Grand Canyon on the National Park Service. Of course we’ve got the religous colleges turning out pharmacists who refuse on religious grounds to do their jobs.
Mostly this pattern of bullying is centered on someone trying to inflict his or her notions about sex on someone else while pretending to be a victim, but sometimes the fauxvictim bullying behavior has another focus like alchohol or flatearth geology. In the end it is al about people having weird relgious nations who can’t tolerate other people not agreeing with them.
I suppose Catholics should avoid buying, say, Apple computers or iPhones, if Apple provides health insurance that covers birth control to its employees. Why should these concerns stop at directly employing people? One shouldn’t support, even as a customer, any organization that engages in such objectionable practices. Turn off the lights if your electricity provider does this stuff. Close your bank accounts and cut up your credit cards, too. It’s vital to your moral well being, you know, as a matter of conscience.
While I think there’s some purchase in the thought, as expressed by sapient and HSH, that there shouldn’t be a difference between the Catholic Church handing money directly to a birth-control providing insurance company and doing the same thing indirectly through an employee (or offering an option), I don’t think it quite completes the deal.
In particular, the Church has to sit down and negotiate the health insurance benefits with the insurance company, what they will and won’t cover, and thus directly has to face the question and hand over funds. Whereas the Church, or anyone/thing else for that matter, couldn’t function if it had to account for all indirect things.
That said, I still think the correct answer Constitutionally and otherwise is “too bad.” It really does come down to the government saying “if” you want to do X (or obtain benefit Z), “then” you have to do Y.
It really is a subset of what (IIRC) is the general 1st A free exercise doctrine under the Constitution: you can believe anything you want, but that doesn’t mean the state can’t restrict you from acting on those beliefs (that is, belief and action are two different things and the latter is subject to state regulation/prohibition).
In particular, the Church has to sit down and negotiate the health insurance benefits with the insurance company, what they will and won’t cover, and thus directly has to face the question and hand over funds.
Yes, but the funds they are handing over are being paid to the insurance company, not to anyone providing actual medical services. And if it is a requirement by law that the covered services include certain things, there is no question to face regarding covering those things, assuming you are going to provide insurance in the first place.
Besides that, I’d like to know if a single Catholic is required by the law to use birth control – or if any church is required to run a hospital, or provide health insurance at all to anyone. (Well, I do know these things – just rhetorical.)
Not that you didn’t already write this, Ugh:
It really does come down to the government saying “if” you want to do X (or obtain benefit Z), “then” you have to do Y.
I’m not exactly arguing with you here.
Let’s not pretend there is a bright line here. There isn’t.
The problem is that the line keeps moving. And for some reason, it always focuses on women and their health and well-being.
First, pharmacists could refuse to dispense contraception if it offended their moral beliefs. Then, they could refuse even to direct the customer to another pharmacy that would fill their prescription. What’s next, the morals police? I will not permit you to impose upon my beliefs, but I surely will impose mine on others.
I meant religious notions!
No, birth control is not part of women’s health.
A claim that is so utterly and astoundingly wrong that it leaves this reader speechless. Thankfully, my fingers still work a bit 😉
Good job as usual, Doc.
Sapient touched on this above, but this link gives the states that already require, to varying degrees, contraception services:
http://www.guttmacher.org/statecenter/spibs/spib_ICC.pdf
Andrew Sullivan quoted Frum:
Republicans are not proposing to allow employers and plans to refuse to cover blood transfusions if they conscientiously object to them (although there are religious groups that do). Or vaccinations (although there are individuals who conscientiously object to those as well). Or medicines derived from animal experimentation. (Ditto.)
No, Marco Rubio’s Religious Freedom Restoration bill provides for one conscientious exemption only: contraception and sterilization. Which means it will be very hard if not impossible to persuade the target audience that this debate is not in fact about contraception. Everybody quite sure that’s a wise debate to have?
I feel reminded too of the debate about legal employee discrimination on ‘moral’ or religious grounds. Over here there were cases where for example catholic (but public*) kindergartens fired teachers (not necessarily a catholic one!) for violating catholic teachings in her private life (like using contraception, remarrying after a divorce etc.). Those cases went to court but I do not remember what the current legal situation is. I know that in job interviews certain questions are illegal (e.g. asking about pregnancy unless the job poses specific health risks). Could an employer in the US legally make use of contraptives a firing offense? Retroactively too?
In case of taxes the topic is clear. Noone can legally refuse to pay taxes because the state uses part of the revenue for purposes morally repugnant to the individual taxpayer.**
*i.e. not reserved for catholic children only
**but there would of course be an uproar of protest should the state introduce a special designated tax to fund certain things. That’s the reason for ‘general’ taxes that don’t state where the money is going to go.
HSH: I’m not exactly arguing with you [Ugh] here.
Absolutely, the liberal circular firing squad only operates on Mondays, Wednesdays and, of course, Sundays.
Speaking of which, the Obama Administration is already signaling that they’re going to back down or “compromise” on the contraception point (and Joe Biden was on the radio this morning in DC saying the same thing).
Between this and the disgusting Plan B decision, along with the other associated awfulness of the administration in other areas (many directly contrary to candidate Obama’s expressed views), I’m considering throwing in the towel because at the least the GOP has a track record of doing sh1t that benefits me directly, even though they tend to screw everything else up.
The problem is that the line keeps moving. And for some reason, it always focuses on women and their health and well-being.
yes, it does. but i feel compelled to point out that contraception is an important matter to men, as well. while the consequences of unprotected sex for women are obviously far greater for women, they are not insignificant for men, either. an unplanned child will change a man’s life, too (as will a planned child).
making the Catholic insurance issue all about Catholics v. women seems to needlessly leave men out of the discussion.
cleek, although I agree with you that contraception is a men’s issue as well, contraception directly affects a woman’s physical health. Pregnancy is a health risk that women can prevent with medication (unless they wish to bear a child). High blood pressure is a health risk that people can prevent with medication.
People (example: McKinney) need to learn that it’s not just a matter of women’s psychological health or life circumstances (although those things are implicated too). It’s about women’s physical well-being.
Yeah, I noticed that other potential religious “concience” objections have been utterly ignored. Only contraception and abortion seem to matter. Gosh, I wonder why.
The upside, as I see it, even if Obama caves (again), is that in the long run the Church is screwed on this topic. They actually lost a while ago, and this is just the hierarchy raging against that decades-old defeat. Their own flock totally ignores them on this issue, and they know it.
Ah, well, whatever it takes to pass the time between kiddie fiddling, I guess…
although I agree with you that contraception is a men’s issue as well, contraception directly affects a woman’s physical health.
right. hence “…while the consequences of unprotected sex for women are obviously far greater for women…”
but my point is that making a discussion about contraception strictly about women seems to deliberately leave some persuasive points out of the discussion. contraception isn’t just about women: a child changes the father’s life, too.
It *is not* the responsibility of the population at large to accommodate those beliefs at every point at which they come into conflict with the mainstream of public life.
It is the responsibility of people who hold strong positions of conscience to figure out how to live in such a way that they neither violate their conscience, or the law.
This is exactly the polar opposite of why we have a constitution. We do protect minority viewpoints and beliefs, especially those we don’t agree with.
Long before there was health insurance or birth control, there were religions. We have an express constitutional provision for protecting religions. As an offshoot of that provision, for example, a famous boxer was able to avoid military service because of a deeply held religious conviction against taking the life of another. Liberals cheered this decision. At least, back then.
But, to turn this argument back against Russell, suppose a majority of country were to vote (1) that abortion as a means of birth control is illegal or (2) gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry. Would you defer to the majority view? I think not.
The debate here is being framed along several different lines.
1. The Catholic Church is trying to force its beliefs on others. Really? Seems to me, the RCC’s beliefs and position on birth control and abortion well predated mandatory insurance mandating birth control. Rather than the RCC imposing anything on anyone, it is just the opposite.
Gov’t and its supporters are compelling a religious body to act in violation of long standing and widely known beliefs. As a footnote, when the HRC debate, such as it was, took place, the Obama administration feinted in the direction of accommodating religious views, which was essential to passing that 2500 page melange of gov’t mandates.
I will not permit you to impose upon my beliefs, but I surely will impose mine on others.
Exactly, although I am sure Debbie doesn’t appreciate the irony of her statement.
2. Birth Control is part of women’s health. No, it is birth control. In specific instances, where pregnancy poses an elevated risk of harm to a women, it is a health issue. Where the pill is used for therapeutic reasons separate and apart from birth control, it is a health issue, but that is not the debate nor is it the issue now being debated. It is straight up contraception as a mandatory part of a mandated insurance program.
3. 98% of Catholic women practice birth control. So what? Other than completely contradicting the bizarre notion that there is some sizable group, other than the RCC hierarchy, that has a secret agenda for controlling women’s bodies and sexual activity in general (good luck there, sex controllers, that battle was lost thousands of years ago), this simply shows, assuming its true, that the legitimacy within the Church of that doctrine is nil. That’s their business, not mine and not anyone else’s.
4. The RCC is motivated by intolerance. As if the progressive left is bending over backward to tolerate opposing views. Please. Does no one here not appreciate the irony of the state compelling someone to do something they fundamentally disagree with?
5. If the RCC was consistent, it would restrict how its members spend their money. Well, it does, indirectly. If someone chooses to be Catholic, they sign on to a lot of beliefs that, while they seem odd to me, require confession and absolution in order to be in communion with Christ, which is the, as I understand it, basic goal of the Church. I’m Episcopalian, so the rules I consent to are much less demanding. But, again, membership in the RCC is voluntary and it’s not may place to tell them how to run their business.
Abortion is, for the left, simply a facet of birth control. I’m fine with paying for birth control as a part of my firm’s insurance program, for several reasons: first and foremost, it’s a lot cheaper for me if my female employees don’t get pregnant and, second, I am fine with birth control.
I am not fine with paying, directly or indirectly, the cost of elective abortion. I can’t prevent others from doing what they will with their own money. I do like having a bit of a say-so with how my money is spent.
So, I have a dog in this conscience fight and so does everyone else who opposes elective abortion, as many, many people do. People who tell me I have no choice in the matter (“choice” being the operative word) will get just as much push back from me as I get from them.
People (example: McKinney) need to learn that it’s not just a matter of women’s psychological health or life circumstances (although those things are implicated too). It’s about women’s physical well-being.
And Sapient and others need to learn that, in America, not everyone agrees with every premise of what the left thinks is good policy. There are limited instances in which the disagreement is fundamental and in which there are competing constitutional and societal interests. The automatic default is not, in every instance, the left’s policy preferences. Or, the left’s views on what is or is not a woman’s health issue.
The burden of not compelling employers to fund either birth control or abortion is not so great as to justify the compulsion that the left finds so easy to impose.
Your view of “women’s health” is pretty damn narrow, McTex.
Anyway, so businesses owned by the Jehovah’s witnesses should not have to pay for insurance that covers blood transfusions, right? Organizations run by anti-vaccine nuts shouldn’t have to pay for plans that cover vaccination, right? And so on and so forth… until…
Where is the line drawn? When does a religious objection become unacceptable to you? I’m sure there is a line – we all draw it somewhere – but where is yours?
By the way, it’s not even clear to me that an insurance plan that covers contraception would be more expensive than one that does not (wouldn’t it actually be more expensive, given the cost of pregnancy?), so the argument that the Church doesn’t want to pay $$ for such a plan is something I’m struggling with, just as a practical matter.
For twelve years, all the way thru the Bush administration, this was not an issue. Suddenly in an election year when the Republicans as usual cannot afford to talk about the real issues this faux-outrage faux-victimization pretense of protecting religous freedom comes flying out of nowhere and R politicians who haven’t given a shit about it in twelve years are suddenly all full of concern.
It’s all partisan bullshit. The Rethug pols and opinion leaders will hyperventilate about it for another week and then its on to the next “issue”. Anything to keep the discussion away from how their tax cuts for the rich caused most of the deficit, or their systematic nation wide union busting or their plans to gut Medicaid and turnMedicare into an underfunded voucher program Anything to avoid discussing their lack of a jobs program and their love affair with the only people whose interests they really represent: Wall Streeters.
It is not a issue at all. It’s a con game for suckers.
This is exactly the polar opposite of why we have a constitution. We do protect minority viewpoints and beliefs, especially those we don’t agree with.
Not to the extent of allowing people to ignore generally applicable laws, we don’t.
We have an express constitutional provision for protecting religions. As an offshoot of that provision, for example, a famous boxer was able to avoid military service because of a deeply held religious conviction against taking the life of another. Liberals cheered this decision. At least, back then.
And did that decision cost him anything, or have any real-world consequence?
So, I have a dog in this conscience fight and so does everyone else who opposes elective abortion, as many, many people do. People who tell me I have no choice in the matter (“choice” being the operative word) will get just as much push back from me as I get from them.
Replace “elective abortion” with “death penalty” in this sentence, and then maybe sit back and think about it for a little while.
And also think about the David Frum quote above — why are no other religions being accommodated on “matters of conscience,” just Catholics and contraception? (And, again, ABORTION IS NOT AT ISSUE HERE.)
And also think about other laws that religious groups have claimed don’t apply to them like the Muslim cab drivers and Orthodox Jewish bus drivers I linked to above.
Why is *this issue* for *this one group of people* so extra super special that it gets to be treated differently from anything else? (And, again, ABORTION IS NOT AT ISSUE HERE.)
Also, I object to paying taxes for bombing people (even our own citizens) on the other side of the world. Conscientiously! Deduct that from my tax bill, please.
Oh, wait, I can’t do that? TYRANNY!
We all end up contributing to things we object to. Welcome to real life.
I note the RCC hierarchy has been rather quiet about various other things our government has done that seem to violate their core beliefs. Where was the RCC’s brave moral stand against the invasion of Iraq? Or the Libyan adventure? Where was their meltdown over the Bush torture regime (too much like the inquisition, I guess?)?
I call bullshit.
Seems to me, the RCC’s beliefs and position on birth control and abortion well predated mandatory insurance mandating birth control.
Who is mandating birth control? No one, not one single person, is compelled by the law to use birth control. This is horsesh1t. No one is even forced to provide health insurance. Pay the 2 grand per employee and be on your way, if that’s where your conscience takes you.
Freedom of religion – how you worship, what church you go to, what you believe, and how you, in your personal life, behave is, within certain reasonable limitation, up to you. This madate does not change that. Not one single Catholic is required to use birth control, and not one single Catholic is required to advocate for that use.
The Church, through its various extended endeavors, just isn’t allowed to restrict others (employees, Catholic or otherwise – individual human beings who can act according to their consciences) access to birth control by denying them insurance coverage.
They can teach their adherents whatever they like regarding birth control, and their adherents can follow those teachings if they so choose. AFAIAC, that’s freedom of religion, in whole.
McTx: We have an express constitutional provision for protecting religions. As an offshoot of that provision, for example, a famous boxer was able to avoid military service because of a deeply held religious conviction against taking the life of another.
Assuming you’re referring to Muhammed Ali and Clay v. United States, if wikipedia is to be believed, you’re misstating the grounds upon which Ali/Clay’s conviction was reversed by SCOTUS (technical errors by the Justice Department). And, upon an admittedly brief search, it doesn’t appear that the conscientious objector exception is somehow constitutionally mandated (though I guess you did say “offshoot”), or that it is limited to religious beliefs.
Gov’t and its supporters are compelling a religious body to act in violation of long standing and widely known beliefs.
Whether a hospital or charity, as opposed to a house of worship, is a “religious body” is part of what is at issue. Further, SCOTUS has already ruled in Smith (as I note above) that even in cases where people are doing things in pursuit of their religion and nothing more, the government can step in and stop them (or force them to do things like register for the draft). To wit, “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.”
Does no one here not appreciate the irony of the state compelling someone to do something they fundamentally disagree with?
The state is not compelling the Catholic Church, for example, to operate hospitals, or charities, or generally employ people for compensation.
Not to pile on, or anything, McKinney. 🙂
And the Catholic Church is not a “someone.” Catholics are someones, and they don’t have to use birth control if they don’t want to.
Where is the line drawn? When does a religious objection become unacceptable to you? I’m sure there is a line – we all draw it somewhere – but where is yours?
I draw it at birth control because the next step is abortion. Blood transfusions are not, in the vast majority of cases if not every case, a discrete, stand-alone medical procedure. One doesn’t go to the pharmacy and get a pint of blood or drop in for an outpatient visit for some hemoglobin. I do agree that a line has to be drawn somewhere.
For twelve years, all the way thru the Bush administration, this was not an issue.
Correct. It was not. There was no federally mandated insurance.
It is not a issue at all. It’s a con game for suckers.
Well, that settles that. Thanks for clarifying. I turn over my king.
Replace “elective abortion” with “death penalty” in this sentence, and then maybe sit back and think about it for a little while.
You are being asked to directly fund ‘death penalty’? Or compelled as a juror to impose it? I think not.
Why is *this issue* for *this one group of people* so extra super special that it gets to be treated differently from anything else? (And, again, ABORTION IS NOT AT ISSUE HERE.)
Because it is a fundamental tenet of their faith, which is well known, longstanding, etc. Because we do protect conscience, constitutionally. Because the burden of requiring women to pay for that aspect of their coverage is not so onerous as to justify setting aside the constitution.
And, just like Obama’s feint toward religious accommodation pre-passage of HRC, it is absolutely about abortion. That is the next, inevitable step. Your assurances to the contrary are of zero comfort.
McTx: Correct. It was not. There was no federally mandated insurance.
Well there’s this story, which I assume Laura is referring to above, and it does note that:
In December 2000, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruled that companies that provided prescription drugs to their employees but didn’t provide birth control were in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents discrimination on the basis of sex. That opinion, which the George W. Bush administration did nothing to alter or withdraw when it took office the next month, is still in effect today—and because it relies on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, it applies to all employers with 15 or more employees. Employers that don’t offer prescription coverage or don’t offer insurance at all are exempt, because they treat men and women equally—but under the EEOC’s interpretation of the law, you can’t offer other preventative care coverage without offering birth control coverage, too.
So perhaps there’s an “out” there that doesn’t exist anymore under the Affordable Care Act and/or the new reg, but somehow I find it hard to believe that all the Catholic operated hospitals and charities in the country either didn’t offer health insurance at all or, if they did, none of them offered prescription drug benefits.
Which is not to say that that makes the Obama Administration’s rule fine and dandy/constitutional on a “but you did it too” theory; however, it does seem add some useful context to the current outrage from those on the right (though not you in particular, McKinney).
I draw it at birth control because the next step is abortion.
Not if used properly, it isn’t. Also, so what?
You are being asked to directly fund ‘death penalty’? Or compelled as a juror to impose it? I think not.
What do you think the portion of my Ohio state taxes that funds its penal system is for? (Also, if I state in voir dire for a capital case that I categorically reject the use of the death penalty, I will be voir dired right the hell out the door, and you know it. In effect, holding the belief I do is a bar to jury service.)
Because it is a fundamental tenet of their faith, which is well known, longstanding, etc.
So are all the other cases cited in this thread, and none of them get a “Get Out Of Following The Law Free” card.
Because the burden of requiring women to pay for that aspect of their coverage is not so onerous as to justify setting aside the constitution.
Says you. Argument by assertion.
The Church is now saying they don’t want a broader exception for religious institutions; they want the mandate removed, period. Including for private employers with no religious affiliation, because the owners might be Catholic.
I’d love it if the end result were public single-payer funding of contraception coverage, but of course that won’t fly either because it offends the religious sensibilities of taxpayers.
(Like when we force Quakers to fund the military. Actually, I looked into this, and some Quakers have an interesting thing going where they refuse to pay that part of their tax and instead put it in an escrow account that the government can access if they say they’re using it peacefully. The government, of course, takes a dim view of the whole thing, and in practice what happens is that the money gets returned when the IRS levies their assets. But Quakers aren’t a large enough bloc to do more than that. Anyway, it’s interesting that they’d be satisfied with the government promising to spend the money on peaceful purposes, instead of complaining that it wouldn’t matter anyway because money is fungible.)
“The state is not compelling the Catholic Church, for example, to operate hospitals, or charities, or generally employ people for compensation.”
and
“And the Catholic Church is not a “someone.””
This is the very essence of the astounding policy shift. The only thing thatt a Catholic can do as a religious activty is go to church. This doesn’t agree with any view of religious charities (including nonprofit hospitals) I have evr heard. It is ridiculous, these institutions are the heart of the support systeem for the poor and downtrodden in our society. It is where the poor go for help. Now the government says that, BECAUSE it is where the poor go for help then the state gets to tell them what to provide. for once Krauthammer gets it right
Great hypothetical from Jonathan Zasloff at the RBC:
if Bob Jones University opened a restaurant and decided not to serve Blacks, should they be exempt from civil rights laws if they say that their religion requires it?
God dammit Marty, don’t make me go read Krauthamer…
if Bob Jones University opened a restaurant and decided not to serve Blacks, should they be exempt from civil rights laws if they say that their religion requires it?
Yes!
/Rand_Paul
…The administration just announced a different way out, which is interesting: if the employer announces a religious objection to providing contraception coverage, it’s on the insurance company to provide it.
I don’t suppose that will be satisfactory either, since after all people with religious objections to contraception own stock in insurance companies. But pushback on that will be more like the “pharmacists’ rights” movement to restrict things at the pharmacy counter, with the idea that I can claim to be a general secular provider of health services and then selectively deny them on religious grounds.
The only thing thatt a Catholic can do as a religious activty is go to church.
No. They can do all sorts of things, but they can’t expect special carve-outs from the law. Add up all the special carve-outs that one might want, depending on the tenets of his or her religion, and you have no law to speak of, except maybe for athiests and agnostics.
Again: They can teach their adherents whatever they like regarding birth control, and their adherents can follow those teachings if they so choose. AFAIAC, that’s freedom of religion, in whole.
Also, too, again: Who is mandating birth control? No one, not one single person, is compelled by the law to use birth control.
I’d say, if people don’t want the government to say that, they should stop trying to tear down nonreligious support systems for the poor.
“See Rachel Maddow’s Amish bus driver rule. (An Amish person can apply for a job as a bus driver, and he can’t be discriminated against in hiring, but if he gets the job, he has to drive the bus. If the Catholic Church wants to be an employer and offer health insurance, it has to offer contraception, because that’s part of women’s health.)”
I think this is a particularly bad analogy for this case. The history of Catholic hospitals and health care providers in most places is along these lines: they provided/provide health care for poor people in places where the poor people were not getting health care. These Catholic institutions did the best they could with limited funding and semi-volunteer staffing. Various arms of the US government wanted more poor people being served in such areas, but didn’t want to put down the serious funds to start new fully publicly owned hospitals. So they provided funds to the Catholic hospitals so that the hospitals could expand their services and provided reimbursement for the costs of providing for some of the poor people being served.
I’m not a big fan of the Catholic church AT ALL, but comparing the situation where they are already providing a service and the government tries to get them to expand that service so that the government doesn’t have to with a situation where the government already provides a job and the Catholics apply for it, is deeply misleading.
As for the “they already do it in X states” argument, this seems to me to be a failure of reporting one way or another, and I can’t tell which way. I’m pretty sure that states like New York offer exemptions for things like Catholic charity organizations. But in any case real reporters could be looking into why the Catholic church is ok with the NY law but not the new Obama regulation. As I say, *I strongly suspect* that it is because they offer exemptions. If so, that would be worth reporting. If not, it would be worth reporting on why they are causing a stink now, when they have been dealing with it for years in New York. If only there were a big assembly of high profile reporters in New York that were capable of looking into something like that. It really is too bad that there isn’t a high profile newspaper or something there that could do reporting like that.
if the employer announces a religious objection to providing contraception coverage, it’s on the insurance company to provide it.
well that seems rather silly.
employers will just scream that, since nobody pays premiums a la carte, some percentage of its premiums must going to fund the insurance company’s purchase of contraceptives.
…but thanks for the reminder of why I don’t read him, now that I’ve finished the column.
And the argument that the Church might choose to close hospitals and no longer serve the poor has nothing to do with the Constitution. That’s a practical matter, and maybe one that isn’t completely irrelevant. But let’s not get this things mixed up with one another.
On the other hand, let’s not pretend that hospitals aren’t large institutions, as opposed to, say, bananas or grains of rice, which don’t tend to displace one another in a way that much matters. You don’t like one, grab another.
There are only going to be so many hospitals for a given area or a given population, so Catholic hospitals, which might deny services to patients or benefits to employeees, are displacing those who will provide those services and benefits. And that makes life harder for the people who might need those services and benefits.
You are being asked to directly fund ‘death penalty’? Or compelled as a juror to impose it? I think not.
What the hell?
Tax dollars fund the death penalty (in states that have the DP). So yes, he helps fund the DP. Just like I helped fund the invasion of Iraq (or rather will fund it, once taxes are eventually raised to pay for debt created by the war). Just like you helped fund the Stimulus.
If your argument is that this funding is indirect, well so would the RCC’s funding of contraception (via a group insurance plan that covers contraception if – and only if – the employee – who may or may not be Catholic – wants/needs contraceptives).
Also, “compelled to impose the DP” is a poor analogy, since no one is compelling Catholics to use birth control. They are being asked to provide health insurance that includes coverage for contraceptives if they run something like a hospital (as opposed to a Church, seminary, etc).
@cleek: Yeah, I don’t expect this is over. But I think the point of the compromise is to try to push opponents of the mandate back into a position that is more and more like saying: on the basis of religious freedom, I reserve the right to prevent other people from getting contraception, full stop.
But in any case real reporters could be looking into why the Catholic church is ok with the NY law but not the new Obama regulation. As I say, *I strongly suspect* that it is because they offer exemptions. If so, that would be worth reporting. If not, it would be worth reporting on why they are causing a stink now, when they have been dealing with it for years in New York. If only there were a big assembly of high profile reporters in New York that were capable of looking into something like that. It really is too bad that there isn’t a high profile newspaper or something there that could do reporting like that.
This is so on the money it isn’t even funny, and also, once again, displaces the myth of the “liberal media,” since you’d think they’d be jumping at any chance to rescue the administration’s bacon, denigrate the Church, or both.
it would be worth reporting on why they are causing a stink now,
One wonders, doesn’t one?
Seriously! The media isn’t liberal. The media is lazy. [yes, I’m aware that some conservatives think these are the same]
” are displacing those who will provide those services and benefits.”
There are legitimate cocerns that in some places there are few hospitals. That is pretty irrelevant. If the Catholic church chooses to open a hospital there it is a good thing. Otherwise, there is plenty of hospital competition and, in most healthcare jobs, lots of competition for labor. Like every other benefit package in the world, people have the opportunity to compare it as part of their overall comp package.
Of course, the part that amazes me is the complete confusion in the discussion between being required to provide it, and required to insure it.
For those people who actually have a job at a Catholic hospital and would have the insurance it seems silly to say that they can’t get contraception. Even if it is not covered. Really? Catholic hospital workers wouldn’t be able to figure out where to get contraception?
For those people who actually have a job at a Catholic hospital and would have the insurance it seems silly to say that they can’t get contraception. Even if it is not covered. Really? Catholic hospital workers wouldn’t be able to figure out where to get contraception?
You know, the coverage of contraception wasn’t dreamed up as a way to make the Catholic Church do stuff it doesn’t like. It’s about an effective health-care system where people can afford the care they need, particularly when that care will prevent the need for far more expensive care in the future.
Why is it that the choices the Church has to make under the mandate are so much more important that the choices everyone else would have to make without it? (Just go work somewhere else, a..hole!)
If the Catholic church chooses to open a hospital there it is a good thing.
Apparently, not as good a thing as someone else opening a hospital. (At least not if Planned Parenthood isn’t next door.)
So right after here, I was reading Kevin Drum and got referred to a blog I’ve heard about but never read: the daily howler. And he has a similar complaint but with more facts. First, the quip about the state laws seems to have mysteriously shrunk from 28 states to 8 states. So fact checking seems to have winnowed it down already (which isn’t going to stop the 28 state quote from floating around forever at this point).
He highlights some loopholes in even the remaining states’ laws. But in this case my intuition on the matter looks very likely to be vindicated. There is pretty much no way that the Catholic church has been quietly paying for contraception in 28 states but only now decides to fight it. In 20 of those states they appear to have an explicit exemption. In at least some of the remaining 8 states there seem to be easy work arounds. I go so far as to guess that in none of the states there has been enforcement.
So, I’d say it is looking like the widely circulated claim that the Catholic church has already been largely doing this, is flat out wrong.
McKinney: Birth Control is part of women’s health. No, it is birth control. In specific instances, where pregnancy poses an elevated risk of harm to a women, it is a health issue.
This is factually wrong. Pregnancy always poses an elevated risk of harm to women. Always. Read what avedis said, and think for a moment why insurance companies are anxious to cover contraception. Because pregnancy itself is a health risk. Nobody can predict whether she will have, say, gestational diabetes, pregnancy related high blood pressure, ectopic pregnancy. These things happen because of the fertilization of a woman’s eggs. This isn’t a “leftist” issue. It’s a medical fact. (Or maybe another instance of the “left” being reality-based.)
Some women choose to take the risk of pregnancy in order to produce children. Most women (including 98% of Catholic women) choose to avoid pregnancy for some periods of time during their fertile years by using birth control. The people who are concern trolling this issue are Catholic men and Republicans who oppose the ACA.
I realize that the only person arguing that contraception is not a women’s health issue is McKinney. He’s unlikely to change his mind from any evidence I present. He, instead, refuses to talk about the evidence, preferring to say that contraception is a “choice”, while ignoring that pain relief is also a “choice,” and preventive medicine for heart disease is a “choice” and being treated for cancer is also a “choice.”
Contraception lowers women’s mortality rates, as well as infant mortality rates.
This is the evidence. What’s your contrary evidence, McKinney?
This is exactly the polar opposite of why we have a constitution. We do protect minority viewpoints and beliefs, especially those we don’t agree with.
And I’m all for that.
And, I don’t think that the Catholic Church as an employer should be forced to do, or pay for, something they don’t support.
And, they have not been and will not be forced to do so.
IF they wish to provide health insurance as part of their compensation, which they ARE NOT required to do, then the requirement is (soon to be was) is that whatever health insurance plan they offer has to cover birth control expenses.
If they cannot do that in good conscience, their employees can purchase insurance on the private market. PPACA intends to establish exchanges to make that easier. It works not-too-badly here in MA.
If that puts the Catholic Church at a disadvantage as an employer, they can sweeten the pot by making up for it in other ways.
Time for them to get creative.
Is it a PITA? Yes it is.
Is it the responsibility of government to carefully craft its laws so that it is never inconvenient or anything less than a PITA for people with strong religious or moral convictions to act on those convictions without falling afoul of the law?
No, really it’s not. And it can’t be, because otherwise it would be plainly impossible to have any public law or policy touching on any issue that has any moral or ethical aspect, whatsoever.
Not least because different groups of people in this country have strong religious, moral, and ethical convictions that conflict with each other.
So lines get drawn, and folks figure out how to work within them.
It IS the obligation of our government to not prevent you from practicing your faith. It IS NOT the obligation of our government to ensure that it is never inconvenient or costly in any way for your to practice your faith.
Especially when honoring your convictions incurs a cost for someone else.
As it turns out, the Catholic Church will probably get a carve-out on this. Because they’re big enough to have their point of view carry weight. In other words, they can have an effective influence on electoral politics.
Not what they’re supposed to be doing, but when you’re one of the big dogs, you get your way more often than not.
Squeaky wheel gets the grease.
We’ll wait and see if all of the other folks who have strong religious, moral, and ethical convictions about any number of other public laws and policies get an equal hearing.
Because they’re big enough to have their point of view carry weight. In other words, they can have an effective influence on electoral politics.
Right. And it’s entirely possible that one might decide that it’s better in practical terms to give them a pass to keep their hospitals open, because that’s what the Church wants, not because the Constitution requires it.
I’d like to think there were other options. Maybe there aren’t.
But I’m putting this out there once again, and I might several more times so no one forgets: They can teach their adherents whatever they like regarding birth control, and their adherents can follow those teachings if they so choose. AFAIAC, that’s freedom of religion, in whole.
So Obama is on tv floating a semantic change to accomodate the Church.
Insurance companies have to provide it, the hospitals don’t have to pay extra for it in their insurance…….
hmmmm. We’ll see.
I suspect the pessimists are right: the RCC will smell blood and say that’s not good enough.
Developing…
“For those people who actually have a job at a Catholic hospital and would have the insurance it seems silly to say that they can’t get contraception.”
This seems like a valid point. Given the high demand for health care labor and assuming a free market, the workers will negotiate an extra bit of salary – what, $50 to $100 a month – so they can privately purchase contraceptives. The Catholic employers should be even more willing to pay the nominal extra salary because they should be saving approximately the same on the insurance premium given non-coverage.
The real issues here are: 1. Obama caving in to ridiculous pressure from religious fanatics and 2. The ridiculous beliefs of the religious fanatics that are completely out of touch with what the vast majority of its own adherants actually wants. 3. That in the 21st century some archaic supersticious – and arguably corrupt -belief system can disrupt progressive secular civil discourse.
The whole thing is insane and reaking of hypocrisey. Do catholic org.s really want their employees to be having like 12 children? Do they really want to pay for all those labor and delivery and neonate insurance claims? Do they really want to be stuck with all of the maternity leaves?
This was an excellent opportunity for Obama to put the church in its place and he failed; miserably.
Sebastian, reading the The Daily Howler piece that you linked to doesn’t challenge the facts in the paragraph that I provided earlier which says: “Twenty-eight states already require organizations that offer prescription insurance to cover contraception.” In other words, contraceptive pills are treated like any other prescription medication in those states. Do you have evidence of which Catholic institutions have opted out of providing prescription insurance because it violated their conscience?
I am not fine with paying, directly or indirectly, the cost of elective abortion. I can’t prevent others from doing what they will with their own money. I do like having a bit of a say-so with how my money is spent.
A question for you, McK:
Why is it your money?
You provide health insurance as part of the compensation that you offer your employees. What they do with that compensation is their business.
If your employee took some of the cash you paid them and procured an elective abortion, would you then argue that you shouldn’t be required to pay them in money? Or that you could put some limits or restrictions on what they spent the money on?
Whose health insurance is it?
Why is it that the choices the Church has to make under the mandate are so much more important that the choices everyone else would have to make without it? (Just go work somewhere else, a..hole!)
No, that is not the choice workers are faced with. The choice is: work for a company that declines to offer birth control/abortion coverage and pay for that yourself OR work elsewhere.
IF they wish to provide health insurance as part of their compensation, which they ARE NOT required to do, then the requirement is (soon to be was) is that whatever health insurance plan they offer has to cover birth control expenses.
If they cannot do that in good conscience, their employees can purchase insurance on the private market. PPACA intends to establish exchanges to make that easier. It works not-too-badly here in MA.
Russell, see my comment above. The fix is not complex or onerous. Rather than either provide insurance or not, simply allow insurance less birth control/abortion coverage and the employee can buy that rider separately.
I suppose another issue is whether an insurer can be forced, as a condition of doing business, to offer birth control/abortion coverage.
Is the left so intent on these coverages that they would rather there be no insurance than insurance that didn’t reach these two, discrete coverages.
Why is it your money?
You provide health insurance as part of the compensation that you offer your employees. What they do with that compensation is their business.
Here’s where the logic breaks down: I require my employees to have health insurance, either on the firm’s group policy or under their spouse’s policy. I don’t want the headache of an uninsured employee getting sick or being in an accident and my paying a lot of doctor and hospital bills (which I have done in the past). Those who are covered on a spouse’s plan get a slightly better deal on the salary side than those who are covered on my plan, but much less than the cost of insurance.
When it comes to health insurance, I don’t give my employees a choice–particularly at the non-professional level. Call it paternalism, I don’t care.
But, what we are talking about here is mandated insurance that would further mandate, eventually, abortion coverage. If I am mandated to buy that insurance, I am buying it with my money. I am not going to pay, directly or through mandated insurance coverage, for an elective abortion.
Employees are free to spend their money pretty much any way they want, including a legal abortion. The only exception that comes to mind is that I have terminated one employee with a drinking problem (at work) and who wouldn’t get help. Other than that, I can’t think of what else a hypothetical employee might do with their money that both legal and so offensive that I would terminate them.
McKinney: Birth Control is part of women’s health. No, it is birth control. In specific instances, where pregnancy poses an elevated risk of harm to a women, it is a health issue.
I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let this go. Pregnancy ALWAYS poses an elevated risk to women’s health. Pregnancy is risky. The link I provided includes risks to women with pre-existing health problems, as well as pregnancy issues that come up totally by surprise. Have you ever heard of a nonpregnant woman having gestational diabetes? No, because it’s a risk of pregnancy. How about pre-eclampsia? No, it happens because women are pregnant – it’s not predictable. How about a torn pelvic floor? Almost everyone has some pelvic floor problems – some temporary, some permanent.
So let’s, for now, ignore those and other “serious” possibilities, such as stroke. What about common morning sickness? Do you consider going to the doctor to get medical treatment when you’ve been throwing up for three months?
Lots of women endure these risks for the sake of bringing a child into the world. But to pretend that they aren’t health risks is an appalling lie.
Contraception lowers infant mortality rates: ” In countries where fewer than 10% of women use a modern contraceptive method (the pill, the injectable, the implant, the IUD, the condom or sterilization), the average infant mortality rate is 100 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 79 per 1,000 in countries where 10-29% of women use a method and 52 per 1,000 in countries where 30% or more do so (Chart A). As would be expected, given the high levels of infant mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa, contraceptive use is much lower there than in other regions; prevalence is below 10% is 16 countries and 5% or less in 10.” It also lowers maternal mortality rates. If defining contraception as a health care issue is “leftist,” it’s yet another instance where the left is reality-based.
McKinney: Birth Control is part of women’s health. No, it is birth control. In specific instances, where pregnancy poses an elevated risk of harm to a women, it is a health issue.
I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let this go. Pregnancy ALWAYS poses an elevated risk to women’s health. Pregnancy is risky. The link I provided includes risks to women with pre-existing health problems, as well as pregnancy issues that come up totally by surprise. Have you ever heard of a nonpregnant woman having gestational diabetes? No, because it’s a risk of pregnancy. How about pre-eclampsia? No, it happens because women are pregnant – it’s not predictable. How about a torn pelvic floor? Almost everyone has some pelvic floor problems – some temporary, some permanent.
So let’s, for now, ignore those and other “serious” possibilities, such as stroke. What about common morning sickness? Do you consider going to the doctor to get medical treatment when you’ve been throwing up for three months?
Lots of women endure these risks for the sake of bringing a child into the world. But to pretend that these aren’t health risks is an appalling lie.
(cont’d)
Contraception lowers infant mortality rates: ” In countries where fewer than 10% of women use a modern contraceptive method (the pill, the injectable, the implant, the IUD, the condom or sterilization), the average infant mortality rate is 100 deaths per 1,000 live births, compared with 79 per 1,000 in countries where 10-29% of women use a method and 52 per 1,000 in countries where 30% or more do so (Chart A). As would be expected, given the high levels of infant mortality in Sub-Saharan Africa, contraceptive use is much lower there than in other regions; prevalence is below 10% is 16 countries and 5% or less in 10.” It also lowers maternal mortality rates. If defining contraception as a health care issue is “leftist,” it’s yet another instance where the left is reality-based.
Rather than either provide insurance or not, simply allow insurance less birth control/abortion coverage and the employee can buy that rider separately.
Something akin to that is where it looks like it is going to land. Apparently, the insurance company will be required to provide the coverage and *not* charge the employer for it if the employer has a scruple about it.
It will be interesting to see how far that flies.
Is the left so intent on these coverages that they would rather there be no insurance than insurance that didn’t reach these two, discrete coverages.
I think “the left” is intent on people being able to go to the doctor and get whatever health care they require, without being horsed around by their employers.
I wish we would just get out of the business of having health insurance be provided by employers in the first place. It’s not a particularly good approach, for anyone involved. Another topic, no doubt.
I’m sympathetic to folks who find themselves uncomfortable with legal or other policy requirements on grounds of conscience.
What I’m not comfortable with are those folks dictating the terms under which other folks have to live.
The terms “cart” and “horse” come to mind.
And yes, employees of Catholic hospitals can buy the rider for themselves, but they’re not the folks who have the issue. They’re just the folks who are being asked to pay for it.
Long story short, I imagine this will all get sorted out in some way or other that everyone can find a way to live with. And, if so, that is a pretty good outcome, by my lights.
I just object to the “Obama / lefties / the government is oppressing people of faith” thing. It’s ridiculous.
And as a slightly OT editorial aside, if there is one religious community in this country that is by god not being oppressed, it is the Catholic Church.
I intended to provide a link in the 3:08 pm comment above, but it got lost: http://womenshealth.gov/pregnancy/you-are-pregnant/pregnancy-complications.cfm
Is the left so intent on these coverages that they would rather there be no insurance than insurance that didn’t reach these two, discrete coverages.
Going at bit past russell’s response’s including scare quotes, can we discuss what we as individuals think, since we’re all participating as individuals in this discussion on this blog, rather than asking people here to figure out what “the left” is intent on?
With that, what I’m intent on is not that there be no insurance. That’s not going to happen over this.
(I might as well ask if the right is so intent on Catholic-owned business not having to comply with the law when it causes religious objections, that they are willing generally to give Catholic doctrine priority over statute.)
Is the left so intent on these coverages that they would rather there be no insurance than insurance that didn’t reach these two, discrete coverages.
One other thing: The above is not a constitutional question about freedom of religion. It is purely a practical one, correct?
McTx: I suppose another issue is whether an insurer can be forced, as a condition of doing business, to offer birth control/abortion coverage.
Well quite clearly they can be, though perhaps that’s not what you meant by “issue.”
More generally McKinney, it seems to me that you’re arguing that requiring, e.g., a Catholic hospital to provide health insurance that covers contraception (or abortion, for that matter), is unconstitutional. Is that the case or are you arguing some more practical point?
Also, you state “I am not going to pay, directly or through mandated insurance coverage, for an elective abortion.” So, if the state of Texas required all employers to provide health insurance to employees that covered elective abortions, you’d…consider that unconstitutional as applied to you/your business? Move to another state? Just (genuinely) curious.
Is the left so intent on these coverages that they would rather there be no insurance than insurance that didn’t reach these two, discrete coverages.
Is the right so intent on treating contraception as different from all other health issues, including other sexual and reproductive health issues like erectile dysfunction, that this is the hill they want to die on?
I’m pretty sure the Republican party isn’t dying on the abortion issue. In fact it looks to me like it is one of the few issues on which it attracts people who might otherwise be much more open to the left. See especially Catholics.
Luckily for all involved, I didn’t say “abortion issue,” I said “contraception.”
But to pretend that these aren’t health risks is an appalling lie.
Henceforth, I will try to lie only minimally and in a non-appalling fashion. I don’t view a normal pregnancy as any more of a ‘health risk’ than driving a car, probably less, but I don’t have the numbers. If a woman is sufficiently concerned about getting pregnant, for health reasons, she has a number of remedies and options.
That said, a fair reading of my objections to this proposal are: (1) constitutional, (2) my general hostility to gov’t mandates (the least of my objections) and (3) abortion, which is the end game to all of this.
It is no secret that I would reverse Roe and return the matter to the states for elective abortion (not for health, rape or incest). I am not going to sit on the sidelines while stage one in making abortion funding a federally-mandated obligation is on the front burner.
I just object to the “Obama / lefties / the government is oppressing people of faith” thing. It’s ridiculous.
As, am I fairly sure, those on the RCC side and people like me, object to being as roundly disparaged because we don’t meekly bow our heads and submit.
Or, dismissed as opportunistic partisans, for example: “This whole controversy is a pile of partisan crap intended to give Republican candidates something to beat Obama over the head with.”
“Motive questioning” is a subset of mind reading. Just as Santorum, as one of many examples, simply cannot comprehend how important the right to contraception is to millions of Americans, too many on the left cannot comprehend (1) how little millions of Americans care to have to gov’t dictate to any church and (2) how strongly many Americans feel about elective abortion and how much more strongly they feel about being compelled to be a party, directly or one step removed, from that procedure. Some accommodation on these discrete topics is going to have to be made.
too many on the
leftright cannot comprehend . . . (2) how strongly many Americans feel aboutelective abortioncapital punishment and how much more strongly they feel about being compelled to be a party, directly or one step removed, from that procedure. Some accommodation on these discrete topics is going to have to be made.I don’t view a normal pregnancy as any more of a ‘health risk’ than driving a car, probably less, but I don’t have the numbers.
I gave you some numbers. And when someone’s not pregnant yet, she doesn’t know yet whether her pregnancy is “normal”. That’s why it’s a “risk”. But even a “normal” (again, ?) pregnancy has health effects, something that I tried to explain with the morning sickness example: not everyone wants to vomit for three months.
If a woman is sufficiently concerned about getting pregnant, for health reasons, she has a number of remedies and options.
Yes, she does! It’s called contraception, and under the Affordable Care Act, she can get it covered by insurance. Hooray for modern medicine!
MKTx: “Rather than either provide insurance or not, simply allow insurance less birth control/abortion coverage and the employee can buy that rider separately.”
Thus effectively giving their female employees a pay cut. Way to go.
Is that the case or are you arguing some more practical point?
It is both. If my 4:02 didn’t clear that up, let me know.
So, if the state of Texas required all employers to provide health insurance to employees that covered elective abortions, you’d…consider that unconstitutional as applied to you/your business? Move to another state? Just (genuinely) curious.
I would consider it unconstitutional, for sure. Move to another state? Probably not. Cut my practice back to just me: quite possibly. Fortunately, your hypo is about as unlikely as Phil supporting Santorum.
Is the right so intent on treating contraception as different from all other health issues, including other sexual and reproductive health issues like erectile dysfunction, that this is the hill they want to die on?
Probably. The right, as I see it (and I am not an authorized spokesperson, given my views on a number of subjects), values gov’t leaving churches alone quite highly, even if it is someone else’s church (not that this doesn’t produce its own set of contradictions). The right, as qualified above, is fine with employer-paid insurance, less so with mandates coming down from on high out of Washington, i.e. the small gov’t thing. Elective abortion opponents are adamantly opposed to being made a party to that procedure. I note that you are careful to couch this in terms of contraception. Having seen the Obama administration trick Catholic Dem congressmen into voting for HCR, I don’t view your limitation as having any long term meaning or reliability. The end game is abortion and your personal assurances give no comfort, as sincere as I am sure they are. So, is this the hill to die on? Yes, I would say so. Is the left equally willing to die on this hill?
[Me]–Is the left so intent on these coverages that they would rather there be no insurance than insurance that didn’t reach these two, discrete coverages.
[HSH]–One other thing: The above is not a constitutional question about freedom of religion. It is purely a practical one, correct?
It is both and it is also simply a matter of principle. Even if we didn’t have a 1St Amendment, I would oppose on principle, the feds telling any church that it had to violate a fundamental, long-standing and widely known tenet of its faith.
I believe it was Russell who suggested that the RCC could just not offer insurance. While that seems a pragmatic solution, it has constitutional infirmities and is wrong as a matter of principle. That solution chills the free exercise of religion and, as a matter of principle, imposing one quarter’s policy preferences on the entire country, regardless of burden created thereby, is contrary to my concept of freedom. And not just mine, I am fairly confident.
McTx: a fair reading of my objections to this proposal are: (1) constitutional,
But you don’t have a leg to stand on w.r.t. this point, at least not in the context of hospitals/charities run by religious organizations, unless you want to object to the SCOTUS jurisprudence (which would be fine, of course).
I mean, suppose a pillar of my religious doctrine mandates that the employees at my religiously run non-profit hospital have to walk a 40 foot high tight rope with no safety belt to go to the bathroom, but the OSHA regs state (effectively) that there must be a safety belt (or, gasp, no tight rope at all!) with no religious exception, is that regulation unconstitutional in your view?
“Motive questioning” is a subset of mind reading.
Fair enough.
For the record, my comment about the political use of this issue was not directed at you. And no worries, there are plenty of other folks who are only to happy to wear that cap.
Also for the record, as mentioned above I am more than sympathetic to folks who find it problematic to live out their personal convictions in a not-always-friendly social context.
At the risk of repeating myself, what I find objectionable is when those folks attempt to square their personal moral circles by making other people change *their* lives to accomodate them.
I can assure you I’ve been on both sides of that. It’s not always an easy tightrope to walk, but as far as I can tell it’s not intended to be.
If it was easy, we’d all be saints, wouldn’t we?
I would still be interested in your thoughts about why the money you spend to compensate your employees belongs to you, and not to them. I get that you, or anyone really, could have concerns about how that money is ultimately spent, but there’s only so far down that rabbit hole that you can go.
We all contribute to stuff that we find objectionable. The alternative is to become a hermit.
“….but I don’t have the numbers.”
That’s pretty damnned feeble coming from an attorney with a long record of scribbling on the internets. Google “health care risks of pregnancy” and dip into any one of over 22 million hits.
JHFC.
too many on the left [right] cannot comprehend . . . (2) how strongly many Americans feel about [elective abortion] capital punishment and how much more strongly they feel about being compelled to be a party, directly or one step removed, from that procedure. Some accommodation on these discrete topics is going to have to be made.
Cool. Let’s make a deal. Ohio citizens get to vote on whether there is capital punishment without judicial review by a federal court, and Texas citizens get to do the same on elective abortion. Any takers?
Thus effectively giving their female employees a pay cut. Way to go.
That would be female employees who elect to work for entities that opt out on conscience grounds. Yes. A women has the right to contraception. She does not have the right to compel what amounts to a conscientious objector to pay for it.
Because it is a fundamental tenet of their faith
Right up their with the Immaculate Conception and the Holy Trinity, eh? Somehow I doubt that very much.
McTx: It is both. If my 4:02 didn’t clear that up, let me know.
It did, thanks.
I would consider it unconstitutional, for sure. Move to another state? Probably not. Cut my practice back to just me: quite possibly. Fortunately, your hypo is about as unlikely as Phil supporting Santorum.
Unconstitutional applied generally, such as to your law practice or Apple Computer, or as applied to religious institutions (however defined)? If the former, under what theory?
I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong above in my objection to sapient/HSH’s distinction between employee compensation paid directly to employees who can do what they want with it, including procuring an “elective abortion” (to use your term), and employee compensation split between the employee and an insurance policy that covers elective abortions. As they note, it’s ultimately up to the employee to utilize the policy to procure an elective abortion, just as it is if they were given cash.
What is it about the latter that is so objectionable as compared to the former? Is it the collective aspect of insurance, i.e., it’s cheaper for 50 people to collectively purchase health insurance as part of the same plan than to do so separately, and thus through your business it’s now cheaper to procure an elective abortion than it otherwise would be?
IOW, I think you seem to be making a distinction based on some sort of “independent actor” between you/your business and the elective abortion, if that’s correct, I’m not sure why it’s any less applicable in the “health insurance policy that covers elective abortions” case than it is in the “employees use compensation to procure elective abortions” case.
But you don’t have a leg to stand on w.r.t. this point, at least not in the context of hospitals/charities run by religious organizations, unless you want to object to the SCOTUS jurisprudence (which would be fine, of course).
I mean, suppose a pillar of my religious doctrine mandates that the employees at my religiously run non-profit hospital have to walk a 40 foot high tight rope with no safety belt to go to the bathroom, but the OSHA regs state (effectively) that there must be a safety belt (or, gasp, no tight rope at all!) with no religious exception, is that regulation unconstitutional in your view?
From a constitutional perspective, you correctly identify the issue, or at least the friction point. If anyone wants to open a hospital, they are subject to the same rules, regulations, standards, etc. as any other hospital. That falls generally within the health/police power of the state. A religious objection, for example, to scrubbing prior to surgery doesn’t exempt that religion for standard hospital hygiene.
From my con law class, I vaguely recall a body of 1st amendment jurisprudence that defines in a very general way the indicia of ‘faith’ that is within the 1st amendment. That is, a person doesn’t have to be a member of a recognized church or religion to fall within the limited number of exceptions the SCt has created based on faith, such as conscientious objectors.
Opposition to birth control, and certainly opposition to abortion, fall easily within the broad constitutional definition of ‘faith.’
Your seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy, however, misses a key point. In your hypo, the ‘faith’ wants to compel non-practicioners to violate a value neutral statute by an act of commission for “religious” reasons that are so irrational as to fall outside even the very broad constitutional definition of ‘faith’.
Further, your hypo is the opposite of what we have been discussing. The RCC is not trying to compel, other than by doctrine, anyone to do anything. Rather, it is being compelled to perform an act that violates a fundamental tenet of its faith. The RCC is passive, in this sense, and the gov’t is active, demanding an act which violates conscience.
Declining to do something for all employees is not the same as requiring all employees to actively do something as a condition of employment. For example, non-religious employees of an RCC run hospital could not be required by their employer to attend mass, foregoe contraception or any number of other things.
I would still be interested in your thoughts about why the money you spend to compensate your employees belongs to you, and not to them. I get that you, or anyone really, could have concerns about how that money is ultimately spent, but there’s only so far down that rabbit hole that you can go.
It is my money until it gets to them, and, under current law, I don’t have to, in the sense that I am not legally required to, insure my employees. That is a voluntary decision on my part. If HRC in fact compels me to either buy insurance or pay a fine, and if the cost of insurance is less than the fine (I’ve heard it’s otherwise, which would be another really stupid feature of that 2500 page simplification of our overly complicated health care system, but that is for another day), then it is no longer a voluntary act by me, it’s a mandate. With my money.
She does not have the right to compel what amounts to a conscientious objector to pay for it.
And the conscientious objector has the prerogative of not providing health insurance as part of compensation.
The RCC IS NOT BEING FORCED BY LAW OR PUBLIC POLICY TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO BIRTH CONTROL.
It’s not.
You have a strong conviction about some moral or ethical principle? Live it out. But it’s not everybody else’s job to make that convenient for you.
But there is a world of difference between not bending the public policy that the other 99% of the world has to live with to suit your preferences, and “compelling” you to abandon your principles.
I’m curious to know how far you would be willing to take this. The number and variety of ways in which religious people are inconvenienced by public policy is pretty broad.
I am not legally required to, insure my employees. That is a voluntary decision on my part.
Thank you.
Unconstitutional applied generally, such as to your law practice or Apple Computer, or as applied to religious institutions (however defined)? If the former, under what theory?
Good question. In fact, so good that I reserve the right to amend,modify or retract some or all of what I’m going to throw out here. Yes, for the RCC, yes for McKinney & Cooper, No for Apple Computer.
Why, he asks.
Neither individuals nor private religious institutions should be compelled to violate their conscience in this instance. In the case of publicly traded entities, the ownership is so attenuated that there isn’t enough of an identifiable conscience present to violate.
I realize this is riddled with technical issues and contradictions, but it’s just too damn close to the cocktail hour at the end of a long week for me to do better.
IOW, I think you seem to be making a distinction based on some sort of “independent actor” between you/your business and the elective abortion, if that’s correct, I’m not sure why it’s any less applicable in the “health insurance policy that covers elective abortions” case than it is in the “employees use compensation to procure elective abortions” case.
Like I said, it’s getting late and it’s been a long week. However, if I understand correctly, you are saying: let McKinney opt out of paying for abortion coverage and give the savings on the reduced premium to his employees who can then buy that coverage if they choose?
I might be ok with that. Would you be ok with me giving all of my employees twice the amount of the savings in exchange for their written agreement not to buy abortion coverage?
Right up their with the Immaculate Conception and the Holy Trinity, eh? Somehow I doubt that very much.
Maybe. I can’t order someone else’s theological priorities, or second guess why they believe as they do.
That’s pretty damnned feeble coming from an attorney with a long record of scribbling on the internets.
I have a long record of scribbling here and nowhere else. I don’t have time to research much. I spend far more time here than I should. I try to shoot straight and qualify when I should be citing proof. That’s all.
And the conscientious objector has the prerogative of not providing health insurance as part of compensation.
And the flip side, is that you would tie conferring a very valuable benefit on employees to committing an act that violates, in a very significant way, the RCC’s faith.
Further, the intent is punish the RCC for its position by making it a less competitive and attractive employer.
Why this is particularly wrong is that it is the individual who decides whether to work at a RCC hospital or charity. Why not let the individual decide whether birth control coverage is such an important aspect of his/her life that he/she will forgo work at an RCC institution rather than do without? Why should the feds make that decision for not only the RCC, but for every citizen in the country?
I’m curious to know how far you would be willing to take this. The number and variety of ways in which religious people are inconvenienced by public policy is pretty broad.
Russell, I think it is just the opposite. Gov’t requires citizens to do very little that violates conscience, other than pay taxes. Gov’t doesn’t tell us where to live, where to work, what to do in our spare time, what to think, what to believe, who we sleep or associate with, and so on and so on.
What do you have in mind when you think of things the gov’t makes us do that run counter to our consciences?
Further, the intent is punish the RCC for its position by making it a less competitive and attractive employer.
No, I personally have no such intent, and I doubt anybody making this particular policy has any such intent.
The *intent* is to ensure that contraception is covered by health insurance. The kind of contraception in question is something you can only get from your doctor, which makes it health care. If it’s not covered, a lot of people who actually do need it, for any strength of the word “need” that is used in common conversation, will find it difficult to afford.
“Punishing the RCC” has nothing whatsoever to do with it.
The RCC, not the rest of us, have an issue with this. And that’s fine, we all have our own beliefs and convictions. But, it’s *their* issue, not the rest of ours, so it’s *their* hash to settle, not the rest of ours.
Don’t like the “don’t provide coverage” idea? Then they can get creative and come up with something else.
I personally actually have no problem with them, or anybody else, getting an exemption of some sort. Different constituencies make deals all the time regarding policy and legislation.
But what this is NOT is the government suppressing the free exercise of religion.
Gov’t requires citizens to do very little that violates conscience, other than pay taxes.
Actually IMO it’s more common than you would think.
A simple example, found after a minute of random googling.
Not a lot of Hasidim in TX? There are lots in NY.
If I can find an hour to go looking around, I’ll see if I can find more.
It’s not at all uncommon for a religious community to bump up against public laws and policies. We do our best to accommodate them, but sometimes doing so means making life that much more difficult for everybody else, so the burden falls on that community to adjust to the rest of us.
Or, you know, buy a bunch of land in Rockland County, set up their own little village, and tell the rest of the world to go to hell. Their choice.
The RCC is a big enough dog that they generally don’t have to go the separatist route. They get their way fairly often.
Lucky them.
Why should the feds make that decision for not only the RCC, but for every citizen in the country?
And seriously, just to ground this in reality:
NOBODY IS MAKING ANYBODY USE CONTRACEPTION.
The one and only requirement under discussion is whether insurance plans should be required to cover it as a medical expense, should any of their insureds decide to avail themselves of it.
These are not the same thing.
And what makes it “health care” as opposed to “a band aid” or “a box of cotton balls” is that, in the cases we’re talking about, you can’t get it other than through a physician.
Fortunately, your hypo is about as unlikely as Phil supporting Santorum.
Considering that he’d find himself on the losing end of a Reagan ’84 style landslide, I’m consdering sending him my next ten paychecks.
A simple example, found after a minute of random googling.
Well, not really. If the RCC was running hospitals that treated women only after all of the men had been treated, you might have a point. Nothing in the RCC’s position discriminates: no one gets contraception or sterilization services. The impact might be disparate, but the application is universal. Moreover, women are not treated differently or required to do something differently.
And seriously, just to ground this in reality:
NOBODY IS MAKING ANYBODY USE CONTRACEPTION.
The one and only requirement under discussion is whether insurance plans should be required to cover it as a medical expense, should any of their insureds decide to avail themselves of it.
I wasn’t very clear then. You say the RCC must either provide the full ride insurance or it won’t be allowed to provide any insurance. This is couched as a ‘choice’. Leaving aside the notion that this is in any appreciable way voluntary, what benefit, what good is served by the ‘all or none’ approach?
Clearly, the intent is to make ‘none’ such an unpalatable choice as to compel ‘all.’ If that is not the intent, then what is?
Yet, the ultimate decider could and should be people who work, or chose not to work, for an RCC institution. They can decide whether they want the coverage so badly that they will forgo work at an RCC institution.
I said nothing about making someone use contraception. Here is my question, again: Why not let the individual decide whether birth control coverage is such an important aspect of his/her life that he/she will forgo work at an RCC institution rather than do without? Why should the feds make that decision for not only the RCC, but for every citizen in the country?
And what makes it “health care” as opposed to “a band aid” or “a box of cotton balls” is that, in the cases we’re talking about, you can’t get it other than through a physician.
Also true for cosmetic surgery and IVF (is this covered? Seriously, my guess is ‘no’, but . . .). By this test anything a doctor does is covered. We can’t afford it, if that is the case.
Considering that he’d find himself on the losing end of a Reagan ’84 style landslide, I’m consdering sending him my next ten paychecks.
Fair point. He couldn’t win if California and New York seceded.
And what makes it “health care” as opposed to “a band aid” or “a box of cotton balls” is that, in the cases we’re talking about, you can’t get it other than through a physician.
Thank you, russell.
And I, for one, don’t mind that people don’t do extensive research to support their positions when they comment here (although it’s very welcome when they do). But to make supposedly factual assertions such as “normal pregnancy [is no more] of a ‘health risk’ than driving a car,” assertions that are at odds with common sense, requires a little bit of substantiation. I don’t know when “driving a car” had a special medical field devoted to it, whereas pregnancy has a field called “obstetrics.” I don’t know when car drivers were asked to pay monthly visits to a physician, whereas pregnant women do so, and do so at a more frequent rates during the last trimester, even in a “normal” pregnancy. I don’t know why it isn’t a given that women often suffer lifelong physical consequences (and sometimes death) from bearing children. The first thing most women do when they discover that they are pregnant is make a doctor’s appointment. The fact that pregnancy is a risk to women’s health is beyond dispute. Women used to die during childbirth at very high rates, and one of the reasons they don’t now is contraception. Contraception for high risk people, contraception to space children, contraception for women who have completed their families, contraception for people who have mental health issues, contraception for women who need to regulate their hormones so that they don’t bleed to death ….
I’m sorry to be stuck on this one point, but it seems to be a fundamental disagreement between people who are so worried about [male] Catholics’ employment sensibilities, and women who are responsible for their own health. This is truly disturbing. The only reason I’m even considering calming down is that I feel that women’s health has not been compromised today.
” If it’s not covered, a lot of people who actually do need it, for any strength of the word “need” that is used in common conversation, will find it difficult to afford.”
I keep going back to this. Are you actually contending that “a whole lot of people” that are employeed at Catholic hospitals and charities wont be able to afford it?
from here.
I figure most people would prefer getting the job with the rest of the health insurance and pay for their birth control.
I figure most people would prefer getting the job with the rest of the health insurance and pay for their birth control.
That might be true for some women, but under the ACA, people will be able to get insurance for themselves for reasonable cost. Some women, on principal, don’t want to have to pay extra for their birth control under a discriminatory plan. Even if Jim Crow personally benefitted me, maybe I’d go for Not Jim Crow.
cleek: but i feel compelled to point out that contraception is an important matter to men, as well.
If you say so, but I never hear any pro-lifers demanding that men keep their pants zipped or declaring that a man is headed to eternal damnation.
In fact, when an abortion protestor confronted me, I asked why his sign didn’t include the men who impregnated the women, and he said it was because the women let them in (his wording).
The first thing most women do when they discover that they are pregnant is make a doctor’s appointment.
Because they are worried about dying? Or because they are interested in prenatal care? I do a lot of personal injury work. Pregnancy is a lot harder on the baby than it is on the mom. Driving cars is a lot more dangerous than a normal pregnancy.
In 2004, there were 4,112,052 live births. Infant mortality was 679 per 100,000 live births or 27,920 stillborn babies. Maternal mortality rate? 12 per 100,000 live births, or 492. Out of a country of 300,000,000.
And you say women are taking the pill because they are afraid of dying in childbirth? Or morning sickness?
They don’t want to get pregnant. For plenty of valid reasons. That’s why my wife–and I am quite sure my daughter–took the pill.
Sapient, you write as if there is this vast number of women who very much want but cannot afford birth control, and who are suffering accordingly. Seriously? PP is pretty much everywhere, certainly in every large and most small to medium urban areas.
I am sure there are plenty of women who should be on birth control. I am quite confident most of these women fail to take the time to get to a doctor or a free clinic or PP and avail themselves of what is pretty damned available and for a very reasonable price. Probably a lot less than they pay for their cell phone.
I’m glad that you support Planned Parenthood, McKinney. But perhaps the salutary statistics you report about infant and maternal mortality in this country is that people can plan their families with contraception.
And, yes, people get prenatal care for both themselves and their potential babies. Trust me: if they’re not well, their babies won’t be. It’s called medicine.
Driving, on the other hand, is an inherently risky act. It’s a different story than a risky medical condition that can prevented with pills.
” If anyone wants to open a hospital, they are subject to the same rules, regulations, standards, etc. as any other hospital.”
This really irritates me in the context of this discussion.
The entire reason this is an issue is because Catholic hospitals were serving poor people’s health needs *BEFORE THE FREAKING GOVERNMENT BOTHERED TO DO IT*.
The whole reason it remains an issue is *the freaking government doesn’t want to pay to open up hospitals to serve those people*.
This isn’t a case of Catholics being pushy and forcing their way into a well served area that the government was covering just fine thank you very much.
The reason this is an issue at all is because the governments in question don’t want to have to pay to create hospitals to serve poor people. Catholic hospitals filled that need to the best of their ability. The government eventually (and usually MUCH later) decided to help SOME by reimbursing the Catholic hospitals for extending their service to still other poor people.
Yikes, I’m not even Catholic, but the whole frame of this discussion really pisses me off. This is exactly the reason why people think the government is pushy and ridiculous. Trying to do things like this is exactly what makes Democrats look ridiculous to anyone who has reservations about government busybodies. Catholic hospitals are *doing what the government doesn’t want to do*. Forcing them to offer contraception when it is pretty clearly against their beliefs while they are still doing you an enormous favor is just ridiculous.
Sebastian: “Catholic hospitals are *doing what the government doesn’t want to do*.”
No, actually, Sebastian, Catholic hospitals were doing what the government didn’t want to do. Catholics in the 1950’s and 1960’s (when I grew up in the Catholic church) had a very serious charitable mission. Now, not so much. It’s pretty much about hating on women and gay people.
I was baptized Catholic. I know about Catholics. There used to be some good in it [not enough to make up for the sexism, child abuse, etc., from a modern day perspective], but it’s not really there anymore. Don’t kid yourself.
“That might be true for some women, but under the ACA, people will be able to get insurance for themselves for reasonable cost.”
Really? You figure that some number beyond negligible will turn down employer paid insurance (at say 80%) and buy it themselves if that is a choice? Even if it doesn’t include contraception benefits?
I can see many employers ceasing to provide it, but I don’t see many people making that choice when the employer does offer to pay.
I can see many employers ceasing to provide it, but I don’t see many people making that choice when the employer does offer to pay.
I can’t see many employers ceasing to provide it when it costs $2000 per employee to opt out. I’m quite happy with the situation in that people who are truly conscientious objectors have some skin in the game and can object. Then, people who are employees can decide. A good balance.
Sapient I’m not sure what you’re trying to say about Catholics in general, but I’m making a very specific point–governments don’t want to have to pay to replace the Catholic hospitals that governments have been leaning on for fifty or more years.
Hypothetical: Christian Scientist employer decides to provide health insurance but refuses to cover treatments, paying only for checkups. Should that employer be allowed to do so? Discuss.
“governments don’t want to have to pay to replace the Catholic hospitals that governments have been leaning on for fifty or more years”
If “governments have been leaning on” Catholic hospitals, it’s time that people came clean. This is part of health care reform. Health care isn’t a charitable enterprise. In a developed, wealthy nation, it’s a proper role for government to insure that people obtain health care. The fact that government has “leaned on” Catholic hospitals, means that government hasn’t been carrying its share of the burden. More taxes; more government subsidized healthcare.
Yet, the ultimate decider could and should be people who work, or chose not to work, for an RCC institution. They can decide whether they want the coverage so badly that they will forgo work at an RCC institution.
I figure most people would prefer getting the job with the rest of the health insurance and pay for their birth control.
Fine with me. That’s their choice.
To reiterate yet again, here’s my point:
As a matter of public policy, the government of the United States would like to require that employers who provide health insurance to their employees ensure that those plans cover birth control.
Because birth control is a useful element of health care.
And I’m sure it’s not that hard for any of us here to make meaningful distinctions between birth control and cosmetic surgery. Can’t we? I thought so.
The RCC objects to this, because they don’t want to be in the position of funding something that includes something they don’t agree with. Which, as an aside, basically puts them in the same position as 99.999% of the people in the world. But I digress.
So, they would like that requirement removed.
Personally, I am not RCC, have nothing whatsoever to do with the RCC, do not receive any aspect of my health care from an RCC sponsored hospital, and in general am completely unaffected by anything the RCC says.
Gladly so.
So, I have no dog in this fight.
My *observation* is that their demand that the requirement be removed from the law amounts to a demand that EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE FREAKING WORLD assume the burden associated with them not wanting to fund, however indirectly, birth control.
To me, that’s more than a little f***ed up.
Every day, people with non-mainstream religious beliefs bump up against the law in some fashion or another.
In general, if that can be accommodated, that’s what we do. But if accommodating somebody’s odd religious quirk means that lots and lots of other people end up holding the bag, then maybe we don’t.
None of this amounts to religious bigotry. It amounts to getting along in a pluralistic society.
Which is what we happen to live in.
And for the record, if you’re a surgeon at an RCC hospital, $50 a month is noise. If you’re sweeping floors, not so much.
Sebastian: if you’re operating a hospital, even from the most laudable of motives, you are no longer operating purely in the world of religious faith and worship. You are engaging in the secular world.
All of which is fine, but if you are going to engage in the secular world, even from the most selfless and beneficient of motives, you still have to deal with that world on its own terms. You can’t demand that it bend to your preferences.
Or, you can, but the answer might be “no”.
As a practical matter, I don’t really give a crap either way if RCC hospitals offer insurance that covers birth control or not. There are, frankly, much bigger fish to fry here in the good old USA at the moment.
But what pisses *me* off is framing this as a matter of government oppression of religious faith and practice.
If a religious order wants to build houses and give them away, they still have to comply with building code. Even if they have some weird scruple about studs being 16″ on center.
If they want to cook food and give it away, the kitchen still has to comply with public health codes. Trust me on this.
And if they want to hire people to operate a hospital, they will still have to comply with all of the various rules and regulations that apply in that case.
Sunday’s a day of rest, but they don’t make all of the patients pack up and go home and Saturday night. Right?
So it’s time to give the religious self-pity thing a rest.
Trying to do things like this is exactly what makes Democrats look ridiculous to anyone who has reservations about government busybodies.
See, I’d think that would come more from, say, requiring women to get a transvaginal ultrasound and listen to a lecture on fetal development and be forced to listen to a heartbeat before getting an abortion, but then I am not possessed of the deep moral insights that conservatives and religious people are. Apparently.
Now matter how far I walk, that same damned mulberry bush is just to my right. (I just read through a good number of comments after being away for a while. It’s like being Bill Murray in a certain small town in Pennsylvania on a certain day in early February.)
/meta
“This is part of health care reform. Health care isn’t a charitable enterprise. In a developed, wealthy nation, it’s a proper role for government to insure that people obtain health care. The fact that government has “leaned on” Catholic hospitals, means that government hasn’t been carrying its share of the burden.”
So then just make your hospitals, don’t do some round about game to piss off the people currently running the hospitals your government won’t pay for.
“All of which is fine, but if you are going to engage in the secular world, even from the most selfless and beneficient of motives, you still have to deal with that world on its own terms. You can’t demand that it bend to your preferences.
Or, you can, but the answer might be “no”.”
Or maybe the answer is yes if enough people think that the government demand isn’t particularly necessary. Which apparently seems to be the case at the moment.
Btw, if it is so gosh darned important that ‘we’ provide contraception, why in the world don’t we just raise taxes and have the government provide the contraception? Isn’t forcing employers to do it kind of silly if we really deeply believe that it is some sort of public good? Why are we making *any* employer pay for it? And what about unemployed people? Aren’t they important enough to get it? Hell, maybe it is even MORE important that they get it. Right?
So darned important? No one would be talking about it at all without those funny-hatted bishops whining about it. It shouldn’t be a big deal.
May I just say:
Until “reasonable” people, “moderate” people, “polite” people — in short “nice” people –stop humoring the demented and respecting the ridiculous, this Groundhog Day will not end.
Religion is not the problem. Respect for religion is the problem. What a bunch of elderly gentlemen in cassocks (or saffron robes, or magic underwear) have to say about ANYTHING would become irrelevant if most people gave up their well-meaning tolerance for “faith.”
The professional religionists have a constitutional right to preach, and their flocks have every right to follow their preachments. But sensible people have an equal right to point at them and snicker. What sensible people lack is the GUMPTION to do that.
If you’re the sort of person who considers it unseemly to mock and ridicule the religious, you have only yourself to blame when the religious get uppity. If you’re the sort of person who can’t quite let go of a lingering faith in the supernatural, you have only yourself to blame when the politicians you elect defer to the purveyors of piety who you don’t. In short, if you’re either afraid or embarassed to be an open atheist, enjoy your Groundhog Day for a few more centuries.
Oh, and if you’re a divorced Catholic, or a contraceptive-using Catholic, or a gay Catholic, why in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster are you still a Catholic?
–TP
“No one would be talking about it at all without those funny-hatted bishops whining about it. It shouldn’t be a big deal.”
Really? Then why isn’t the government just providing contraception?
Because they came up with a perfectly reasonable solution within a larger framework that shouldn’t have been a big deal and wasn’t one until the electoral spoon of the race for the Republican nomination stirred the pot?
Not that I’m opposed to the govt providing contraception…
So then just make your hospitals, don’t do some round about game to piss off the people currently running the hospitals your government won’t pay for.
if it is so gosh darned important that ‘we’ provide contraception, why in the world don’t we just raise taxes and have the government provide the contraception? Isn’t forcing employers to do it kind of silly if we really deeply believe that it is some sort of public good? Why are we making *any* employer pay for it? And what about unemployed people? Aren’t they important enough to get it?
All good with me. More than all good with, maybe.
Then why isn’t the government just providing contraception?
Or, more realistically, why doesn’t the government simply provide a basic level of health insurance?
I think we all know the answer to that one.
maybe the answer is yes if enough people think that the government demand isn’t particularly necessary.
Also all good as far as I’m concerned. “Enough people think” ought to be how we make decisions about public policy.
What I don’t buy, in this particular case, is that the issue is a matter of religious liberty.
You don’t have to go too far down that rabbit hole before it becomes absurd.
Let’s stay close to topic with a real life example: THIS IS NOT A HYPOTHETICAL.
During my lifetime (at least some) catholic hospitals in the US had signs at their entrance informing pregnant women coming there to give birth that in case of birth complications the hospitals #1 priority would be the baptism (if need be inside the uterus) of the child EVEN IF THAT MEANT THAT THE WOMAN WOULD DIE. In other words, if given the unpleasant choice between saving the life of the mother and letting the child die unbaptized or to baptize the child (even if it dies seconds later) while letting the mother die, it would be the latter option without exception. If it was up to me anyone involved in such practices would be stripped of the right to practice medicine and get sued into the poorhouse and to the hot place below with their religion or conscience. And the ‘you have been warned’ signs would make no difference.
I do not know, whether this practice is still legal in the US. The Vatican changed its position in (iirc) 1982 making this optional instead of mandatory (while still considering it the better choice).
And just preempting an expected objection: There might not have been a choice to go to another hospital since the catholic one could well have been the only one within reach.
“Because they came up with a perfectly reasonable solution within a larger framework that shouldn’t have been a big deal and wasn’t one until the electoral spoon of the race for the Republican nomination stirred the pot?”
Of course, in the best groundhog day tradition this sentence uses “perfectly reasonable”. “they”, and “larger framework” to, probably unconsciously, avoid saying that the problem here is that the PPACA gave the director of HHS, one person, the right to change this law that is in place, for or against, in all fifty states by declaring an executive policy.
I can’t think of anything less reasonable, a worse definition of “they” or a “larger framework” more unconstitutional.
Really? Then why isn’t the government just providing contraception?
With the announcement of the “compromise” it appears we now have that policy. My thanks to the Roman Catholic Bishops for bringing this about.
I could have sworn the PPACA was passed by our elected representatives and signed into law by our elected president. It sounds like there was a “they” in there, and that “they” followed the process by which we make laws in this country, according to our constitution.
(You really can’t think of anything less reasonable? What about guys in funny hats protecting serial molesters?)
Ok, I don’t think it is reasonable. With little effort, covering all things I can think about, I do come up with a list of more unreasonable things pretty easily.
But this is on the list.
I guess I’m a little unclear on why folks think the (now defunct) ruling is bad.
Birth control shouldn’t be on the list of things that are required to be covered, because it’s not a significant part of health care, and it’s not terribly expensive to just buy it yourself?
Birth control shouldn’t be on the list because not everyone agrees that it should be available at all and they therefore shouldn’t be forced to pay for it?
Birth control shouldn’t be on the list because the RCC funds health insurance as part of operating hospitals and other non-church institutions and requiring them to fund birth control, however indirectly, transgresses their right to religious freedom?
The process by which birth control came to be on the list is inherently autocratic and unconstitutional?
Any federal regulation that requires people to fund or otherwise participate in things they don’t agree with, or find morally or ethically wrong, is illegitimate?
All of the above?
The arguments both pro and con are varied, that’s fine. I’m just trying to get a handle on what the actual problem is.
Russell,
You remember all the heated arguments about the Fugitive Slave Act, right? Good times. In my admittedly imperfect recollection, the basic issue was about the morality of slavery and those who believed slavery to be a moral abomination being “forced” by the federal government to return slaves to their masters arose from that basic disagreement.
Apparently, the morality of The Pill is still in doubt.
“Birth control shouldn’t be on the list because the RCC funds health insurance as part of operating hospitals and other non-church institutions and requiring them to fund birth control, however indirectly, transgresses their right to religious freedom?
The process by which birth control came to be on the list is inherently autocratic and unconstitutional?”
My take is that the redefinition of Catholic Hospitals as non-church institutions thus not eligible for the exemption from this requirement was autocratic and unconstitutional. Simple enough.
And as much as you hate this being described as a religious freedom issue, I hate, a word I don’t use much, this issue being compared to Jim Crow laws and The Fugitive Slave Act.
I also found your Sunday day of rest comparison a little out there. Have you been in a hospital over the weekend? Skeleton staff and you don’t get anything done except a few meals unless you are coding. That’s all hospitals, not just RCC.
My take is that the redefinition of Catholic Hospitals as non-church institutions thus not eligible for the exemption from this requirement was autocratic and unconstitutional. Simple enough.
There is a standard for defining institutions as religious or not. As there ought to be.
I’m sure the degree to which any given Catholic hospital is a church institution, or not, varies quite widely. We have to draw the line somewhere.
And yes, by ‘we’, I mean the bureaucrats in government whose job it is to implement the laws that Congress makes.
I have a longer post floating around in the ether, maybe it will show up, maybe it won’t.
Hospitals and churches are two different things, and lots of other things are not churches. I think that’s all that “non-church institutions” is meant to convey. Those things might be run by the Catholic Church (two capital C’s), but their churches are churches (small c’s), and their other stuff is other stuff.
While I’m at it, I’m putting this out there once again, and I might several more times so no one forgets: They can teach their adherents whatever they like regarding birth control, and their adherents can follow those teachings if they so choose. AFAIAC, that’s freedom of religion, in whole.
This whole thing is so far out of context from a religious-freedom standpoint that it makes my head spin. Catholics are free to be Catholics. And no one has to use birth control if they don’t want to.
FWIW, I can take some of what Sebastian wrote without too much trouble. The government is (or was) making an institution that is doing good work in an area where it’s needed and requiring (sort of) that institution to do something it doesn’t like (being anthropomorphic about it) on moral grounds, and the government is essentially doing so because of the good work that institution is doing.
Maybe that’s a bad idea. Maybe it’s bad politics. What it isn’t is unconstitutional as a violation of freedom of religion.
FWIW, I can take some of what Sebastian wrote without too much trouble.
Likewise. As well as what lots of others have written on this thread.
For the record, in case it’s of interest or use, here is the IRS regs on what can be considered religious or charitable organization for tax purposes.
What I note is that, while both religious and charitable orgs receive tax exemptions, the two categories are distinct. That is, religious organizations are not the same as charitable organizations. Even if the charitable organization is operated for religious reasons, and/or by a religious organization.
Charitable != religious. For purposes of law.
And yes I know that we’re talking about HHS, not the IRS. It’s an example. Humor me.
I don’t know where all of this is going to land, but it seems to me that operating a hospital can very arguably be a charitable activity, but is much less arguably a religious one.
YMMV.
If you say so,
yes, i do. and i’ll say it again, loudly: MEN CARE ABOUT REPRODUCTION TOO. THEY WANT TO HAVE A SAY IN SUCH THINGS. A CHILD CHANGES THEIR LIVES, TOO. THAT’S WHY CONTRACEPTION IS NOT A WOMEN-ONLY ISSUE.
“Birth control shouldn’t be on the list of things that are required to be covered, because it’s not a significant part of health care, and it’s not terribly expensive to just buy it yourself?”
I’d say that birth control doesn’t make sense from a health insurance perspective because it is a regular cost not an insurable cost (you can’t save money by insuring against a regular cost because it just jacks up the premiums by the amount of the cost since you are regularly using it). If the government wants to cover regular recurring cost items it should just pay for them. Laundering it through ‘insurance’ is a silly way to do it because it doesn’t really make sense through the insurance lens. (I.e. you shouldn’t buy ‘insurance’ for automobile oil changes because if you’re doing them right the ‘insurance’ ends up being exactly the same amount of money as the oil changes).
And the idea of having mandated employer ‘paid-for’ birth control is just silly anyway. What does employment have to do with birth control? Shouldn’t we have birth control for the unemployed too? It is just silly. The history of health care in the US is admittedly stupid, but do we really have to go out of our way to compound it? If Congress wants to pay for national birth control availability it should do so. It isn’t saving any money in the grand scheme of things by forcing insurance companies to do so, the only thing it saves is the *appearance* of having to pay for it. It is still paid for in a collective enough way that it might as well be ‘taxes’.
And it is the beginning of another rant, but it *feels* to me like more and more really important political decisions are being hidden behind bureaucratic ‘clarifications’. I hate hate hate when bureaucrats take the normal way of doing things, ‘clarify’ it away, and say “what? it has always been that way”. It is a deeply dishonest way of doing politics. If you want to make a big change, go through the political process. Don’t have a pet bureaucrat just pretend that you’re ‘clarifying’ an already existing rule.
I’d say that birth control doesn’t make sense from a health insurance perspective because it is a regular cost not an insurable cost (you can’t save money by insuring against a regular cost because it just jacks up the premiums by the amount of the cost since you are regularly using it).
Birth control is cheaper when purchased in bulk. Are you arguing that I would pay the say for viagra without insurance as the insurance company does?
Plus it spreads the cost to the other half of the population that can’t get pregnant, but generally causes it.
How is birth control different from immunizations or checkups where you know the wchedule and can plan for the cost?
There’s a lot more than half of the population that can’t get pregnant, but significantly less than half that can cause it. In any case, most women of child-bearing age don’t stay on birth control constantly, and it’s not always planned when they go on or off it.
I’d say this particular argument is a pretty bad one, even if I’m not opposed to government-provided contraception as an alternative.
So, RCC-affiliated organizations that employ people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs and that, as employers, provide health insurance plans that include prescription coverage must now include birth control pills under that coverage. This in compliance with an 11-year-old EEOC ruling. And now these employers no longer have to pay for this specific coverage – insurance carriers will pay the cost.
Why should the health insurance industry agree to do this? Because it, unlike some people, understands that birth control pills are cheaper and safer than prenatal care, obstetric and hospital services, and pregnancy-related health concerns (ectopic pregnancy, diabetes, pre-eclampsia, acute hemorrhage from spontaneous abortions and placental abruptions, etc.). And that birth control pills are prescribed to treat other medical conditions. It’s not as though health insurance plans haven’t already included birth control pills for the last decade or so, although often at a steeper co-pay or deductible than, let’s say, Viagra.
How expensive or not are birth control pills? This article provides some answers.
Since RCC-affiliated employers will no longer be required to act against their religious beliefs, now that birth control is strictly in the hands of the employee, her doctors, and the insurance carrier, the debate between religious freedom and a woman’s right to equally appropriate health care will go away, right? We all know the answer to that. Because it is and always has been more a matter of controlling women’s sexual and reproductive processes than one of a religious organization’s apparent freedom to tell other people what to do.
As a woman, I know that I am not an equal citizen under the law as long as my vagina, uterus, and Fallopian tubes are subject to other people’s religious beliefs and political ideology. Yeah, freedom!
One of my closest friends nearly died – and her baby did die – due to pre-eclampsia. The birth of a healthy daughter two years later could never remove her husband’s fear of losing his wife, and her own grief at losing her child. Two women of my acquaintance, from my childbirth class, died within a week after I gave birth to my second child. One died because of cerebral hemorrhage, the other from acute hemorrhaging with placental abruption. There are other possible costs, personal and financial. My firstborn died when four days old after a surgery to repair a serious heart defect. My third pregnancy ended when my four-month fetus died in utero, and I had to spend 24 hours in the hospital before and after “giving birth” to my son.
So I say to all those who assert that pregnancy is no big deal, or that birth control is not a “significant part of health care” that you should, please, Just. Shut. Up.
Because it is and always has been more a matter of controlling women’s sexual and reproductive processes than one of a religious organization’s apparent freedom to tell other people what to do.
While I’d say this always plays a big role, in the current situation it looks to me more like another excuse to attack Obama and the Dems. The purpose is to paint Obama as a tyrant, archenemy of religion (unless it is radical atheist Islam*), immoral, out-of-touch-with-the-American-people etc.
This is the crowd that claimed that universal healthcare was invented by Hitler in preparation for the Holocaust (and that Obama has the same intention), that Christians in the US are persecuted worse than under Stalin in the Soviet Union, that Obama is building a secret army of brainwashed youngsters…
These days the GOPsters attack the Dems for proposing stuff that in some cases they themselves proposed less than a month earlier. They don’t take yes for an answer. If suddenly Obama would propose making contraception illegal and abortion a capital offense, at least parts of the Right would do a 180° turn within 24 hours and accuse him of taking away inalienable rights. These guys want to abolish social security, medicare, medicaid etc. while at the same time claiming that Obama wants to take away the same programs from needy Americans. And they are successful, which does not increase my respect for the average US citizen. Oh yes, and Obama was also actually against getting Osama bin Laden with all credit belonging to Chain-Eye/Shrub and the waterboard (cf. Faux News this week).
Sorry for the rant (no actually not and I’d go further, if that would not violate the rules)
*no, that is not a mistake. It has become a meme in parts of the Right that Islam is not a religion (and thus not protected by the 1st amendment) and that radical secularists (=atheists) and radical Islamists have identical goals (and may actually be the same). Just as the Newt.
I don’think that leaving churches alone is a rightwing value. It’s an American value.
However what’s happened since Lee Atwood’s day is, in an attempt to broaden the Republican base, the R leadership decided to use controversial relgious issues as wedges in close elections. Often this fanning of flames was done cynically with no desire to actually accomplish anything. Remember family values, code for hating the gays? What R politicians ever tried to do anything real for families? And Terri Schiavo was really really important to Bush and the R’s in congress–until opinion polls showed that their grandstanding wasn’t working. Then suddenly she didn’t matter any more.
I think this flap about birth control is just another cynical dodge by the godbotherers. The effect of it might be to give to force non-Catholic women to either abide by Catholic standards or accept a de facto pay cut, which is hardly “leaving churches alone”. It’s more like expanding the power of one church.
I don’t really think the R politicians who are milking this controversy care if wha tthe result is since the only result they ever care about on any issue is how it effects the next election.
birth control doesn’t make sense from a health insurance perspective because it is a regular cost not an insurable cost
If I understand your point correctly, the same would be true of any prescription med that is taken on a regular basis. Which covers a lot of ground.
Perhaps I’ve misunderstood your point.
What does employment have to do with birth control? Shouldn’t we have birth control for the unemployed too?
Employment has the same relationship to prescription birth control meds as it does to every other form of medical product or service.
Which is to say, none inherently, but lots because of the way in which we deliver health services in this country.
Health insurance is available to unemployed people generally through one of COBRA, Medicaid, or Medicare.
If COBRA, coverage basically follows whatever plan you are continuing from your former employer.
If Medicaid, prescription birth control is covered.
If Medicare, it depends, it may or may not be covered under Part D. Medicare is primarily intended for folks over 65, so it’s a less relevant part of the package.
Look, here are the high points as to why prescription birth control is viewed as a part of health care, and why an insurer might cover it.
Prescription health care – birth control pills, etc. – are only available through a doctor. You can’t just go buy them at the pharmacy. So, they are basically like any other prescription med as far as that goes. And there is good reason for them to only be available by prescription, because there are potential health issues involved with taking them, so a doctor’s involvement is appropriate.
Being able to manage whether and when you have children has a strong correlation to the health and general medical outcomes for women and children. And, as cleek has repeatedly noted, this has implications for men as well. So from a basic preventative health / health management point of view, it is sensible to cover prescription birth control.
Not everyone approves of it, and nobody is required to use it. If an individual has no moral objection to it, and chooses to use it, then covering it makes it that much more likely that they will do so. Actuarily, it makes sense.
I get why the RCC is upset, and I’m not hostile to groups or individuals wanting to honor their private conscience. But laudable as it is for the RCC to sponsor or operate hospitals, employing medical staff is not exactly the same thing as practicing the Catholic religion.
What I see at the moment is that the RCC has been relieved of the burden of contributing in any way to birth control costs, and they still object. So, I am even less convinced that the issue is one of safeguarding their religious liberty.
IMVHO, they are simply against artificial birth control, and don’t want anyone, Catholic or not, to have access to it.
It’s not their privilege to make that decision.
Thank you, Dawn.
” think this flap about birth control is just another cynical dodge by the godbotherers. The effect of it might be to give to force non-Catholic women to either abide by Catholic standards or accept a de facto pay cut,”
Two points here.
First, this wasn’t a flap until the administration changed the rules. The R’s didn’t suddenly come out against something that had been in place. So, I don’t think it is a cynical attempt by either side, but if it was it would be the D’s creating an issue that didn’t exist.
And, second, because the rule would change what exists today, no one would be taking a pay cut by NOT changing it. Also, since,( I admit to assuming), many unmarried men and women past needing birth control are insured by the RCC, they would be taking a pay cut if their insurance went up due to the increased coverage.
So, in the overall discussion, I don’t see either of those as a particularly strong argument, either way.
First, this wasn’t a flap until the administration changed the rules. The R’s didn’t suddenly come out against something that had been in place. So, I don’t think it is a cynical attempt by either side, but if it was it would be the D’s creating an issue that didn’t exist.
I guess you haven’t been paying attention. Contraception coverage has been available from insurance companies that have offered prescription drug benefits under the law of most states. Plenty of other plans have provided it as well. The main significant change is that it’s part of ACA, which Republicans hate (although some of it was their idea) because a Democratic president and Congress passed it.
many unmarried men and women past needing birth control are insured by the RCC, they would be taking a pay cut if their insurance went up due to the increased coverage.
Again, not paying attention? Contraceptive coverage ends up reducing insurance costs because the costs of unintended pregnancies are much higher than the costs of providing contraception. Reducing costs for everyone, including people past fertility age.
It would be nice if people who “don’t have the facts” would at least read the facts presented in the comments.
Reply to 2 points:
1. This only became a flap when the bishop’s made it one. The administration’s policy flows logically from the thrust of the AHCA’s emphasis on preventative health care, cost control, and non-discrimination. There have been successive policies adopted since the Act’s passage that have led more or less inevitably to this policy. It was not simply made up from thin air.
2. Yes. Far better to preserve gender based pay discrimination? And really, we could reduce health insurance costs dramatically by simply excluding old people. After all, growing old and getting ill are just a part of life and are obviously not “an insurable cost”. Nobody forces you to grow old.
“It would be nice if people who “don’t have the facts” would at least read the facts presented in the comments.”
Neither of your points addressed what I said. The fact is that almost everywhere the Catholic hospitals DON’T include contraception coverage. If you add it, it costs more. The current uproar was caused by the Democrats trying to change it.
Your “facts” don’t address either of the very specific points I made.
Back to my youtube video.
“I guess you haven’t been paying attention. Contraception coverage has been available from insurance companies that have offered prescription drug benefits under the law of most states.”
And Catholic charity organizations have almost always been exempt because of the religious ramifications.
The Obama administration wanted to change that, and if we’re speculating on political motivations why not assume that they did so to give the Planned Parenthood lobby a win against the Catholic Church that they’ve been looking for for quite some time. When the Obama administration was discussing the national rule, Catholic organizations thought they had been told by the administration that the exemptions would continue.
From the NYT Religion Correspondent here
Now I’ll admit that Goodstein’s credibility may be low on this issue since she repeats the discredited “28 states” thing, but presuming that she actually talked to Dolan, she seems to be acting as a reporter.
So the evidence appears to show that the person who chose to make this a political issue was Obama, that he was specifically asked to continue the exemptions for the Catholic church, that he signaled Dolan that he was going to continue the exemptions, and then chose not to.
That looks like evidence of Obama choosing to make this a political issue, not ‘Republicans’.
And since when do we assume that Catholics are ‘Republicans’ anyway? That is very much inaccurate political line drawing. The Republican evangelical base is very mixed on contraception and Catholics have always been very strongly Democratic *except on the issue of abortion and contraception*.
2. Yes. Far better to preserve gender based pay discrimination? And really, we could reduce health insurance costs dramatically by simply excluding old people. After all, growing old and getting ill are just a part of life and are obviously not “an insurable cost”. Nobody forces you to grow old.
Ah, yes, the too-often ignored social costs of tolerating the
elderly lifestyle…
And Catholic charity organizations have almost always been exempt because of the religious ramifications.
And apparently they will be again. It appears the policy will be changed so that the RCC will not have to contribute a dime to birth control coverage.
But the bishops are still not happy. They want the requirement removed, no matter who is funding it.
Can I get my personal religious and moral convictions enshrined in public policy, too? Everybody will have to play by my rules.
Trust me, some serious changes will be msde.
Sound good to you?
The RCC is entitled to practice their faith, and to promote it if they wish to. They are not entitled to require everyone else to conform to their beliefs.
Actually, so far as I can tell, they are still paying it for it under the new ‘compromise’. They will be paying the insurance premium, the insurance carrier will be forced to provide birth control, and in no world I’m aware of will services provided by the insurer not be reflected in the premium.
“The RCC is entitled to practice their faith, and to promote it if they wish to. They are not entitled to require everyone else to conform to their beliefs.”
This is a valid general principle, that has no obvious application to this discussion.
In fact it is especially strange that you put it that way.
So far as I can tell, the only people attempting to require *everyone else* to conform to their beliefs are those who want *all* employers *without exception* to fund personal birth control.
It is a reversal of the facts to spin resisting that as an attempt to require everyone else to conform the the RCC beliefs.
It is a reversal of the facts to spin resisting that as an attempt to require everyone else to conform the the RCC beliefs.
And it is little more than clever but deceptive re-framing to put it as you do here. The RCC may not be attempting to force everyone to conform to their beliefs, but they are trying to make their beliefs the basis of public policy; they are attempting to make the law (to which everyone must conform) conform to their beliefs. They are stating that if they object to a law, the law needs to be revised; i.e., compatibility with RCC beliefs is a standard to which all laws must be held.
The whole shebang has been worth it to the adminstration, so that tehy could jump around and shout “IN YOUR FACE, BART STUPAK !!!” Hah! Here’s ur unitory president executive order now!!!
The RCC would like the requirement for health insurance to cover prescription birth control to be removed entirely. Because they think it is morally wrong.
So, to the degree that their position wins the day, the public policy that all of us live with will be changed to accommodate their convictions, regardless of whether the RCC is a party to the transaction in any way, shape, or form, or not.
Hence, my comment.
There is no scenario in which all employers without exception will be required to fund personal birth control. Exemptions for religious groups existed prior to the controversy, and would have persisted under the originally planned policy.
The only thing at issue is the scope of the exception, i.e., whether non-church institutions sponsored or operated by churches are considered ‘religious organizations’ for purposes of the law.
If you want to press the bishops’ argument – that no person anywhere should be required to contribute in any way to anything they have a religious objection to, or for that matter comply with any law or public policy they have a religious objection to, based on 1st Amendment protections of freedom of religion – feel free to do so, but that is going to lead us into some strange places. But if we’re going to go down that path, we all will need to get to play, not just the bishops.
If you want to sign up for that, I’m all for it.
From here:
The bishops will also renew their call for lawmakers to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” which would exempt both insurance providers and purchasers — and not just those who are religiously affiliated — from any mandate to cover items of services that is contrary to either’s “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
Splendid. I say, let’s have it. Except I want it to apply to everything – every federal law, mandate, and policy – not just health insurance requirements.
If my conscience tells me that any law or policy is morally askew, I claim an exemption. Not a civil disobedience, I am willing to go to jail if need be exemption, I mean a total carve out.
That law or policy, whatever it is, will simply not apply to me, because in my heart of hearts, I find it morally wrong. My conscience and my god tell me it’s wrong.
I am exempt.
Let’s go there.
Sebastian, as I pointed out, the “28 states thing” wasn’t discredited. Your source for the “discrediting” was discredited. And as to whether some conservative Republican disguised as a theologian or “archbishop” is “disappointed” or “feels betrayed:” meet House Speaker Boehner and Whip Eric Cantor or, perhaps, Mitch McConnell. They, I’m sure, will tell you the same thing, that they thought they explained just everything to President Obama, but still he came out with something that they didn’t like which, of course, turned everything into a betrayal, and thus a political issue.
Yeah, right. What a joke.
I’ll bet Catholic women aren’t going to buy it.
“The RCC would like the requirement for health insurance to cover prescription birth control to be removed entirely. Because they think it is morally wrong.”
And you would like it to cover everyone because you think it is morally right.
“The RCC may not be attempting to force everyone to conform to their beliefs, but they are trying to make their beliefs the basis of public policy”
Yes, and you are trying to make YOUR beliefs the basis of public policy.
I get that.
I just don’t understand how you don’t understand that.
The 28 states thing is at best a misunderstanding and at worst a ouright lie. There are no more than 8 states that don’t have explicit religious exemptions. And two of the jurisdictions specifically called out in the 28 states report (New York and DC) definitely exempted hospitals. So the talking point that Catholics are making a stink out something that they’ve been living with in 28 states is incorrect. It may not have been an intentional falsehood when originally stated, but it is clearly not true and should not be repeated as fact if you want to use actual facts instead of made up ones.
So far as I can tell, the only people attempting to require *everyone else* to conform to their beliefs are those who want *all* employers *without exception* to fund personal birth control.
Is a RC woman covered under such circumstances forced to use contraception?
Is the RC Church, as an institution, forced to provide health insurance as part of a wage package?
Is the RC Church forced to enter the secular business realm?
As they say, both the rich and the poor are free to sleep under bridges. I would ask the Catholic hierarchy to live their conscience….asking for the exemption tells me they are unwilling to do so.
“Is the RC Church forced to enter the secular business realm?”
No, they could close all their non-profit hospitals and the state could either spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding them, or let the poor people they have been serving for longer than you’ve been alive go unserved. WTF
Sebastian, maybe you could tell us which institutions in which states have had insurance companies that have supplied contraceptive coverage?
No, they could close all their non-profit hospitals and the state could either spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding them, or let the poor people they have been serving for longer than you’ve been alive go unserved. WTF
Or, they could do what most businesses do, and sell their assets, whereby the doctors, nurses, and administrative staff could work for a new employer.
Yes, and you are trying to make YOUR beliefs the basis of public policy.
My beliefs are based on the fact that people are more healthy when they have access to medical benefits. That’s a public policy issue. The “bishops'” belief is that women are sinners if they take contraceptives. That’s a religious belief. The United States allows public policy to be made on the basis of evidence of general welfare, not based on religious arguments.
Yes, and you are trying to make YOUR beliefs the basis of public policy.
I get that.
I just don’t understand how you don’t understand that.
Then you’re being willfully obtuse. OF COURSE public policy is based on the beliefs of members of the body politic. To claim otherwise, or rather to impute that I am doing so, is little more than condescending slight-of-hand to duck and weave around the fact that the RCC is saying that their beliefs should be a standard against which all laws must be measured, and that compromise is simply not an option; if a law does not conform with their beliefs, the law must be rescinded or exceptions must be introduced. They may not be, as you put it, “forcing [individual citizens] to conform to RCC beliefs”, but they are attempting to force legislators and judges to do so. I see very little distinction in the difference you touted so loudly.
Also, what russell said.
Sebastion, “The RCC would like the requirement for health insurance to cover prescription birth control to be removed entirely. Because they think it is morally wrong.” O.K so far.
But, “And you would like it to cover everyone because you think it is morally right.” not so fast. My reason for wanting everyone covered is because it is scientifically proven to improve women’s health and even to reduce abortions. It’s proven good public policy. It pays for itself in reduced health costs that would occur and do occur when contraception isn’t available. It’s not a moral argument. No one is required to use it(I repeat, I repeat). It is in the best interests of women, men and our health care system from a proven scientific point of view. It’s like requiring health insurers to provide free gym memberships because it keeps folks healthier. That is not a noral decision to require everyone to go work out. It is good science.
From Balloon Juice ( Balloon Juice has the link to the source)
“Not satisfied with President Obama’s new religious accommodation, Republicans will move forward with legislation by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that permits any employer to deny birth control coverage in their health insurance plans, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Sunday.
“If we end up having to try to overcome the President’s opposition by legislation, of course I’d be happy to support it, and intend to support it,” McConnell said. “We’ll be voting on that in the Senate and you can anticipate that that would happen as soon as possible”
I can just imagine the reaction of my female co workers if they had a de facto salary cut becaue some religious fanatic in a position of power decided that our insurance shouldn’t cover birth control. It isn’t the Democrats who are going to come out of this discussion looking stupid.
Oh, and I can’t wait for insurers who refuse to cover blood transfusions or provide insurance for people who eat meat or who are gay.
And you would like it to cover everyone because you think it is morally right.
I actually don’t have a strong moral, ethical, or religious feeling about whether prescription birth control should be required to be covered by health insurance plans, or not.
Nor do I have any personal stake in the matter, my wife and I are both too old for childbearing, and I don’t plan to sleep with anyone other than her, so birth control is a fairly academic topic for me, personally.
I think there are sound reasons from a public health perspective for birth control to be available to people who are of child bearing age, and who are interested in using it. And since, for our sins, we are lashed to the mast of employer-provided health insurance for the vast majority of people, it makes sense for me that HHS should require employers to include that as part of the standard mix of coverage offered as part of employee compensation.
I’m not saying it must be thus, or must not be thus. I’m simply saying it seems reasonable, and makes sense, to me. It seems like a basically sound thing for them to do.
I recognize that some people object to artificial birth control as a matter of religious principle, and I have no problem with that.
I also recognize that the RCC and other religious organizations are also, for various purposes, employers of secular people, and I recognize that the requirement puts them in a quandary. I frankly think it’s fine that the religious exemption has been extended to them in that capacity, however I would have also been fine had it not been, because they’re actually wearing a somewhat different hat when they act in that capacity.
What I think is utter crap is for the RCC bishops to insist that the requirement be removed completely, in all cases, because in their particular case it conflicts with their particular understanding of the will of god.
My reasons for thinking that is utter crap are primarily a matter of principle, but they are also strongly motivated by the plain practical clusterf**k that would ensue were we to make that degree of public leverage available, equally, to all religious, moral, and ethical persuasions.
As indeed we are, and ought to be, required to do, if we are not to be in the business of establishing religion.
Rastafarians, Santeros, snake-handling primitive Baptists. Fundamentalist Mormons, Odinist pagans, peyote eating native Americans.
The members of the St John Coltrane African Orthodox Church.
All of those who have been ordained, online, by the Universal Life Church.
They all get a seat at the table alongside the RCC bishops. They all get weigh in on what the HSS, or any other federal official or agency, rules. They all get weigh in on the legitimacy of any law or policy.
They all do, or none them do. Otherwise, we will indeed have a serious constitutional issue.
If it’s good for one, it’s gotta be good for all. Because otherwise you do, in fact, have state endorsement of one religion over another. Which is, as we all know, expressly disallowed.
If one gets to weigh in, they all do.
No, they could close all their non-profit hospitals and the state could either spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding them, or let the poor people they have been serving for longer than you’ve been alive go unserved. WTF
Besides being a beyond dumb argument (See sapient @ 7:33), I would be in deep awe and admiration if the Church shuttered their hospitals and let them sit unused to abide by their deeply felt moral obligations.
I challenge them to do so. Show me the depth of this absolute unwillingness to bend to the secular world on the basis of THIS PARTICULAR moral abomination. Show me.
I dare them.
“My reason for wanting everyone covered is because it is scientifically proven to improve women’s health and even to reduce abortions. It’s proven good public policy.”
It is scientifically proven that people can only get birth control from employer based health care? I’d be very surprised to hear that, I think I’ll need some studies.
Sapient’s solution assumes that they are for profit businesses, which they aren’t. Catholic hospitals aren’t easily replaceable. You may WISH they were, but they aren’t.
Sebastian, You stated that “we” want contaception to be available to women for moral reasons. I responded that it is for solid scientific reasons. You respond with why do employers have to provide it? WTF, indeed.
If you think the RCC is going to close the doors of their hospitals over this, I’d tell you that’s not very likely. However, assuming they would, that has nothing to do with the freedom of Catholics to practice their religion. No one has to advocate the use of contraception. No one has to use contraception. No one is barred from telling people that using contraception is a sin.
You may think that covering it isn’t relevant to access to it, but you’re probably wrong about that as it concerns some number of people, though not everyone, certainly. In any case, for some people, not covering it has the effect of restricting their choices. Somehow, though, giving individuals greater choice, for good reason as it concerns the effectiveness of our health system, is seen as forcing people to violate their religious convictions.
Whatever. We’re not getting anywhere with this.
Sapient’s solution assumes that they are for profit businesses, which they aren’t. Catholic hospitals aren’t easily replaceable. You may WISH they were, but they aren’t.
No, Sapient’s solution does not require that at all. Nonprofit organizations can and do own assets that they can sell to other nonprofits.
I don’t see the problem here. The Catholic church isn’t selling precious Vatican art and real estate in order to pay for indigent care; they don’t care enough about that issue. What they might be doing is fundraising from people with money who do care about indigent health care. But you know what? Those people will want to donate to hospitals that provide indigent health care regardless of whether those hospitals are affiliated with the RCC. We have lots of non-profit organizations that do tremendous good in this world and are not affiliated with the RCC.
You might have an argument if you wanted to claim that RCC hospitals provided significantly more indigent health care than their non-RCC competitors and that this care was funded disproportionately by people who were only willing to fund RCC organizations, but that seems frankly bizarre.
Sapient’s solution assumes that they are for profit businesses
As far as I can tell, it assumes no such thing.
We’re not getting anywhere with this.
Agree. I’d like to see a defender of the RCC answer Russell’s [repeated] question. So far, no takers.
There aren’t hundreds of organizations around that could take over the Catholic hospitals, there isn’t the hundreds of millions of dollars around to take over the Catholic hospitals, and there is a lot of non-transferable gift economy going on because of the Catholic hospitals.
I’m not Catholic. I don’t even like the Catholic church. But if is an unmitigated fantasy to think that anyone is in the position to just step into their shoes in the hospital world.
If it weren’t for the fact that you dislike the church so much, you should really be in awe of the massive scale of volunteerism put into the Catholic hospital systems.
“Sebastian, You stated that “we” want contaception to be available to women for moral reasons. I responded that it is for solid scientific reasons. You respond with why do employers have to provide it? WTF, indeed.”
You are cloaking yourself in science for a naked political attack. There is nothing whatsoever scientific about the need to force employers to pay for contraception. Not one shred of evidence has been marshaled to show that you need to do it through employers. In point of fact it is almost certainly NOT better done through employers. In point of second fact lots of people already get it through other means. In point of third fact lots of insurance didn’t cover it, yet strangely contraception is widely available.
There was no reason to slap the Catholic Charities in the face like this. There is no reason to attack their issues of conscience over this. No reason at all.
This is no economic gain in providing it that way. If you think spreading the cost around in a pool is great think how big the “whole freaking country pool” is. We aren’t even really saving taxes by forcing it on insurance, because they just raise the premium to cover it (and get to pad with profit on the way).
Don’t pretend this is just a policy issue. The policy for providing contraception is one issue. The policy for cramming it down ANY employer’s throats is another issue. The policy for cramming it down the throats of Catholic charities is another issue altogether.
You only have science for the first issue. You have bad policy making at best for the second. There is very little left but bigotry for third.
I know the Catholic Church isn’t popular. Hell, I really don’t like it.
But I don’t go out of my way to be mean to it and its members for no reason whatsoever either. There is no reason for it.
In other contexts you would call it by its name: bigotry.
I guess this is John Galt non-profits: All the people who provide the value working to help others will simply quit because they have additional coverage on thier insurance that does not cost them anything.
I suppose that is possible, but it seems unlikely.
The members of the St John Coltrane African Orthodox Church.
What about St.Vladimir (Putin)? 😉
Kristof’s latest may be of interest.
To understand the centrality of birth control, consider that every dollar that the United States government spends on family planning reduces Medicaid expenditures by $3.74, according to Guttmacher. Likewise, the National Business Group on Health estimated that it costs employers at least an extra 15 percent if they don’t cover contraception in their health plans.
It is scientifically proven that people can only get birth control from employer based health care? I’d be very surprised to hear that, I think I’ll need some studies.
If employer-based health care is the only kind of health care they can get, and they can’t afford birth control otherwise, then, yes, they can only get birth control from employer-based health care.
You know, I used to think the big, final, looming political problem with government-provided single-payer health care was that there was going to be a big fight over whether it would cover abortion. What I’m realizing now is that this is no obstacle to single-payer, since employer-provided health care has exactly the same political problem, and in fact it may well be worse in that case considering that we’re actually having this fight over birth control pills, and in fact this may be the thing that drives us to single payer.
this may be the thing that drives us to single payer.
Works for me.
Everybody is worried about big bad government kicking granny to the curb?
How are they going to like having everybody in the country that employs more than 50 people deciding what they will or will not allow in whatever health care they offer, based on their own personal religious persuasion.
Good times!
And Sebastian, you seem to be seeing all of this as some kind of big political FU from Obama to the Catholic Church.
Who knows, you could be right. I’m not a mind reader, but maybe you are.
But from the outside, what this looks like is HHS trying to get people access to health care coverage that they want and need, and the RCC saying no, if they don’t want it, nobody can have it.
Even *after* their specific concerns have been accommodated.
I sincerely do hope this whole stupid crapfest does tip us over to some kind of single payer model.
Yes, single payer universal health care is better then employer provided health care. If this is your issue, Sebastian, I’m with you. However, employer provided health care seems to be our only option unless you think Obama and congress were too timid in changing the health care system? You think Republicans will go for a single payer system, huh?
I had no idea the Obama administration invented employer-provided health insurance and made it the de facto standard in this country. How could they be so unscientific?
Btw, if it is so gosh darned important that ‘we’ provide contraception, why in the world don’t we just raise taxes and have the government provide the contraception? Isn’t forcing employers to do it kind of silly if we really deeply believe that it is some sort of public good? Why are we making *any* employer pay for it? And what about unemployed people? Aren’t they important enough to get it? Hell, maybe it is even MORE important that they get it. Right?
By all means, let us have a single-payer healthcare system and provide contraception to all. I’m in.
But we don’t do that because it was deemed too radical a change from the status quo. We don’t have a time machine, so we can’t go back ~70 years and chart a different course.
Col. Sanders: We’re in now, now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
Sanders: We missed it.
Helmet: When?
Sanders: Just now.
😉
Btw, if it is so gosh darned important that ‘we’ provide contraception, why in the world don’t we just raise taxes and have the government provide the contraception?
That would be awesome! Let’s do it! Are the Republicans in?
Just one clarification here – pharmacies provide contraception, not insurance companies, not employers and not (potentially) the government.
Why does that matter, if the money is ultimately coming from one of those entities?
It matters because neither the employer, nor the insurance company, nor (potentially) the government are involved in the exchange of said contraceptives at the behest of the individual who has decided for herself to use contraception.
“By all means, let us have a single-payer healthcare system and provide contraception to all.”
Contraception through insurance is a relatively new development (because it isn’t a normally insurable cost, it is a regular expenditure and you can’t save money by insuring it). Many insurance plans don’t cover it. So if the government wants to introduce a new plan of providing contraception, there is no reason whatsoever to ram it through the employer (sometimes) provided health care system. Far more efficient to just provide it directly.
You don’t have to fix everything to change something new that you’re doing.
It is silly to get bogged down in overall health care politics when all you want to do here is provide a new contraception service. This is typical of what Democrats do in trying to drag in everything instead of just fix the problem. And in this case they can’t even claim that they have to because of some maximally increased government efficiency in doing it that way. No one thinks employer-provided health care is ideal.
Contraception through insurance is a relatively new development (because it isn’t a normally insurable cost, it is a regular expenditure and you can’t save money by insuring it).
1. It’s been shown repeatedly on this very thread that, in fact, it does save insurance companies money to cover it since it’s cheaper than pregnancy and child care turn out to be. (BTW when you’re cribbing from Rick Santorum for talking points is generally considered a good time to re-assess your position.)
2. The lisinopril I take for blood pressure and the niacin I take for cholesterol, among other things, are also regular, non-insurable costs. Just like birth control, it’s cheaper to pay for those than for the costs that would result from me having a stroke or heart attack 10 years down the road.
3. What you’re really asking here is “Why should the entities that provide prescription drug coverage provide coverage for this prescription drug?”
4. I still want to see at least one person on the anti- side of this address russell’s question. When do, not just other religions, but people of particular conscience, get to play at this game? As a vegetarian and animal welfare proponent, I have very strong feelings of conscience on some of our laws and would like them changed posthaste.
Contraception through insurance is a relatively new development (because it isn’t a normally insurable cost, it is a regular expenditure and you can’t save money by insuring it).
Can you back that up? Even if you can’t save money on the contraception, the fact that more people will use it, among the insured ones for whom it is now covered, you can save on other costs from unintended pregancies (or ovarian cysts and such). And lot’s of covered drugs/treatments are regular in nature, some even moreso than contraception, so why is this so different?
I have a list!
1. It’s just dumb to cover contraception with insurance.
2. Making Catholic-run (non-church) institutions cover employees’ contraception is a violation of freedom of religion.
3. Even if it’s not a violation of freedom of religion, it’s still pissing the RCC off and they’re going to close their hospitals.
it isn’t a normally insurable cost, it is a regular expenditure and you can’t save money by insuring it
You have asserted this a few times here, but others have cited information to demonstrate that there is a financial benefit to insurance companies in covering birth control.
If you want to stand behind your assertion, you need to address the counterclaims.
there is no reason whatsoever to ram it through the employer (sometimes) provided health care system.
Yes, there is. The reason is that, unless you are very poor or over 65, the way you gain access to physician-provided health care is through employer-provided insurance.
Would that that were not so. Or, at least, not exclusively so. But it is so, and it’s not bloody likely to change anytime soon.
The alternative, I suppose, would be a nationwide system of federally funded and operated family planning clinics?
Which brings us to this:
Far more efficient to just provide it directly.
Yes, in the land of ponies and unicorns.
Perhaps you missed the last few years’ worth of debate about publicly provided health insurance and/or direct services.
Funding office visits so people could discuss end of life care with their physician was, of course, an exercise in eugenics. Very entertaining.
Just imagine how a proposal for federally funded family planning services would have been received.
Ack. My long comment got eaten somewhere.
“You have asserted this a few times here, but others have cited information to demonstrate that there is a financial benefit to insurance companies in covering birth control.”
But insuring against fixed costs is a financial detriment to the buyer of the insurance.
If I have to get an oil change each year at the cost of $39.99, how much will the annual premium to cover that cost?
$42 or so (5% or more for administrative costs and profit).
That is why you don’t buy insurance for fixed costs.
Which leaves redistributing the costs from the users to other people. (Pooling costs). That is fine too, but for things that we want absolutely all potential users to have in a very particular way, taxing, pooling and then spending happens to be a much better way of doing it because it a) has fewer costs, b) properly engages the political decision making process, and c) insulates conscientious objectors.
If you refuse to do that, you open up the conscientious objector problem much more than if you use the political process properly. You also lose much of the moral force of “neutral lawmaking”.
To steal directly from the comments of a CT post on a similar topic:
Even at times of war, we didn’t try to force the Quakers to shoot at people. And that was when at war.
If you refuse for whatever reason to go through the whole political process, it isn’t really fair to invoke the full protections of the democratic political process in your defense.
When you work to short circuit the political process by trying to force private actors to do your work for you, you open up the conscientious objector problem in a way that you wouldn’t have if you had actually taxed and funded.
But it is silly to complain that the conscientious objectors are objecting. You created this problem by not going through the proper process.
We all agree that conscientious objectors don’t get to whine that they don’t like everything their tax dollars get spent on. We SHOULD agree that they have a better case if the government mandates home security spending and forces you to buy equipment from Blackwater. If the government wants to ram Blackwater spending down conscientious objectors throats, it should tax and spend, not have a petty bureaucrat issue a clarifying opinion making people in the toy making business buy stuff from Blackwater.
When you work to short circuit the political process by trying to force private actors to do your work for you, you open up the conscientious objector problem in a way that you wouldn’t have if you had actually taxed and funded.
Really? So you think government funding for contraception wouldn’t be a problem for the same people complaining about insurance coverage? Or that it would somehow not be a “conscientious objector” problem, but some other sort of problem, and therefore wouldn’t matter?
And, guess what? Employer-provided insurance isn’t some new invention dreamed up by the political-process-short-circuit brigade.
We SHOULD agree that they have a better case if the government mandates home security spending and forces you to buy equipment from Blackwater.
This would be a great analogy is anyone was being forced to buy (or use) CONTRACEPTIVES. Now they’re not even being forced to buy the insurance coverage. But that’s not good enough.
If you refuse to do that
As far as I can tell, most folks on the sinister side are fine with doing stuff like this through public means.
So the “you” here is likely not referring to me, for folks who think like me.
As far as I can see, HHS is just trying to play the hand it’s been dealt.
“Really? So you think government funding for contraception wouldn’t be a problem for the same people complaining about insurance coverage?”
A problem? Maybe. But if you work it out through the normal political process you end up insulating a conscientious objector by:
engaging them in the process;
not forcing them to directly take the actions they don’t want to take;
and not forcing them to be involved in the action they don’t want to take.
It seems weird that you’re boxing yourself into a totally binary position where conscientious objectors are all either hyper-libertarians, or don’t exist. Many of the most obvious conscientious objectors were very communalist (Quakers, Amish, etc.) but still very attentive to conscientious objection.
If I have to get an oil change each year at the cost of $39.99, how much will the annual premium to cover that cost?
Also:
No, if there were such a thing as automotive maintenance insurance, the premium for oil changes might well be less than the actual cost of the oil changes.
It might be free.
Because insurers might run the numbers and find that giving you an oil change every 3 or 5K at $40 a pop was cheaper than an engine rebuild every 100K.
This particular dog of yours does not hunt, Seb. Just saying.
It seems weird that you’re boxing yourself into a totally binary position where conscientious objectors are all either hyper-libertarians, or don’t exist.
Nobody has a problem with conscientious objectors. Nor does anyone think COs exist only among hyper-libertarians.
First, we were talking about whether the long-standing religious exemption for funding birth control, or any other thing folks object to, applies when a religious institution is engaged in activities that, while charitable, are arguably not religious, and definitely don’t involve just religious people.
A potentially thorny question, certainly an interesting one.
The bishops have very kindly simplified the issue for us. Now we are discussing whether one person or group’s religious objection must be considered, and not just considered but enforced, in *all* cases.
The bishops want the requirement removed, period, for everyone, because they don’t like it. That’s their prerogative, but the rest of us are not obliged to accommodate them in situations that they are not even a party to, at all, in any way.
We left conscientious objection behind quite a while ago.
Sebastian, your theory would be more compelling if the Republicans were proposing a bill that amended the ACA by providing “fixed cost” items (such as blood pressure medicines, etc.) through a different channel (like for free at the doctor’s office). Of course, they’re not doing that. They have no interest in discussing how to make the ACA more cost effective. They just want to capitalize on a wedge issue. The bishops want to exploit the public’s belief in “free expression of religion” to deprive women of contraception.
“First, we were talking about whether the long-standing religious exemption for funding birth control, or any other thing folks object to, applies when a religious institution is engaged in activities that, while charitable, are arguably not religious, and definitely don’t involve just religious people.
A potentially thorny question, certainly an interesting one.
The bishops have very kindly simplified the issue for us.”
Why didn’t you say that the Obama administration very kindly simplified the issue for us with a resounding NO?
Why didn’t you say that the Obama administration very kindly simplified the issue for us with a resounding NO?
Because they didn’t.
It seems weird that you’re boxing yourself into a totally binary position where conscientious objectors are all either hyper-libertarians, or don’t exist. Many of the most obvious conscientious objectors were very communalist (Quakers, Amish, etc.) but still very attentive to conscientious objection.
It seems weird because it’s not happening. I’m not talking about conscientious objectors in the general case, so the box you’re talking about isn’t there.
We’re discussing a specific issue here, not whether or not there are any cases at all where conscientious objectors can be accommodated while still achieving some goal that might cause them problems, depending on the political process followed.
The bishops don’t give a sh1t about process or accommodation.
But insuring against fixed costs is a financial detriment to the buyer of the insurance.
If I have to get an oil change each year at the cost of $39.99…..
heh…a few observations:
(1.) You obviously don’t drive much, or somebody else is in charge of your auto maintenance (your chauffer?).
(2.) Fixed costs are those that do not rise or fall with output…how this applies to actual human beings is beyond me, unless you count births as “outputs”.
(3.) You can buy insurance for just about anything as long as somebody is fairly sure of the numbers (the actuarial work and analysis), but comparing health insurance to property insurance is going into some very strange world not inhabited by most human beings who, last I heard, do not assess each other as depreciating assets.
The bishops don’t give a sh1t about process or accommodation.
Yes. This. There is no evidence that the bishops would have responded differently if only we had asked them nicely.
Like I say….if this is such a big moral issue for them, let them close their hospitals. There is a great deal of charitable work elsewhere that could use the resources.
Contraception through insurance is a relatively new development (because it isn’t a normally insurable cost, it is a regular expenditure and you can’t save money by insuring it).
I believe that this is more because sexual liberation is a relatively new development.
“The bishops don’t give a sh1t about process or accommodation.”
That isn’t true at all. I already linked the NYT religion reporter who said that the bishops thought they already had an accommodation which is why they were so shocked to find out they didn’t.
“Because they didn’t.”
Yes, the Obama administration rule was that there was to be no accommodation. The even said they were sticking with no accommodation after the first few days of the firestorm, they only reversed after the big stink continued to be made. This whole thing started because they treated your “potentially thorny question” with a curt “we don’t care about it”. I don’t know how you can pretend that they were treating it as a potentially thorny question. What did they do to suggest that interpretation? So far as I can tell, they summarily announced the rule.
The accommodation they want is that the requirement be dropped for anyone, not just them, which means it isn’t accommodation at all, but capitulation.
“You obviously don’t drive much, or somebody else is in charge of your auto maintenance (your chauffer?)”
You are an ass. I paid $39.99 to the Honda dealership one month ago and drove the car there myself thank you very much. I have enormous debt from school (no daddy paying it), last year’s income was less than $20,000 and I was laid off almost three years ago. Furthermore the practice of law makes me want to scream, so I’ve downsized rather dramatically and I am often a director at a bridge club.
Thanks for caring so deeply about my financial situation.
What did they do to suggest that interpretation?
They changed the rule.
And for the record, I’m actually not here to defend or not defend Obama or HHS. They don’t get everything right.
What I’m not at all fine with is (a) folks claiming they’re being subjected to religious persecution if some law or policy conflicts with their personal convictions, and (b) the bishops, in this specific case, demanding that the policy be changed *for everyone* to suit their requirements.
Good luck with your financial situation Seb, no snark.
“They changed the rule.”
After the Church made a big stink.
Which you don’t approve of.
So without the big stink that you don’t approve of, the rule would have been that Catholic charities would have had to provide birth control. None of the thorny issues would have been dealt with.
Am I missing something here?
Am I missing something here?
Nope, you have it to the letter.
HHS made the rule. The bishops made a big stink. The rule was changed.
I actually don’t have a problem with any of the above.
I had a problem with them basing their big stink on claims of religious persecution, because IMO claiming that the Obama administration, or any American administration in my living memory, is hostile toward religion in general or toward the RCC in particular is plainly risible.
There is a huge difference between “you are not accommodating our conscience” and “you are hostile toward us and persecuting us”. Especially when the area in which they are not being accommodated is not specifically religious.
There are lots of people in this country other than Roman Catholics, and LOTS of people in this country other than Roman Catholic bishops. Those other people — including among others the huge number of Catholic women who use prescription birth control every day — have a stake in this issue also, and the feds are responsible to consider the interests of all parties concerned.
Shorter me: the members of the RCC hierarchy are not the only catfish in the sea. They are among the catfish, but they are not the only catfish.
I’m sure it was surprising and disappointing to them to have the policy come down in a way other than how they thought they had planned on, but to be perfectly frank I find it HIGHLY unlikely that the HHS ruling was directed at them, specifically.
Nobody’s picking on them. It’s a balancing act, and nobody wins them all.
Frankly, I can point you to lots and lots and lots of folks who only *wish* they could get on the news, throw a fit, and have public policy changed to suit their preferences. From where I sit, the RCC is actually in a pretty good situation. I don’t know WTF they are complaining about.
There are people in the world who actually are subject to religious persecution. The RCC, in this country, at this time, are not among them.
And, last but far from least, I continue to have a problem with them insisting that the rule be dropped for everyone, because *they* don’t like it. That is not their call to make, and they should stay the f*** out of it.
I think this is getting a bit heated, so I make this observation gingerly, but the cost of birth control pills is $15-$50 dollars a month, so that is $180-$600 dollars a year. Not precisely sure how this works out in the insurance (is it part of the deductible).
I share Russell’s sympathies for your financial situation, Seb. Money problems suck.
Thanks for caring so deeply about my financial situation.
You are welcome. But if you drive anywhere near the normal amount of miles put on by the average driver, you will add significantly to your financial woes if you don’t change the oil more regularly than “once a year”.
Take the advise for what it’s worth…but you’re the one who started calling commenters here (i.e., those as part of a larger community that disagrees with your position) bigots. My reply to that is unprintable.
LJ: The cost of contraception is not insignificant to those at or near the poverty level. Pandagon had a recent entry on this aspect of the issue. I recommend you check it out. Thank you.
Honda Civics come with a computerized oil monitor and are rated for normal to light use conditions at about 7500-10000 miles. I live in San Diego and drive mostly on the freeway–which is the epitome of light use conditions.
Maybe you could just S T F U.
I drive a Civic myself. I drive more miles/year than you do (good for you). I change the oil more than “annually”. The cost of the oil change is not a “fixed cost” by any stretch of the imagination. Those costs are directly rated to output (i.e., miles driven).
Have a nice day.
Even at times of war, we didn’t try to force the Quakers to shoot at people. And that was when at war.
Nobody has a problem with conscientious objectors.
The state may had not but the RCC did. Even after WW2 the RCC condemned conscientious objection to serve in the military and actively tried to prevent that right from becoming part of the new German constitution. During WW2 the church even applauded the execution of conscientious objectors in Germany from the pulpit. It took another generation (up to the 70ies) to drop that stance (with the grumbling and weasely reasoning that the church has to accept the individual conscience even if it was ‘objetively wrong’). That went down the memory hole since then (as so many 180° turns the church did).
And to think I got a ban warning way back on page 1 for implying that McKinneyTX doesn’t care much about physically intrusive abortion restrictions. We’ve since moved on to personal accusations of bigotry and “STFU” with nary a word from anyone.
We need Gary back to play impartial referee, frankly.
Maybe it’s time to wrap this thread.
And yes, Farber is missed, and not only for his willingness to play impartial referee.
Seb, best of luck, you have my wishes for a better year this year.
We need Gary back to play impartial referee, frankly.
I’m not sure this would help because the problem is structural. OW defines itself (in part) as a place where conservatives and liberals come together to discuss, but Seb is the only conservative front pager who shows up, so he can do whatever the hell he wants. No one with authority is going to call him on it because then he might disappear and we’d be back to a liberal only roster. That calls into question OW’s whole reason to be.
The point is, in practice, none of the rules apply to Seb anymore.
Woah, so me changing my Civic’s oil every 3750 miles is overkill? Granted, I often end up pushing it to more like 4k (which works out to 3 oil changes/year for me). Sounds like I could drop to 2x/yr.
Just so we are clear, there are countless threads that any conservative/moderate in these discussions gets called a bigot, explicitly and implicitly. So I am not going to support any accusation in reverse, but to say the rules don’t apply to Seb is just silly.
“Woah, so me changing my Civic’s oil every 3750 miles is overkill? Granted, I often end up pushing it to more like 4k (which works out to 3 oil changes/year for me). Sounds like I could drop to 2x/yr.”
I am not an automotive expert, I do drive my cars about 150k miles. I (for thirty years, really since the engine manufacturing technology improved) have changed my oil about every 30k miles. It is never burnt.
One of the funniest commercials I see on tv is one where they take the oil out of NYC cab after 10K miles and it is as “good as new”.
Changing your oil every 3500 miles is fine, and completely unnecessary.
My Fit has an indicator on the dash that tells you how much lifetime you’ve got remaining on your oil. I think the implied interval is something like 10,000 miles.
Now, this in itself is a hook to get you to go to Honda dealers to get your oil changed, since they know how to reset that dashboard gadget. But the dealer energetically pokes me via various channels to get an oil change after just a few thousand miles, in stark contrast to what the manufacturer actually recommends. It’s pretty comical.
…I also suspect that the perceived discrepancy in oil-change prices has to do with the amount of upselling providers generally try to do in the process, some of which is good maintenance and some of which is snake oil. A basic oil change is pretty cheap, but then there’s checking and topping off all the other fluids, filter changes, radiator flush, engine flush, transmission flush…
“The point is, in practice, none of the rules apply to Seb anymore.”
The point appears to be in practice, Turbulence, that so long as someone is on your side, they can play ad hom class insults (based purely on the fact that he is a conservative) against someone who almost certainly made less money than most of the rest of the liberal commentors here and has actually been living south of the poverty line for multiple years, and get not a single word from anyone on the liberal side.
So I guess woe is you that I didn’t just take that one right on the chin too. My bad.
I’m F@#$@ing lucky to still have a F!@#$@#ing car right now. My F!@$@#ing chauffeur indeed.
Oh for the love of god, I’m literally crying in anger and frustration over a stupid quip.
I clearly need to gain some perspective.
I clearly need to gain some perspective.
Well, we are violating the “never discuss politics or religion” rule in both ways on this thread, and usually do so in at least one most of the time on this blog generally. But, yeah, the intertubes just aren’t that important, really.
I’m not good at coming up with kind word of comfort, so I’ll repeat a joke that went over pretty well here a while back:
What did the Dali Lama say to the hot dog vendor?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Make me one with everything.
(Stay Zen, my friend….)
Sebastian – I hope your financial situation improves.
CCDG – interesting. It’s funny… when I first became responsible for maintenance of my own car I screwed up (went too long between services, tranny went screwy) and this resulted in me reforming my ways and making damn sure I get my car serviced regularly… apparently to the point of overkill.
I have noticed they’ve backed off to 3750 miles. They used to push for every 3000. Maybe I’ll adjust up to 5k. Still probably overkill, but less 🙂
I just go with synthetics, and at least 7500 miles between changes.
I clearly need to gain some perspective.
Hey Seb, you’ve been holding up your side of the argument almost single-handedly for a while. It’s easy for this stuff to get under your skin. I know I find myself looking for some furniture to kick now and then.
If I was on your side of the continent, I’d offer to buy you lunch. Since I’m not, I’ll just say it’s always a pleasure conversing with you.
Be well, and please accept my best wishes for a change in your fortunes sometime soon.
Hey Seb, you’ve been holding up your side of the argument almost single-handedly for a while.
Yes, you have. I’ve been, and remain, jammed at work. Which is a good thing. Otherwise, I would have pitched in.
Seb, I may have some contract work that is eminently do-able over the internet. Briefing, motion practice, summarizing depositions. Currently, I am in a near term over-flow situation. Let me know.
mckinney@mckinneycooper.com.
So I guess woe is you that I didn’t just take that one right on the chin too. My bad.
Well yes, the rules do apply to you, even when you’re having a bad day or when someone on the internet pisses you off. We all have bad days and we all get pissed of by people on the internet. But we all (well, apparently all of us except for you) still have to follow the rules.
so long as someone is on your side, they can play ad hom class insults
Good heavens, did someone on the internet insult someone else?! I’d say the proper response to that is to warn/ban them or ignore it. Telling them to STFU violates the rules. Which don’t apply to you I guess.
By the way, do you have a rice cooker? I hear they make living in near poverty much easier.
wtf…
HSH: wtf…
I assume Turb is referring to at least this thread (see comments starting at 5:20pm on 1/25/2008 and following), and perhaps others.
So STFU is a bad thing? 🙂 Who coulda’ known?
I don’t mind being called an ass. I’ve made stupid assertions on the internets and been brought up by the short hairs many times before. But really, calling an oil change a fixed cost? Those are fighting words.
Yes, my remark about the chauffeur was a bit gratuitous, but it really had nothing to do with your perceived economic status or your politics…it had to do with what I took was your cluelessness about auto maintenance. My bad. You have my sincere apology.
Which brings up another thing…this easy, and all too common nonchalance that the cost of birth control is an inciddental expense. It costs hundreds of dollars a year (lots more than an oil change!). Stack that up in the context of a single woman with a child making $8/hr. at the corner mini-mart.
Yes indeed. Perspective.
Live long and prosper, sir.
I do have a rice cooker and it has been an excellent money saver. I recommend it to anyone trying to live on a fixed budget!
Here is an interesting twist on this whole “religious liberty” angle. Catholic hospitals merging with or acquiring the operations of secular healthcare providers, and suddenly doctors find they can’t treat their patients how they want to because some bishop says so.
Oh, and just for McKinney, Virginia is in the process of passing a bill that REQUIRES a transvaginal ultrasound *even for pharmaceutically induced abortions* and *even when a traditional ultrasound would work* , combining a favorite Republican one-two punch: Shocking bodily intrusion and not understanding the difference between consent and non-consent:
Phil, the Virginia (Republican) legislature has gone off the deep end. They passed a bill abandoning the once-a-month restriction for buying guns; they are passing a bill allowing private adoption agencies to deny placements that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs, including opposition to homosexuality; they’re passing legislation to define “person” as a fertilized human egg at the moment of conception.
This is what the federal government will look like if Obama loses.
The RCC response to Obama’s compromise varies, depending on who you ask.
As it turns out, “the RCC” is not of one opinion.
Phil – you left out the parts of the bill that require the woman to click her heels three times while saying “I do believe in fairies, I do believe in fairies!” and then bake cookies while barefoot.
From russell’s link:
The bishops, however, have continued to voice strong objections to the White House plan. And they have taken it one step further, arguing that individual Catholics who own businesses should not have to provide birth control to their employees in their health insurance coverage.
Er, no, fnck you!
In effect, we are supposed to determine national health policy based on Catholic doctrine according to these bishops.
I don’t like the way that’s even worded in the article, because employers don’t provide birth control, they provide insurance coverage.
How someone uses that coverage is up to her. If she decides to listen to anyone who tells her birth control is a sin, and she doesn’t want to commit that particular sin, she won’t use that coverage. And anyone is free to advise her in that manner (without coercing her, of course), be that person a Catholic clergy member or anyone else.
Which is to say: No, you don’t get to act out your religious beliefs in every public interaction you might undertake, so stop asking. Next they’ll claim the right to refuse treatment to homosexuals.
Funny you should mention that, Ugh:
Read the whole thing, which has some great quotes from an ACLU lawyer who supported the college in this case.
“Next they’ll RECLAIM the right to refuse treatment to homosexuals.”
fixed that for ya.
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2004/04/first-give-no-help-dear-rep.html
Huh, I posted a lengthy excerpt from an NYT article about a pending Michigan case involving a counseling student claiming the right not to take gay patients, but it didn’t appear. Anyway, here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/when-counseling-and-conviction-collide-beliefs.html
I removed it from the spam-bin, Phil. The criteria that Typepad uses for spambinning is not divulged and also (to my knowledge) not subject to change by e.g. those with superuser password.
No prob,thanks. I figured it was a length issue.
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(That’s what she said.)
The government is better qualified to provide school lunches as well.
Looks like the parents had to pay the school, too because the school was the provider of the approved food.
From here:
Dave, whenever you read PJ media, you weaken the nation.
Preple should be grateful to accept the only acceptable “option” “provided” to them by the powers that be.
To not accept the option would be ungrateful and therefore impermissible; people shouldn’t have the right not to accept the provided option.
Whatever, Dave.
Seriously, if the bar for fascism is going to be that somebody gave a kid milk and vegetables for lunch *in addition to the lunch the mother packed* because the kids mother *signed the kid up for the program where they give you extra food for lunch*, then I guess we’re all brownshirts now.
The new champion of liberty is apparently somebody who either forgot to read the handout, or couldn’t understand it.
I’m approaching the point where I say fine, f**k it, no remedial federal programs, of any kind, for anybody.
Send it all down to the states. If the states don’t do it, it won’t get done. I live in MA, I’ll be fine. In fact, we’ll be better off, we send more to the feds than we get back right now. We’ll get to keep the difference.
The places where it will suck, mightily, will be all the red states. All the places where everybody hates the freaking feds, hates coastal elitist arugula-eating know-it-alls, hates nosy intrusive government agents making their kids eat a vegetable.
Hates, as it turns out, people like me.
You know what? I’m sick of the hostility, all because people like me think it would kinda nice to help out folks who aren’t as well off.
Who needs that crap? I sure don’t.
Enjoy your liberty sandwich. When your kids don’t have enough to eat, or can’t freaking read, or think pi equals 3, or think Jesus rode a dinosaur, too freaking bad.
Have it your way. Not my problem.
I’m freaking sick of the culture wars. I like my life just fine, you live however you like.
You don’t want the kid in NC to eat the vegetables, fine, no more vegetables. It’ll save me and people like me a few bucks. We’ll spend it on our own people. If NC wants to buy their kids some vegetables, they can pay for it their damned selves.
This stuff goes two ways, dude.
By god I’ve had enough of this crap.
By god I’ve had enough of this crap.
Thank god my company insurance plan covers chill pills. 🙂
Thank god my company insurance plan covers chill pills. 🙂
I wish mine did, but I live in Virginia.
I have those moments too, Russell, but here’s the thing:
That amounts to abandoning a bunch of needy people in those “Red” states. People who probably aren’t all going ’round ignorantly whining about the government or hating on people like you.
It also, of course, re-opens up the question of “why are we in a federal union together again?” which I’d rather like to avoid. Once was enough.
That amounts to abandoning a bunch of needy people in those “Red” states.
It ain’t abandonment if the folks in question don’t want it, and resent having to receive it.
If folks find that, as it turns out, they really kinda liked being able to sign up for extra food at school lunchtime, then they can make that happen for themselves in their own state.
Or, they can get see if their churches and charities will cover it.
Or, they can rebuild their local economies so that there aren’t so many poor people.
It’ll be up to them.
Who knows, maybe without the intrusive federal nosy-parkerism they now have to contend with, they’ll prosper and thrive.
Either way, it’ll be up to them.
This woman in NC signed her kid up for a program where the kids would get extra food at lunchtime if they needed it. She got it in her head that she would have to pay for the extras, so she didn’t want her kid to have it.
As it turns out, she doesn’t have to pay for it. It’s free to her, to some degree because public federal money is paying for it.
That’s the face of jackbooted fascism nowadays. That’s what “government coercion” looks like, here and now.
Vegetables and milk, for kids, after you opt in.
I ask myself why we are in a federal union almost every day, nowadays. I’m not sure what we all have in common anymore.
if the folks in question don’t want it
That’s central to my argument. I think “the folks in question” by and large do want it, and appreciate it. And yes, I read the recent NYT article about this. Some (vocal, moronic) among them whine about it and piss you off. I hear that – it pisses me off too. The woman in NC seems to be one such. Types like her get the headlines. How many more quietly appreciate the hell out of the safety net but don’t end up in PJ media stories and wingnut emails?
I ask myself why we are in a federal union almost every day, nowadays. I’m not sure what we all have in common anymore.
Because we’re strong together than apart, and splitting apart would be *very* hard, even if large majorities agreed it was for the best. The wrangling now would pale in comparison. A particularly nasty divorce, basically. We really don’t want to go down that road. Also, do you really want to deal with a powerful neighboring nation ruled by wingnuts (all the time, as opposed to intermittantly)? I don’t.
I totally understand the emotion. I’m just saying that it goes nowhere good.
First they came for the vegetables and milk, and I said nothing.
As it turns out, she doesn’t have to pay for it. It’s free to her, to some degree because public federal money is paying for it.
That’s the face of jackbooted fascism nowadays. That’s what “government coercion” looks like, here and now.
Actually, Russell, you and many here are conflating ‘free’ and ‘optional’ gov’t subsidies with compelled gov’t mandates.
A gov’t mandate that all employers either fund insurance with BC as a covered item (leading inexorably to abortion being a covered item, and most likely from there, a mandate that all hospitals receiving federally subsidized insurance offer abortion services–no one has bothered to refute this concern that I’ve expressed from the outset) or not offer insurance at all is, quite simply a mandate, that runs counter to the conscience of, in this particular instance, the RCC.
Abortion cuts a broader swath and runs counter to the conscience of many outside the RCC. So, to paraphrase Ugh: “First they came with BC, and I said nothing.”
What really gets me about this debate is that the mandate is the product, not of some diligent, faceless bureaucrat just doing his/her job, but of a calculated decision by political appointees in the executive branch.
That is a two way street. Another administration, with a different philosophical bent, can just as easily cut the opposite direction. By what amounts to executive decree. I am confident the left will not find that to their liking.
But, as you say, this has gone on long enough. No minds are being changed.
leading inexorably to abortion being a covered item, and most likely from there, a mandate that all hospitals receiving federally subsidized insurance offer abortion services–no one has bothered to refute this concern that I’ve expressed from the outset)
Perhaps in a world where, e.g., the Hyde Amendment didn’t still exist people would bother to address your “inevitables” and “inexorables” and leaping from point A to point Z without ever bothering to even figure out how we get to point B. But we don’t live in that world, so we’re not all going to rush to join you at the bottom of a slippery slope when we haven’t even stepped off the top yet.
So, your feelings on that Virginia vaginal ultrasound bill? Yes, no, indifferent?
So, your feelings on that Virginia vaginal ultrasound bill? Yes, no, indifferent?
I view the VA thing as the kind of legislative excess you get when a single entity, here the US SCT, mandates a rule that invades the political process. You get push back. The VA legislature (currently) wants to discourage abortion. I agree with that sentiment. I don’t care for individual coercion, regardless of where it comes from, and whether it is ultrasounds as a condition of acquiring an otherwise legal procedure or insurance. But, functionally, I see no difference between hard left and hard right: both are perfectly willing to tell others what to do for their own good. Another VA legislature could go the opposite direction. You’d be fine with that, I wouldn’t.
I’ve aired my views on abortion and what I think is and is not right. As for the Hyde amendment, that too is subject to legislative whim. Your assurances give me no comfort.
Russell was responding to DaveC, McTex. The discussion got off-topic.
both are perfectly willing to tell others what to do for their own good.
I see a difference, at least when it comes to issues such as these:
The “hard” Right wants to ban things. Abortion, birth control, gay marriage, etc. that prevent people from doing various things.
The “hard” Left wants to mandate that certain things be legal and available – but that doesn’t mean any given individual must avail themselves of those things. Think BC is immoral? Don’t use it. Think abortion is evil? Don’t have one.
The Left does often try to make people do things for the good of others (rather than “for their own good”), it’s true. And that’s certainly true of this case.
That seems to me to be an important distinction. YMMV.
What would the opposite direction be? Mandatory abortions? Because I actually wouldn’t be fine with that.
The Hyde Amendment has survived Obama, Clinton and History’s Greatest Monster, Jimmy Carter. It ain’t going anywhere.
Russell was responding to DaveC, McTex
Quite right.
both are perfectly willing to tell others what to do for their own good.
“You must” vs “you may”.
Not the same thing.
The “hard” Right wants to ban things. Abortion, birth control, gay marriage, etc. that prevent people from doing various things.
I’d like to know what comes after the etc. Some on the hard right want to ban abortions, but that isn’t going to happen. Others, such as myself, want Roe reversed so that we can, in the American tradition, settle the matter democratically. As for BC, there is no appreciable percentage of people on the right who would ban birth control.
Gay marriage, yes. I agree.
The “hard” Left wants to mandate that certain things be legal and available – but that doesn’t mean any given individual must avail themselves of those things. Think BC is immoral? Don’t use it. Think abortion is evil? Don’t have one.
No, this is wrong. The ‘hard left’ mandates that I and others as employers pay for insurance that pays for BC, and eventually abortion. The connecting link is the mandate on me and others. BC does not violate my conscience, but abortion does. Which is why I’m drawing the line early and not waiting.
And, the hard left would ban/restrict firearms ownership tomorrow if it could. Eventually, the hard left, if given free rein, would mandate car size, possibly the number of vehicles a citizen would own, how and where people live and so on. All of these are live topics on the left: maybe in their philosophical infancy and not ripe for full public debate and policy making, but they are there.
I view the VA thing as the kind of legislative excess you get when a single entity, here the US SCT, mandates a rule that invades the political process. You get push back.
How can the political process invade itself? You’d think these people got onto the court without being nominated and approved by elected officials, and that there wasn’t case brought before them to rule on, or that there was no basis in law upon which they ruled. You might disagree with the ruling, of course, but that’s not the same as believing the political process was somehow subverted (or invaded).
But, yes, push back is a real phenomenon in any case. I’m not sure that it would have mattered if the restrictions on the states’ abilities to restrict abortions came from congress or the SCOTUS. People don’t like the law, and the process issue is an excuse to justify the kind of excess we’re seeing in Va.
And the notion that the federal government is mandating something is farcical – a goofy federalist contruct that somehow results in viewing leaving things to the states as more libertarian than leaving things to the individual.
Others, such as myself, want Roe reversed so that we can, in the American tradition, settle the matter democratically.
The fundamental rights of women are not up for a vote.
The ‘hard left’ mandates that I and others as employers pay for insurance that pays for BC, and eventually abortion.
You have a choice to make if your conscience doesn’t allow you to pay for mandated insurance coverage (of whatever kind) – you either pay the $2k per employee penalty or you get out of the business of employing people.
(The “hard left” apprently includes a majority of Americans according the the latest polls.)
“You have a choice to make if your conscience doesn’t allow you to pay for mandated insurance coverage (of whatever kind) – you either pay the $2k per employee penalty or you get out of the business of employing people.”
The weird thing is that you don’t seem to think that sentences ending in “or you get out of the business of employing people” could possibly be coercive.
If the administration clarified the DEA prescribing authorization rule such that “you must be willing to provide elective late term abortions or get out of the business of doctoring” would you think that could be coercive?
“The fundamental rights of women are not up for a vote.”
And while we’re sloganeering, the fundamental rights of viable unborn children aren’t up for vote either. But they should be.
You left out the light bulbs, McK.
What becomes clearer and clearer to me as time goes on is that I have more in common, politically and socially, with someone who lives in Toronto, or maybe someplace like Frankfurt, than with a huge number of people here in the US.
I have very little personal animus toward conservatives, however I find it hard, increasingly so, to see what we have in common in terms of our understanding of what it means to live in a common polity.
I really do think the nation is at serious risk of becoming ungovernable.
And the conscience question is an interesting one, but I’m still waiting for a response to my question about how far we take it.
Yee-hah!.
Double down, y’all. Not just churches, but any employer. Not just religious conviction, but any moral or ethical concern. Not just birth control, but any mandated element of coverage.
I say, why stop with employer-provided health insurance? Any aspect of the employer-employee relationship should be subject to the personal moral, ethical, or religious concerns of the employer.
Workplace safety, minimum wage, maximum hours and overtime, child labor, all of it.
Put all of it on the table. Every bit.
Unclear how the religious, moral, and ethical concerns of the employee come into play here, the (R) proposal doesn’t seem to address that.
p. sure HSH meant “insuring people” rather than “employing people” there, Sebastian.
And the conscience question is an interesting one, but I’m still waiting for a response to my question about how far we take it.
You’re about to find out!
I’d like to know what comes after the etc
Hopefully nothing, but I’m not confident on that. We are talking about the “hard” Right here, not your average Republican voter. Actually, thinking about it some more, I think there would be a shift from banning things over to overturning anti-discrimination measures (on the basis that these are unacceptable intrusions into the actions or private business).
I don’t put you in the hard right, McKinney. There are people *well* to the Right of you. So I am not accusing YOU of that. Just like I rather doubt you’re accusing ME of wanting the government to mandate abortion coverage…
Others, such as myself, want Roe reversed so that we can, in the American tradition, settle the matter democratically.
Come now. You want to have abortion banned. Democratically, sure. Just like I’d want to keep it legal, hoping my side would have the votes (if Roe were overturned).
No, this is wrong. The ‘hard left’ mandates that I and others as employers pay for insurance that pays for BC, and eventually abortion.
You believe the “eventually abortion” part, I don’t (basically b/c I don’t think the hard Left has or will have the power to make it so).
Other than that… that’s what I said (the part you didn’t quote). In this case, Left (including but not limited to the “hard” Left) are trying to make the RCC do something it doesn’t want to do for the benefit of others. Yes, true. Admitted. The Left often does do stuff like this. See also: Progressive Taxation, Social Security (that’s actually a mix of your original formulation of make you help yourself and forcing others to help), Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance (mix, like SS)… lots of things.
And, the hard left would ban/restrict firearms ownership tomorrow if it could. Eventually, the hard left, if given free rein, would mandate car size, possibly the number of vehicles a citizen would own, how and where people live and so on. All of these are live topics on the left: maybe in their philosophical infancy and not ripe for full public debate and policy making, but they are there.
On guns I agree (I had forgotten that). The Left (hard and squishy) wants to regulate guns. The “hard” Left probably does want to just ban at least some of them.
The rest… mandating car size… is that about CAFE standards? Do you oppose CAFE standards, by the way? Would “mandating car size” include a surcharge on big cars (because heavier/less efficient vehicles beat up the roads more?)? Or do you actually think there will be laws that say “you may not manufacture or sell a car bigger/heavier than X”? If the former, I could see it. I could totally see a tax preference for fuel efficiency (we already have some of that, after all). If the latter… I think that’s paranoid.
Ideas like this probably do exist somewhere out there. The thing is the hard Right is DRIVING THE DAMN BUS over there on the Right, whereas the “hard” Left is usually marginalized (in this particular case, the “hard” Leftist position is not in command – abortion coverage is not mandated, and there are carveouts for religious orgs – just not big enough carveouts to satisfy you or the RCC). I promise I’ll object if they try to grab the wheel of the Dem bus.
…
By the way, regarding those environmentally-related restrictions you fear would come from the Left, I’d like to point out something. If the climate scientists are right and we’re facing serious warming due to human activity, we have a *massive* collective action problem. And the longer we wait to do something, the more draconian the response will have to be. I would much rather have mild responses (carbon tax/cap & trade) now than emergency measures later. The only way I think you will ever see the sorts of restrictions you fear on car size, # of cars, how/where you live in this country is if we are literally staring at catastrophe. Sorta like WWII, except without the Nazis.
I hope that either: a) the climate scientists are wrong (I see this as rather unlikely, but possible); or b) we manage to head things off (via measures such as carbon taxation, technological progress, or likely a mix of both) before draconian measures are our only viable option.
Look, if the “hard” Left had its way, we’d have a single-payer healthcare system.
That wasn’t even CONSIDERED, after a wave election that elected a Dem POTUS, a Dem Senate with 59 (and briefly 60) senators, and a big majority in the House.
Hence my point about who is driving the bus.
The weird thing is that you don’t seem to think that sentences ending in “or you get out of the business of employing people” could possibly be coercive.
The weird thing is that it most certainly could be more coercive (if you consider the rest of the sentence, giving the “or” more meaning). There’s a choice to be made between covering birth control, paying the $2k penalty (and not paying for any insurance at all), or decide for yourself that you don’t want to do either and work for yourself without a staff or work for someone else. Those last two options are what most people do regardless of insurance requirements.
The other weird thing (weirdness is everywhere these days) is that this is all about birth control, but there are a host of other things that must be covered, unless and employer would rather pay the penalty than provide insurance. None is any more coercive than another, but it’s all about birth control.
Eventually, the hard left, if given free rein, would mandate car size
We do that right now. Try and drive a tank on an interstate highway. Surely you agree with that policy?
I mean, seriously, road damage is proportional to vehicle weight raised to the fourth power. That means that if you drive a car that is twice as heavy as mine, you’re doing 16 times as much damage to the road. Obviously, either we need to find a way for you to pay 16 times as much for road maintenance as I do or we need to forbid you from driving on public roads.
This is hardly theoretical: a Civic weighs about 2600 pounds and a Hummer weighs about 6000, which means that a hummer driver causes 28 times as much road damage as I do. Why should he be able to freeload off me rather than paying for the damage he causes?
how and where people live and so on.
As a liberal, I strongly oppose our many subsidies for rural living. Don’t you agree with me?
p. sure HSH meant “insuring people” rather than “employing people” there, Sebastian.
I meant both (or either?). You can employ someone without insuring her and pay $2k or you can simply not employ her at all, if you don’t want to include coverage for birth control. Not to employ is an available option.
Another thing to consider here is the wording “pay for insurance that pays for bc.” Are you paying more for your overall coverage or less when bc is included? What’s the marginal cost for including bc? Is it postitive, negative or zero?
And while we’re sloganeering, the fundamental rights of viable unborn children aren’t up for vote either. But they should be.
To a large degree, they already are. Non-viable fetuses, not so much.
None is any more coercive than another, but it’s all about birth control.
Or at least is was. Way to go, russell. 😉
As for BC, there is no appreciable percentage of people on the right who would ban birth control.
What about the “hard right?” (Maybe we can focus a bit more on each other’s arguments rather than unnecessarily bringing in the entire, or even just the hard, right and left. I mean, there’s a place for that when discussing the political environment as such, but do we have to go there so often?)
Way to go, russell. 😉
DaveC made me do it.
A picture worth a whole lot of words.
I was just coming to post that, sapient. See also GOP prevents women from testifying at birth control coverage hearing. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Carolyn Maloney walked out, and good for them for doing so.
The other weird thing (weirdness is everywhere these days) is that this is all about birth control, but there are a host of other things that must be covered, unless and employer would rather pay the penalty than provide insurance. None is any more coercive than another, but it’s all about birth control.
Indeed. We don’t see, for example, Scientologists on this panel complaining about having to cover antidepressants.
Let’s see if we can go at this a little different way.
Hiring somebody is basically a contractual relationship. They will do XYZ, you will pay them N dollars for that.
Can the state make any rules about what may, or may not, or must, make up any part of the contract between the employer and the employee? Or is that purely between the two of them?
If health insurance is part of the compensation, is the money spent on that properly considered the property of the employer or the employee?
If the employer, as McK seems to say when he says it’s his money paying for stuff he doesn’t like, then can the employer also say to the employee, you can’t spend your cash compensation on booze, or cigarettes, or the dog track? If not, why not? After all, it’s the ’employers money’ showing up in the pay envelope, isn’t it?
From my point of view it’s *not just the employer* that is a party to the overall transaction, and not just the employer’s interests and conscience that need to be considered.
They’re not unimportant, they’re just not the only things on the table.
“If the employer, as McK seems to say when he says it’s his money paying for stuff he doesn’t like, then can the employer also say to the employee, you can’t spend your cash compensation on booze, or cigarettes, or the dog track? ”
Actually this really gets to the heart of it. Many employers today won’t hire a smoker. This is primarily for insurance cost reasons. So, yes, they can. In fact, they can deny employment on that basis. The left finds this perfectly acceptable.
Thanks, Phil. I’m glad I watched that video clip. I’m grateful for Elijah Cummings, Carolyn Maloney and Eleanor Holmes Norton, even though this situation (along with the Virginia news) is making me increasingly depressed and enraged.
Many employers today won’t hire a smoker. This is primarily for insurance cost reasons.
Cite please?
I’ve never been asked by an employer whether or not I smoked before I was hired.
Not exactly where I was going with my question, but an interesting point. And, one I was unaware of, i.e., I was not aware that folks were, and could, deny employment due to smoking.
For the record, I’ll say as a self-described lefty that I find that problematic. Assuming, of course, that there is no actual work condition – working in a no-open-flame environment frex – that would rule a smoker out.
The left finds this perfectly acceptable.
Could you please identify who you mean by “the left”?
Charles Pierce on the Virginia ultrasound law:
One more time!
Maybe we can focus a bit more on each other’s arguments rather than unnecessarily bringing in the entire, or even just the hard, right and left. I mean, there’s a place for that when discussing the political environment as such, but do we have to go there so often?
I’ll spot Marty one: The Cleveland Clinic stopped hiring smokers as of Sept. 2010.
“‘Even if this makes sense, how is this materially different from screening for other high-risk and high-cost behaviors?’ says Andrew Tarsy, executive director of the Progressive Business Leaders Network in Massachusetts and a former civil rights attorney. He calls the policy ‘a slippery slope.'”
…
“The American Civil Liberties Union characterizes a refusal to hire smokers as ‘lifestyle discrimination.’ On its website, the ACLU notes that the Bureau of National Affairs, a private, independent publisher, ‘reports that 95 percent of companies banning smoking reported no financial savings, and the US Chamber of Commerce has found no connection between smoking and absenteeism.'”
…
“About 30 states have laws that protect smokers, and some won’t let employers exclude smokers in the hiring process. Most do not allow firms to fire workers who smoke. ‘The laws are enforceable. There are laws that protect smokers,’ says Stephen Sugarman, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. For instance, ‘I think it’s pretty clear that all of these laws prohibit an employer from firing an employee for smoking.'”
Again, CCDG, who do you mean by “the left?”
If the administration clarified the DEA prescribing authorization rule such that “you must be willing to provide elective late term abortions or get out of the business of doctoring” would you think that could be coercive?
Yes, I would, most certainly. Of course, that is of a very different nature than what we’re discussing and therefore not particularly relevant. But thanks for asking, I guess, to be sure that I’m not completely loony.
If the employer, as McK seems to say when he says it’s his money paying for stuff he doesn’t like, then can the employer also say to the employee, you can’t spend your cash compensation on booze, or cigarettes, or the dog track? If not, why not? After all, it’s the ’employers money’ showing up in the pay envelope, isn’t it?
The difference is (1) can McKinney be required by law to spend his money to purchase a specific class of insurance coverage? vs. (2) can McKinney legally limit how his employees spend their money?
Answer to (1)–apparently “yes”, although that is up for debate.
Answer to (2)–“no.”
Put all of it on the table. Every bit.
Unclear how the religious, moral, and ethical concerns of the employee come into play here, the (R) proposal doesn’t seem to address that.
Or, put somewhat differently:
I’m still waiting for a response to my question about how far we take it.
Where is the line between compelled gov’t mandates and conscience?
THAT is a fair question, and one I took a stab at answering much earlier in this thread.
When a citizen’s health poses a risk to other citizens, as in vaccinations against communicable diseases, that is one instance where a discrete public interest overrides individual conscience.
Can a citizen as tax payer withhold taxes that would go to, e.g. the was in Iraq?
No. Too attenuated.
More generally, Russell, you posit an “either/or” dichotomy in which the gov’t either can mandate anything it wants or it can’t mandate anything at all.
Most of the parade of horribles raised as the sequelae of deferring to conscience in this instance are protected/authorized by the US Constitution, e.g. discrimination in employment/hiring if your in interstate commerce is illegal.
The anti-discrimination example is useful in this discussion. Is the logical extension of not discriminating hiring a statistically representative workforce based on age, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc? It is one thing to say “you cannot discriminate” but it is another to say, “you must hire X number of Asian-Americans if you have Y number of total employees.”
Here, I am opposing being told that I must do X or Y, no choice in the matter other than these. I don’t care for this in principle, even if the current requirement is unoffensive as a matter of my personal beliefs.
A final note: yes, the hard right is predictably over-reacting. What a surprise. If Santorum miraculously gets the nomination and more miraculously wins the election, look for a HHS that does the opposite of what Obama is attempting. You want to live in that world, a world where people’s choices are dictated by which ideologue wins the last election?
Actually, thinking about it some more, I think there would be a shift from banning things over to overturning anti-discrimination measures (on the basis that these are unacceptable intrusions into the actions or private business).
Correct, aside from abortion (and here we have the absolutists vs the “execeptions” subset–that’s me, forex), and gay marriage (a long term loser for the right), I am unaware of what the ‘right’ generally would ban. Individual liberty is a big thing for many outside the hard core religious.
As for eliminating discrimination protection, to do that statutorily would be difficult, although some on the right and in the libertarian section would favor that. I agree this is on the agenda of more than just a few crackpots, but I doubt it’s a fight the Repubs is interested in.
You believe the “eventually abortion” part, I don’t (basically b/c I don’t think the hard Left has or will have the power to make it so).
Well, all it takes is an HHS decree, assuming the Hyde Amendment can be repealed.
In this case, Left (including but not limited to the “hard” Left) are trying to make the RCC do something it doesn’t want to do for the benefit of others. Yes, true. Admitted. The Left often does do stuff like this. See also: Progressive Taxation, Social Security (that’s actually a mix of your original formulation of make you help yourself and forcing others to help), Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance (mix, like SS)… lots of things.
You almost had me at “admitted”, but then you went too far. Everything you list is the result of a congressional vote, after real and usually extended debate. Further, your entire list falls on all taxpayers equally and in the same way: they pay their taxes. THAT is the only coercion: pay or have your assets seized (or, go to jail). No individual is required to “do” anything else.
If the climate scientists are right and we’re facing serious warming due to human activity, we have a *massive* collective action problem. And the longer we wait to do something, the more draconian the response will have to be.
If the climate scientists are right, what we do in the near and mid term won’t matter because we’ll be the only ones doing it, whatever ‘it’ means. If environmental hell breaks loose (I’m a skeptic on this point, that is, on just how bad things would be), there won’t be collective action, there will be world wide chaos with massive population loss due to starvation, societal collapse, etc. and TEOTWAWKI.
I really do think the nation is at serious risk of becoming ungovernable.
I agree. Your response to DaveC, while not intended to do so, offers a useful paradigm: let the states decide how much and how little their gov’ts will do for their citizens. Folks in MA don’t see eye to eye, generally, with folks in TX, generally. Yet, we have a lot of rules and values we do hold in common. The Feds require the states to protected federally secured constitutional rights, the Feds regulate interstate commerce and the states handles SS and healthcare via block grants. Let CA be CA, let LA be LA. Good plan?
More generally, Russell, you posit an “either/or” dichotomy in which the gov’t either can mandate anything it wants or it can’t mandate anything at all.
I haven’t seen that, myself. I’m sure russell would oppose a government mandate that required people to use birth control, for instance. Providing insurance coverage doesn’t even necessarily result in anyone using a particular covered service, and, if it did, the employer shouldn’t necessarily need to know about it. That’s sufficiently attenuated, too, I think.
McTex, did you see my comment? I’m still curious why you don’t agree with the far left that people who contribute 28 times as much road damage should have to pay more for road upkeep. Unless you’re generally OK with freeloading.
THAT is the only coercion: pay or have your assets seized (or, go to jail). No individual is required to “do” anything else.
And what happens if you decide you don’t want to provide your employees coverage for BC? (And the real “doing” is by the employee, her doctor and her pharmacist, not the employer.)
Has there ever been a serious effort to repeal the Hyde Amendment? Like, one that has gotten to the full House/Senate voting stage? Ever?
And if it ever *were* repealed, wouldn’t that be a pretty solid indicator that public opinion had shifted sufficiently to clearly favor the pro-choice position?
Feds regulate interstate commerce and the states handles SS and healthcare via block grants. Let CA be CA, let LA be LA. Good plan?
Letting the states handle SS would be a monumentally stupid idea for the very simple reason that lots and lots and lots of people don’t earn income in nor live in one state for their entire lives. Tax code at every level would become an order of magnitude more complicated, and the state-by-state administrative costs alone would eat the entire program alive.
Providing insurance coverage doesn’t even necessarily result in anyone using a particular covered service, and, if it did, the employer shouldn’t necessarily need to know about it.
It’s entirely possible that under HIPAA they may be prohibited from knowing about individual details of doctor/patient interaction.
Sorry, people were throwing around the hard right and the RCC as representing Republicans and the far left so just got lazy.
Thanks for the example Phil, I have been looking for a job for almost two years now and I can assure everyone here that there are a less than trivial amount of companies that won’t take a smokers application.
McTex:
Everything you list is the result of a congressional vote, after real and usually extended debate. Further, your entire list falls on all taxpayers equally and in the same way: they pay their taxes. THAT is the only coercion: pay or have your assets seized (or, go to jail). No individual is required to “do” anything else.
So was the ACA. I take it that this particular rule, as it comes from the HHS (as empowered by Congress via the ACA), is different in your eyes. I don’t really see it, but ok.
I also don’t really understand how the government coercing taxes out of you to pay for birth control is somehow better than the mandate in question. Surely that’s actually worse, for someone who opposes paying for contraception??
…
As for delegating things back to the states… I remain wary of that as a general rule. In the past “letting X state be X state” has sometimes had ugly consequences for groups within X state. Maybe I should stop worrying and learn to love states rights, but that gives me pause. It probably always will.
BTW you should all stop smoking, it’s bad for you and people around you.
Like, discrimination and law and everything else aside, if something like that were literally keeping me from getting a job I’d probably re-assess its importance in my life, you know?
“It’s entirely possible that under HIPAA they may be prohibited from knowing about individual details of doctor/patient interaction.”
Actually employers get supposedly generic summary information on usage of particular parts of an insurance plan, often used to decide what coverage is more/less important to their employee base.
Even in a medium size company it is really easy to identify from the deidentified information who is using some of the coverages.
Whoops, time for me to stop doctor-shopping for Percocet scrips.
(I kid, I kid!)
“Like, discrimination and law and everything else aside, if something like that were literally keeping me from getting a job I’d probably re-assess its importance in my life, you know?”
Actually, because so many people are happy to discriminate against smokers, I hope to just live long enough to be the last American smoker. Paying black market prices to reimport the cigarettes shipped to Eastern Europe from NC.
I don’t drink, I eat great(well ok), I exercised and played BB twice a week right up until I was fifty and couldn’t do as much, but I will not quit smoking. I’m betting my lungs against ya’lls liver.
And, on a slightly more serious note, I have smoked for over forty years, quitting is easier said than done.
norbizness is The Left, unless he’s passed the tiara on to someone else.
I hereby nominate DaveC to take the crown, sceptre & jackboots of The Hard Right.
…and cigarette holder, maybe.
Your response to DaveC, while not intended to do so, offers a useful paradigm
Actually, that was my intent.
I’m open to devolving a lot of stuff to the states. IMO the country is becoming ungovernable because we spend all our time arguing about things that are, basically, matters of social preference. Or, things that naturally do, and likely ought to, vary by region.
People in MA don’t see eye to eye with people in TX because MA ain’t TX. And ain’t gonna be. And, really, shouldn’t be. No slur or disrespect intended toward either place.
I recognize that “state’s rights” has covered some of the worst practices this nation has ever seen, but I also recognize that people in different parts of the country value different things.
I’m betting my lungs against ya’lls liver.
That is a bet I’m not taking.
I’m betting my lungs against ya’lls liver.
I’d take that bet, except I also smoked for ~12 years in addition to drinking, eating too much and excercising too little. Go me.
In general, though, I think that’s a losing bet (unless you’re going up against a hardcore alcoholic and you are a fairly light smoker, I guess).
I’m ok with paying for both your lungs and my liver. I think that’s how it should work. I’m satisfied with a strong public health campaign aimed at getting people to quit voluntarily, coupled with restrictions to protect non-smokers from smoke. Going beyond that to refusing to hire smokers seems excessive.
[/squishy Left]
I hereby nominate DaveC to take the crown, sceptre & jackboots of The Hard Right.
Hey man, no fair! You’re making it sound like fun!
McTx: The difference is (1) can McKinney be required by law to spend his money to purchase a specific class of insurance coverage? vs. (2) can McKinney legally limit how his employees spend their money?
Answer to (1)–apparently “yes”, although that is up for debate.
What do you mean by “up for debate” here? Constitutionally? If so, I think that was decided long long ago against your position, at least with respect to the employee/employer relationship.
And what happens if you decide you don’t want to provide your employees coverage for BC? (And the real “doing” is by the employee, her doctor and her pharmacist, not the employer.)
Apparently, I pay a fine and can’t offer insurance, which as I explained above is something I want to do and have done either as an outright owner or a partner since 1986.
We do that right now. Try and drive a tank on an interstate highway. Surely you agree with that policy?
Ok, I’ll concede this point which was not my point. I can see the day when the leftish side of policymakers will advocate mandatory limits on passenger size and weight of cars that are far more restrictive than those currently in force, which are mainly geared toward the size of roads. Larger vehicles pay higher user fees–no problem there.
It’s entirely possible that under HIPAA they may be prohibited from knowing about individual details of doctor/patient interaction.
I am pretty sure this is the case. Again, no problem here with anyone’s medical situation remaining private.
I remain wary of that as a general rule. In the past “letting X state be X state” has sometimes had ugly consequences for groups within X state.
We have a large body of constitutional law and federal statutory schemes aimed directly at this problem. If these were not in place, I would agree completely.
I’m betting my lungs against ya’lls liver.
And, on a slightly more serious note, I have smoked for over forty years, quitting is easier said than done.
That’s a bad bet, particularly as you get older. I quit after 23 years by using the gum. Sometimes the excess stress of a major trial puts me back on the weed. A week or two of patches fixes things right up.
Alternatively, put the patch on in the morning, go to work, smoke at night.
I’m open to devolving a lot of stuff to the states. IMO the country is becoming ungovernable because we spend all our time arguing about things that are, basically, matters of social preference. Or, things that naturally do, and likely ought to, vary by region.
We are on very common ground here. Phil’s point–made with his usual subtlety–about SS is valid. I don’t know what could be done in that discrete instance, but if there is an entitlement than can be tweaked and fixed, it’s SS.
What do you mean by “up for debate” here? Constitutionally? If so, I think that was decided long long ago against your position, at least with respect to the employee/employer relationship.
I mean there is a debate going on right now about this, in Washington. As for constitutionality, I think it’s a close call. Do you have a case that disposes of the current insurance coverage issue? Not demanding, just curious. I am unaware of it.
I hereby nominate DaveC to take the crown, sceptre & jackboots of The Hard Right.
To some people that’s what it is. To me, I think that the administration reneged on a deal made with enough Democrat representatives that could have kept the affordable (health) care act from being passed. So the argument is “hey we didn’t renege, there is no federal funding for abortion yet, um, well, even though planned parenthood is somewhat federally funded.
The kicker is that the fedral gov’t is just going to coerce you Catholics to use your private money to fund what you think is abortion (plan B and RU486).
Now I don’t believe that plan B is abortion, and I am not against contraception, but you know what the US govt is doing is wrong and they lied about it on the original deal in order to get the law passed. I wanted to point that out, and that it was an “in your face”, mean thing to do.
And of course the shaming and coercion of children for the greater good. This talk about having “options” and stuff being “provided” for you, what it means really is “you have no options” and you will not be allowed to have it provided for you by your parents, that is, as a parent, your food is policed, as a child, you will be shamed publicly.
So. well it think that is what this is, some attempt at public shaming for commenting about two specific problems that I can see, even if you all choose not to see.
I’m open to devolving a lot of stuff to the states. IMO the country is becoming ungovernable because we spend all our time arguing about things that are, basically, matters of social preference. Or, things that naturally do, and likely ought to, vary by region.
Sorry to call bullshit on you, russell, but that’s just wrong. The country is ungovernable because a bunch of right-wing twits have taken over Congress. The right-wing twits disproportionately come from southern states, but that’s largely because of the legacy of white supremacy in those states. And don’t forget that Sarah Palin is from Alaska, Michelle Bachmann is from Minnesota (where Al Franken comes from), Darrell Issa is from California, and Scott Brown is from Massachusetts. Rick Santorum (not in Congress anymore, but scarily close to the Republican nominee) is from Pennsylvania. Regional differences? Sure, the Yanks have more urban areas so there’s more of that going on.
Besides, are you that provincial that you just want to take care of your own neighborhood? Have you not been reading Ta-Nehisi Coates on the Civil War? Yes, I get it that you don’t care at all about people in other countries that are trying to make their societies better (like the people who are giving their lives in Syria on a daily basis, Tibet, [no credit to Obama for helping out the Libyan movement], etc. But, really, your own freaking country? Didn’t you have some distant relative that you were proud of, who fought the fascists in WWII – maybe your father-in-law or somebody?
Seriously, get a grip.
I have to say, this is really tragic. Just keep taking care of you and yours.
Didn’t you have some distant relative that you were proud of, who fought the fascists in WWII – maybe your father-in-law or somebody?
Seriously, get a grip.
It seems you’ve taken what russell wrote several steps too far. We’re not talking about fascists taking over Nebraska. We’re talking about policy preferences.
Not that I disagree about nitwits in congress, but they were elected, mostly in the states russell doesn’t seem to find much commonality with.
Maybe the point is to let them have their way on some things and see where it goes. They might find out their ideas weren’t fully baked, and some of this silliness would go away – short-term pain for long-term gain, if you will.
mostly in the states russell doesn’t seem to find much commonality with.
Mostly, but some in his state, actually.
Maybe the point is to let them have their way on some things and see where it goes.
Where will it go, exactly? I live in Virginia and am a citizen of the United States. I pay Federal taxes. Women in my state will be subject to vaginal ultrasounds if they want an abortion. What the f&^% is russell talking about? What are you talking about “let them [who????] have their way?”
State’s rights! Excellent progressive talking point! Give me a barf bag. [Screw black people, women, undocumented workers, etc. Let’s see where it goes!!!!! To the concentration camps!]
Yes, maybe we can have a couple of states that have abortion rules almost as restrictive as France or Sweden!
BTW, just wanted to point out that the ‘compromise’ is wholly hypothetical at this point, and right after announcing the ‘compromise’ the HHS finalized the rule in its objectionable form. Rule as finalized YESTERDAY
Really, Sebastian? Vaginal ultrasounds in France prior to the 12th week? I don’t think so! Nor in Sweden! In fact, where in Europe are vaginal ultrasounds required, inquiring minds want to know!
By the way, Sebastian, which of these people are you?
Ah, yes, we’re talking about concentration camps now.
C’mon, sapient. Letting them have their way has its limits. The Constitution doesn’t just get thrown out the window. It just gets more interpretation by democratic means at the state level. And those who get their way are majorities in states who want different things (to a point, mind you). They might find out that what they want isn’t what they thought they wanted.
I don’t necessarily agree with that approach, but I can still recognize that it isn’t about fascists throwing people into concentration camps. It might unfortunately be about women having to get vaginal ultrasounds before abortions in Va. I don’t know if russell would be willing to let it go that far or not. Maybe he’s just thinking about school lunches.
The Constitution doesn’t just get thrown out the window.
Really? When you’re talking about “states’ rights,” it surely does. hairshirthedonist, just out of curiosity and if you’re willing: what state do you come from and live in?
Is my google fu awful or has that not become state law as of yet?
Further isn’t the ‘vaginal ultrasound’ an interpretation of the most vocal opponent? So far as I can glean from basic googling while vaginal ultrasound is *better* than traditional ultrasound, it isn’t necessary.
So far as I can tell the only one who thinks vaginal ultrasounds will be necessary is opponent David Englin (D). [all reports source back to him]
And of course, in typical showman legislator style, he tries evicerate the bill with an amendment to require consent instead of offering an amendment to clarify that only traditional non-invasive ultrasounds are necessary.
That would of course made his point very clearly if it had been rejected, but I suppose he didn’t want to risk his amendment actually passing.
Further isn’t the ‘vaginal ultrasound’ an interpretation of the most vocal opponent? So far as I can glean from basic googling while vaginal ultrasound is *better* than traditional ultrasound, it isn’t necessary.
Isn’t necessary for what? I haven’t been following this too closely, but if the supposed purpose of this ridiculous ultrasound-before-abortion law is to show the woman the fetus and/or see a heart beat, then depending on the time frame and the woman, in certain cases you have to have a vaginal ultrasound as traditional ultrasounds won’t show one or both.
So I don’t think part of your argument here cuts the way you think it does Sebastian (i.e., if the amendment had passed then proponents of the general law would have shown their true colors).
Further, even a traditional ultrasound is pretty effing personal, i.e., if someone did it to you without your consent they could go to prison for a long time.
McTx: I mean there is a debate going on right now about this, in Washington.
Well sure, but that’s true about pretty much everything.
As for constitutionality, I think it’s a close call. Do you have a case that disposes of the current insurance coverage issue? Not demanding, just curious. I am unaware of it.
As applied to employer/employee relationships? I mean, I think it’s pretty clear that Congress can do (almost) whatever it wants in that respect based on modern SCOTUS jurisprudence. If Congress can pass a national minimum wage law why not a national minimum health insurance coverage law? Why would some sort of moral/religious objection exempt an employer from either under the Constitution?
There’s the ministerial exception I guess, but I don’t think that’s going to cover your paralegal.
DaveC: And of course the shaming and coercion of children for the greater good. This talk about having “options” and stuff being “provided” for you, what it means really is “you have no options” and you will not be allowed to have it provided for you by your parents, that is, as a parent, your food is policed, as a child, you will be shamed publicly.
I’m not sure I understand, could you explain further DaveC?
Cause really, I’m reminded of this.
I think Gary Wills nailed it in this brief essay.
And of course, in typical showman legislator style, he tries evicerate the bill with an amendment to require consent instead of offering an amendment to clarify that only traditional non-invasive ultrasounds are necessary.
I know right? What kind of boob honestly believes that CONSENT by both patient and doctor should be part and parcel of any medical procedure? What a dummy! (cue cuckoo clock sounds)
The Virginia bill also apparently requires the doctor to put a note in the patient’s file stating whether she did or did not look at the ultrasound and listen to the heartbeat. (Or, more specifically, “The medical professional performing the ultrasound must obtain written certification from the woman that the opportunity was offered and whether the woman availed herself of the opportunity to see the ultrasound image or hear the fetal heartbeat. A copy of the ultrasound and the written certification shall be maintained in the woman’s medical records at the facility where the abortion is to be performed.”)
Perhaps McKinney or Sebastian can explain the medical need for such a requirement.
Really? When you’re talking about “states’ rights,” it surely does. hairshirthedonist, just out of curiosity and if you’re willing: what state do you come from and live in?
Sapient, if you’ll bother to go back and reread the exchange between Russell and me, we both posit the continuing implementation of federal constitutional and statutory schemes established 40-60 years ago to eliminate that aspect of ‘states rights’ that was the rationale for Jim Crow and other invidious forms of discrimination.
Your ‘states rights’ premise is essentially an argument for writing federalism out of the constitution. Because, a half a century ago, bitter enders, using ‘states rights’ as their rallying cry, lost the fight on civil rights, doesn’t mean that every aspect of federalism is suspect. It would be like pro-lifers arguing that every pro-choice person would give the mother the right to terminate her pregnancy while the child is in the birth canal at the end of 9 months.
You paint federalism as the equivalent of active bigotry. The subject here is devolving federally funded entitlements to the states, which has a lot budgetary pluses as well as letting people have a more direct stake in how they are taxed and what benefits they would and would not confer on themselves.
You have frequently complained that others lift an isolated statement from a larger argument you advance and take it out of context. That’s what you are doing here.
As for where HSH lives. I know where he lives. He is actually Joe Biden and he resides at an undisclosed location within the continental United States. We are lucky to have his insights.
As applied to employer/employee relationships? I mean, I think it’s pretty clear that Congress can do (almost) whatever it wants in that respect based on modern SCOTUS jurisprudence.
I think not. I cannot be required to hire X, or required to pay each employee the same or any number–an almost infinite number, in fact–of other things that some outlier policy pundit might deem beneficial to the greater good.
There is a ‘rational relationship’ test applied to pretty much any federal or state statute. Plus, there are constitutional limitations on what the gov’t can or cannot impose.
You paint federalism as the equivalent of active bigotry.
What’s happening in Virginia is active bigotry. And that’s the kind of “federalism” we’re talking about here.
Perhaps McKinney or Sebastian can explain the medical need for such a requirement.
Depending on how one defines ‘medical need’ and who the intended beneficiary is, if the mother is persuaded not to have an abortion, the child’s medical need–life–is met. It’s a matter of perspective and one that we are not going to agree on. In my world, abortion for convenience or as an extension of birth control would be against the law in Texas. Other states would make that call as their voters see fit. I would not compel ultrasound or sonograms or anything else. I would simply dispense with the procedure.
The country is ungovernable because a bunch of right-wing twits have taken over Congress.
Somebody voted for those nitwits. That’s how they got there. They have a constituency.
And I don’t have to go back to the Civil War to understand the kind of evil crap that masquerades as “states’ rights”. I have my own living memory of it.
I also think there’s a place for the feds to step in and knock heads. Cases where fundamental civil rights are at stake would fall in that category.
And saying all of the above leaves a number of very broad areas where people in different parts of the country have very different understandings of what they want or need the government to do.
Gun laws, building codes, corporate licensing and governance, how basic services will be funded and delivered. Highway speed limits. Land use. Mineral rights.
In MA you can’t buy a slingshot unless you are a member of a slingshot target shooting club. I discovered this when I wanted to get one to keep squirrels off the bird feeders. That seems, to me, to be some serious public safety overkill, but that’s how we roll in MA. And, I’m fine with it, I got a better squirrel proof feeder and all is well.
As it turns out, as much fun as it would be to rain death, or at least pebbles, from above upon my local squirrel population, I really don’t need a slingshot.
Imagine telling somebody in, frex, Wyoming that they can’t have a slingshot.
Different strokes.
I’m seriously open to it, because I think it would go a long way to getting us out of the business of arguing about arugula vs corn dogs, and back in the business of addressing things that actually are important.
Not that arugula isn’t important, but I think you get my point.
What’s happening in Virginia is active bigotry.
My name for it ‘using the law to stick it to people who are doing something you disagree with’. Where you can construe ‘sticking it to them’ in the most literal sense possible.
You live in VA. I don’t. The person who is more likely to be able to change the noxious requirement is not me, but you.
There is a ‘rational relationship’ test applied to pretty much any federal or state statute.
A sweeping claim. Who administers this test? Is it pass/fail? Part of No Child Left Behind? If the statute fails is it automatically repealed without further legislative action? How is a failed statute passed in the first place? Was it granted an exemption to skip the test?
I live in a state with a Republican governor who challenges the capacity of the helicopter taking him to his son’s baseball games.
You live in VA. I don’t. The person who is more likely to be able to change the noxious requirement is not me, but you.
The way I’m most likely to do it is to challenge the laws in court under the United States Constitution (that is, if it still applies to me). Thanks for your support.
And of course the shaming and coercion of children for the greater good. This talk about having “options” and stuff being “provided” for you, what it means really is “you have no options” and you will not be allowed to have it provided for you by your parents, that is, as a parent, your food is policed, as a child, you will be shamed publicly.
Are you actually claiming that’s what happened in NC with the school lunch thing? How in the world do you get that out of it? WTF?
…
While Sapient is amping the rhetoric up to 11, I am deeply suspicious of the states rights argument for similar reasons.
The idea generally is that oh, we won’t go back to Jim Crow. And yeah, we probably won’t. But there *will* be a lot more stuff like what VA is doing right now. LOTS of it. The idea here is that those of us in more liberal states should just shrug and say “well, that’s what they want.” Ah, but who is “they?” They are, of course, majorities within certain states. Minorities w/in those states? Pound sand.
Ditto, of course, conservatives in CT, MA, VT, etc. The more you devolve power to the states, the more they will be oppressed by fascist liberals.
It’s difficult to find the right balance between states rights and federal power. I recognize that, and we’re all just talking here. But I am really, really, really dubious about your proposal Russell & McKinney. And I don’t need to conjure up Jim Crow in order to worry.
And of course, in typical showman legislator style, he tries evicerate the bill with an amendment to require consent instead of offering an amendment to clarify that only traditional non-invasive ultrasounds are necessary.
This is beyond disingenuous. Why would an opponent of the entire thrust of the bill (i.e., that ultrasounds are in any way ‘necessary’ to begin with) offer such a stupid amendment? The vote on the amendment revealed the radical zealotry of its proponents. Thus it served its purpose.**
Further, the amendment’s defeat revealed this argument is not in any way about oft invoked high principles regarding ‘freedom’ and ‘coercion’ because the proposed statute (assuming it passes McTx’s final exam)bounds the first and expands the second.
**Nearly all legislators, even at the state level can count votes. Pretty elementary stuff.
I am really, really, really dubious about your proposal Russell & McKinney.
And I, in turn, am really tired of having discussions of the public policy and political direction of the nation focus on whether some kid in NC had to eat a vegetable.
People in different parts of the country *want different things*. It’s fine for Northeast suburban lefty-liberal me to say that they *should not want those things*, but that’s not my call to make.
Is it?
The kinds of things I can see devolving to the states are the kinds of things I listed upthread. Many of them are already largely devolved to the states.
There are also things that are currently largely devolved to the states that I would actually like to see taken up by the feds. Qualifications for voting and voting procedures, for example, at least for any federal position.
So it’s not all a one-way street.
I’m just tired of the freaking culture wars.
he subject here is devolving federally funded entitlements to the states, which has a lot budgetary pluses
This assumes a lot of facts not yet entered into evidence, counselor.
In my world, abortion for convenience or as an extension of birth control would be against the law in Texas.
Yes, I’m well aware of the sophistry under which fetuses have all the rights of already-born human beings, yet somehow the fetuses of rape and incest victims maybe just have slightly fewer rights than those other fetuses. And it is sophistry, make no mistake about that.
The purpose of the provision requiring a note in the file as to whether a woman did or did not look at the ultrasound and listen to the heartbeat is quite obvious: Slut-shaming. There’s no medical need for it.
Aside to russell: In case you missed it, Republicans no longer care about federalism when it comes to gun rights. They want legislation requiring all states to honor carry permits from out of state, even if the carrier would normally be prohibited from gun ownership in that state.
So, when it comes to “full faith and credit,” marriage licenses, no; gun permits, yes. That’s today’s GOP in a nutshell.
BTW, how would The Party of Small Government determine which abortions were for “convenience” or “an extension of birth control” and which were not without invasions of personal privacy that would, under any other circumstances, cause you to cry foul?
Depending on how one defines ‘medical need’ and who the intended beneficiary is, if the mother is persuaded not to have an abortion, the child’s medical need–life–is met. It’s a matter of perspective and one that we are not going to agree on.
Problem with this assertion: even if the fetus is the intended beneficiary, the procedure still isn’t medically necessary. It does nothing to medically preserve the fetus. Nothing. By your argument here, strapping the potential mother to a bed with a feeding tube down her nose until she came to term could be deemed a “medically necessary” procedure, based strictly on its potential outcome. Or perhaps we should advocate the equally “medical” procedure of levying an “abortion tax” of 10% of her household’s gross income (or let’s say $2000, whichever is larger). In fact, one could probably argue that either would be “medically” preferable, since I should think either would be more likely to “meet” the “medical need” you cite here than simple non-medical coercive persuasion following an ultrasound, even an intrusive one. Indeed, the ultrasound probably would not meet a test of medical necessity, as it cannot be reliably demonstrated to be “medically” sufficient to restrict the free exercise of the would-be mother’s right to abort her gestating fetus, and most of the definitions of medical necessity I’ve seen (while representing a quick, small sample of all out there) include a concept of a procedure being neither too little nor too much to address the medical condition being treated. Although again, in this particular case I should probably be talking about the “medical condition” being “treated”…
Republicans no longer care about federalism when it comes to gun rights.
Quel suprise..
Who administers this test?
A reviewing court: the question is asked, “does this law have a rational relationship to a legitimate state purpose.” Requiring employers to furnish uniforms for employees facially has no rational state purpose outside of North Korea.
The way I’m most likely to do it is to challenge the laws in court under the United States Constitution (that is, if it still applies to me). Thanks for your support.
It does and you can. Nothing Russell or I have said would prevent federal judicial review of state laws for compliance with the US Constitution. Otherwise, neither Russell nor I would be on board. In fact, federal judicial review of state acts is the key ingredient to devolution.
Ditto, of course, conservatives in CT, MA, VT, etc. The more you devolve power to the states, the more they will be oppressed by fascist liberals.
“What is good” is in the eye of the beholder. Yes, minority policy views in conservative and liberal states will take a hit. That’s democracy. The beauty, in theory (at least), of devolution is that, once the dust settles, citizens will have the right and the freedom to relocate, if they feel sufficiently strong about an issue. When virtually every issue under the sun is federalized, dissenters have no where to go.
I’m just tired of the freaking culture wars.
Exactly. We get, particularly at the SCT level, ideologues who profess moderation and openness at senate hearing and are anything but moderate and open. I’d like jurists who put their agenda last and the law first.
Ugh, you’re hurting my head.
He is actually Joe Biden and he resides at an undisclosed location within the continental United States.
I do occasionally blurt out things that are funny to me, but that end up making me look like an ass to anyone in earshot.
Ditto, of course, conservatives in CT, MA, VT, etc.
once the dust settles, citizens will have the right and the freedom to relocate
NH south of Concord has basically been colonized by folks who find MA too much of a nanny state.
Vermont is a truly interesting place. It’s a unique blend of libertarian, social democrat, and green party, with a heavy don’t-tread-on-me swamp yankee hippie element. For folks not familiar with New England, for “swamp yankee” please read “hillbilly”, except with cold weather gear.
I’m not sure there’s any other place quite like it in the country. Maybe the rural upper Midwest.
“Swamp yankee”. I like that. We have a place like that in Texas. We call it ‘East Texas.’ In East Texas a nice smile has at least one tooth.
That’s lovely – for those who can manage to move. For those who, for whatever reason, cannot, well screw them I guess.
I totally understand being sick and tired of the culture wars. I am too. And yet…
I don’t really support an approach that has me saying to women in VA: too bad, so sad, a majority in your state is a bunch of slut-shaming aholes. Come up to CT if you can. *shrug*
YMMV.
Russell – I also suspect many of the people who moved into southern NH from MA were folks who just wanted a nice house & some land but found the suburbs of Boston were too expensive (rather than fleeing the horrid nanny state). They traded a longer commute for more land/sqft.
There may well be an ideological component, but I suspect it is much smaller than more mundane things.
I don’t know any of those people (my wife is from the Concord area and we go to NH often, but I don’t find myself talking to MA transplants), and I don’t have any data. I suppose one could look at election results over the past few decades in certain counties as a way to test the theory.
For folks not familiar with New England, for “swamp yankee” please read “hillbilly”, except with cold weather gear.
I knew lots of self-described swamp yankees when I worked in eastern CT.
I ate the heart of a deer sauteed in butter with some onions a few hours after the deer was hit and killed by a Volvo on a dark road. My coworker threw it into the back of his pickup on his way to meet me for dinner in Mystic. We rode out to another coworker’s house in the middle of nowhere, because he had a place to hang and gut the deer, instead of eating in Mystic.
Eastern CT isn’t like the NY suburbs in western CT. That’s for sure. Though we did watch some college basketball that night, which made the whole experience a little less surreal for suburban Jersey boy me.
“Perhaps McKinney or Sebastian can explain the medical need for such a requirement.”
I’m so used to hard questions that I’m surprised you gave me such an easy one.
It is to prove that the doctor is actually following the requirements of the law. Something like that is necessary because of the Kermit Gosnell case and cases like it where abortion rules regarding viability were ignored by the doctor leading to what the grand jury saw as evidence for at least a hundred infanticides and fully viable abortions without the slightest hint of medical necessity. [He was only charged on 8, because they could prove those viable babies had completely exited the womb before he murdered them, and because the statute of limitations on infanticide was so amazingly short (2 years)].
“BTW, how would The Party of Small Government determine which abortions were for “convenience” or “an extension of birth control” and which were not without invasions of personal privacy that would, under any other circumstances, cause you to cry foul?”
Another easy one, I’m aware of very few other ‘privacy’ areas where one of two parties ends up killed and liberals suspect that we shouldn’t even think of regulating it. Second hand smoking anyone? Child discipline? Marital homicide?
Even the ridiculously permissive Roe standard, which is light years less restrictive than the rules in many very liberal European countries, suggests that the state can be concerned with the fetus as it approaches viability. I’m not sure how that would happen if you would ban the ability to determine when it approaches viability.
I ate the heart of a deer sauteed in butter with some onions a few hours after the deer was hit and killed by a Volvo on a dark road.
Ok, I’ll bite. Is this legit? I mean, I used to hunt (a lot) and have shot and cleaned more than my fair share of deer. I could never eat venison the same day I cleaned a deer. The heart? It isn’t that big. Just a snack? And, how do you know road kill is fresh enough to eat? Damn.
That’s lovely – for those who can manage to move. For those who, for whatever reason, cannot, well screw them I guess.
So, let’s have a system where there is no place to go–a central gov’t that decides everything.
Do I need to explain the difference between “medical need” and “legal need?” It appears I might. Oh, dear.
I also suspect many of the people who moved into southern NH from MA were folks who just wanted a nice house & some land but found the suburbs of Boston were too expensive (rather than fleeing the horrid nanny state). They traded a longer commute for more land/sqft.
It’s a mix. And, the two go hand in hand in a lot of cases.
And it has made NH significantly more liberal. It turns out folks don’t want to give up all aspects of the nanny state, just the tax rate.
But you have a point, the real ideologues move north of Concord.
I ate the heart of a deer sauteed in butter with some onions a few hours after the deer was hit and killed by a Volvo on a dark road.
Now that’s what I’m talking about. Nothing says “swamp yankee” like road kill for dinner.
Look, I have no interest in making VA women have a vaginal ultrasound before they can have an elective abortion. Quite the opposite.
But as a practical matter, there is little I can do as a MA resident to change it, and virtually nothing I can do as a MA resident, or basically as a human being, to convince the folks in VA who think that’s a good idea to change their minds.
People who, unlike me, actually live in VA can vote the guy who proposed the law out of office. And/or they can bring suit in federal court to overturn it, because they have standing, which I do not. And/or they can attempt to persuade their neighbors that it’s a crappy idea, which I cannot do because I don’t live there, and which would be both rejected and resented were I try to do it because I’m a lefty Northeastern urban do-gooder.
The ruling laid down in Roe has been interpreted and implemented about 50 different ways, by the 50 different states, because *the people who live in those 50 different states have about 1,000,000 different points of view on the topic*.
Roe excludes an outright ban, but what that means in practical terms varies widely, and that variance to a large degree tracks *what people want*.
Just like the 2nd Amendment excludes and outright ban on gun ownership, but how that is implemented varies widely from place to place.
Etc etc etc.
I can, and do, advocate for things that I think are important, and will continue to do so. But I’m not, and don’t really want to be, in the business of convincing other people that they need to change their mind about what *they* want.
Or, probably more accurately, I’ve had the reality that I’m not going to be particularly successful at that beaten into me. So I’m giving it up as a bad job, and choosing to focus on just advocating for what I think is good.
And that effort is not really going to be advanced by me saying “what you believe is wrong, evil, and bad bad bad!” to everybody who disagrees with me. Even if I actually do think it’s wrong, evil, and bad bad bad. Trust me, it’s not.
There is never going to be a consensus in this country about some things. If we want to continue to function as a coherent entity, we are going to have to accept that and learn to work with it.
I can’t change the law in VA. Neither can you, Rob in CT, because you’re Rob in CT.
Sapient can, and I heartily encourage him to do so.
And, again, what is the medical OR legal need *for noting whether or not the woman wanted to view the ultrasound*? It’s irrelevant to determining gestational age or anything else. What is the purpose? Anyone?
What is the purpose? Anyone?
The purpose is to discourage women from having abortions by making it as distressing and degrading a process as possible, without crossing the line to an outright ban.
SATSQ
Ok, I’ll bite. Is this legit?
Yes.
Road kill for dinner is not uncommon in rural New England. There’s an etiquette: driver gets first right of refusal, then the local cops will often have a list of folks who want to be called if a salvageable carcass is available.
For the record, Pittsburg NH, the town in the story, is *way* the hell up north, but the same thing goes on in lots of places in rural New England.
It’s free meat.
“And, again, what is the medical OR legal need *for noting whether or not the woman wanted to view the ultrasound*? It’s irrelevant”
It’s irrelevant to what? It is part of record-keeping to prove that the ultrasound is done and that it is offered to the woman.
It isn’t say like a rule in Germany mandating that for any abortion in Germany the woman has to sit with a counselor and be informed of the baby’s right to life. It isn’t like the rule in Sweden where a woman after the fourth month has to apply to the National Board of Health in order to get permission for an abortion. Or like in France where after the 3rd month where a woman would have to send her medical records off to have them analyzed by experts to prove that the baby is irredeemably damaged.
It is an ultrasound, almost certainly not vaginal unless I get some suggestion other than the rhetoric of its main opponent, given before a surgical abortion–which abortion is going to be noticeably more invasive than an ultrasound and which btw is going to involve putting instruments in the vagina.
Would I pass this law? No. Is it ridiculously restrictive. No.
It’s irrelevant to what? It is part of record-keeping to prove that the ultrasound is done and that it is offered to the woman.
The recordkeeping requirement is satisfied entirely by a) performing the ultrasound, b) printing the time- and date-stamped ultrasound image and c) putting it in a file folder. Everything else is irrelevant. Offering it to the woman is irrelevant, and noting whether she wanted to look at it or not is super-duper irrelevant.
It is an ultrasound, almost certainly not vaginal unless I get some suggestion other than the rhetoric of its main opponent, given before a surgical abortion
That you cannot get a proper image via external ultrasound prior to a certain point in fetal development — and particularly not one useful for determining gestational age — is a medical fact, and will remain so however much you stamp your feet about it. Thus, yes, some of these will of necessity by vaginal ultrasounds. Perhaps even a nontrivial number of them since the large majority of abortions take place during this time period.
which abortion is going to be noticeably more invasive than an ultrasound and which btw is going to involve putting instruments in the vagina.
And thus Sebastian demonstrates that he doesn’t understand the difference between consent and nonconsent either. It really is a conservative blind spot. “So long as she’s having stuff put in her vagina, we can basically do whatever, right?”
It’s irrelevant to what? It is part of record-keeping to prove that the ultrasound is done and that it is offered to the woman.
Clever. That’s not what was being asked, and I find it difficult (though not impossible; I’ll leave the Carnac penalties to you, TYVM) to believe that you don’t know that. Yes, as you state, it is necessary for record-keeping to document if the ultrasound was performed and that the patient was afforded the opportunity to review the image. However, as you very pointedly neglect to address, the bill’s requirement to record and keep on file for no less than seven years whether or not the patient chooses to review the image has no medical relevance, nor any record-keeping necessity in terms of documenting compliance with the greater requirements of the law. The only thing that data demonstrates compliance with is the requirement to maintain that data, and there’s no reason to maintain that data beyond invading the patient’s privacy.
It is an ultrasound, almost certainly not vaginal unless I get some suggestion other than the rhetoric of its main opponent, given before a surgical abortion–which abortion is going to be noticeably more invasive than an ultrasound and which btw is going to involve putting instruments in the vagina.
This is grossly misleading. I see nothing in the law stating anywhere that the ultrasound requirement is limited to surgical abortions. The law would require them prior to medical abortions as well.
Road kill for dinner is not uncommon in rural New England. There’s an etiquette: driver gets first right of refusal, then the local cops will often have a list of folks who want to be called if a salvageable carcass is available.
That is the damndest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time. Is there an emoticon for slack-jawed amazement?
It’s free meat.
Yes, it is. Damn.
Russell – um… I don’t disagree with any of that.
I also don’t really see how it has any impact on the argument I’ve been trying to make.
The whole point of leaving more things to the states is to take things that the feds now do (or involve themselves in directly) and hand it back to the states. That’s a real change. That’s not about you or me arguing with people in the internet (which we will likely both continue to do regardless).
My point has to do with the downside of such a change. There is upside – which you and McKinney have pointed out.
I’ve made my point and I’ll leave it there.
QFFT
Though I’ve never eaten roadkill, nor known anyone personally who has… I’m pretty sure I drove past someone claiming some to take home & eat. Pretty recently… last month I think.
Yes, I live East of the River.
“And thus Sebastian demonstrates that he doesn’t understand the difference between consent and nonconsent either. It really is a conservative blind spot. “So long as she’s having stuff put in her vagina, we can basically do whatever, right?””
This is actually very cute Phil. You realize that you’re writing on the very thread where you yourself have endorsed the concept of “So long as she’s employing people, we can basically do whatever, right?”
So I guess we’ve identified a blind spot that isn’t just conservative, eh?
And to be clear the actual blind spot is along the lines of:
So long as she is getting an abortion, we can [in the Roe framework] identify the gestational age of the fetus via ultrasound because the state is allowed to enforce various concerns and rights depending on the gestational age of the fetus.
Which doesn’t *exactly* translate into ‘anything’ in my book.
That is the damndest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.
Yeah, whitetail are common enough around here to have achieved the status of pest. People hit them on the road a lot.
If it’s gonna total your car, you might as well get a meal out of it.
My point has to do with the downside of such a change.
I hear you.
I’ve made my point and I’ll leave it there.
It’s a good point.
QFFT
I pretty much always avoid the abortion issue per se, because IMVHO it’s essentially intractable. What you think about it is going to be a function of other things you believe, which are generally going to be much deeper, and much more immune to argument, than political opinions.
That said, if I may presume to speak for Sebastian and maybe McK, their issue with abortion is not a matter of their opinion about how big government should be, or whether one procedure or another is intrusive.
Their issue is that they think abortion kills a human being. A real, live human person.
If you believe that abortion kills a real, live human person, than the details are gonna be more or less noise. Like, for instance, the way they are when most folks discuss something like infanticide, or spousal abuse to the point of killing, etc etc.
I AM NOT expressing an opinion one way or the other on the substance, because I have no freaking idea how to even begin figuring out when a cell becomes a real, live human being.
But it might be helpful in making the conversation more useful, or productive, or at least less ad hominem, if folks could recognize and acknowledge that folks who oppose abortion generally, or at least very often, don’t do so because they are hostile to women, or want to invade other people’s bodies or bedrooms, but because they think it’s a matter killing a person.
Shorter me: I’m not sure “DNFTT” is appropriate in this case.
And with that, I will retire from the field on the question of abortion, per se.
Yeah, whitetail are common enough around here to have achieved the status of pest. People hit them on the road a lot.
Very common down here, too, but no one that I’ve heard of eats one after it’s been hit by a car. As you say, different strokes.
Their issue is that they think abortion kills a human being. A real, live human person.
Yes, that is exactly my position.
Which doesn’t *exactly* translate into ‘anything’ in my book.
Well, nothing except whatever we should take away from your bald assertion that the patient’s privacy/consent issues arising from a law which would in some cases mandate an invasive ultrasound are to be dismissed as irrelevant – nay, non-existent – based on the supposition that the patient will be undergoing a (consensual) surgical abortion. Unless she isn’t, but hey, drugs go through her entire body, so I guess medical abortion must be even more invasive than surgery, let alone some piddly little vaginal ultrasound, amiright?
“Yeah, whitetail are common enough around here to have achieved the status of pest. People hit them on the road a lot.”
Very common down here, too, but no one that I’ve heard of eats one after it’s been hit by a car. As you say, different strokes.
I grew up in rural Ohio. This sort of thing happened not infrequently*, albeit without any overarching (quasi-)official sanction.
*To include some roadkill that occurred off-road. But still purely by accident, I’m sure.
But it might be helpful in making the conversation more useful, or productive, or at least less ad hominem, if folks could recognize and acknowledge that folks who oppose abortion generally, or at least very often, don’t do so because they are hostile to women, or want to invade other people’s bodies or bedrooms, but because they think it’s a matter killing a person.
It helps on this score if all parties involved don’t play bait-and-switch with their motivations in endorsing laws. If some is not willing to openly proclaim that their support for a provision of a law restricting abortion access is because they want to see abortions eliminated, but rather for some other reason, it becomes more difficult to take their motivation at face value, as they’re hiding said motivation’s face. It devolves into a matter of dueling rhetoric at that point, but blame is to be at least evenly distributed.
But still purely by accident, I’m sure.
Yes. In East Texas, there is a lot of post-sunset shooting practice with lights. Amazingly, a lot of deer are shot accidently.
blame is to be at least evenly distributed.
Fair enough.
But it might be helpful in making the conversation more useful, or productive, or at least less ad hominem, if folks could recognize and acknowledge that folks who oppose abortion generally, or at least very often, don’t do so because they are hostile to women, or want to invade other people’s bodies or bedrooms, but because they think it’s a matter killing a person.
Yeah, sure. Most of us get that. What I don’t get is that those same people refuse to believe that pregnancy is a serious health issue for a woman. And they seem to think that a woman’s conscience isn’t as worthy as a state legislature’s. Because those evil women (you know, the 1/3 of all women who have an abortion during their lifetime), they just don’t have a conscience, certainly not one as good as McKinney’s. They just like to murder.
(1.) devolution: A strategy to move the locus of decision making to an more politically advantageous venue. Subject to whimsical reversals of course when circumstances merit as in……
(2.) Personhood: A state of being that is unambiguously subject to constitutional protection, and defined in any number of ways as determined solely by its proponents on either side. For some unknown reason, it is commonly held to be not applicable to similar clumps of cells created as a result of acts of rape or incest.
(3.) Equal Protection: An overarching Constitutional concept held generally in disfavor by proponents of (1.) unless (2.) is invoked, whereby it becomes a special case of irrevocable exemption. According to one noted Texas attorney who has been known to golf, its applicability under the irrevocable exemption of (2.) should be subject to local plebicite, depending on..er,..ah,…. well, stuff.
(4.) Abortion: (a.) An issue that deeply disturbs The Force, the incidence of which is less in nations that have national health care policies and stricter rules governing those cases where said incidence is, for all intents and purposes, statistically insignificant.
(b.) One of the few things in this world that men cannot have.
Russell,
I see your point, but I foresee a slippery slope leading inevitably to Mississippi armed with nuclear weapons.
All the best,
Yes, the heart was just a snack. And my coworker arrived just after the deer was hit. Plus it was a very cold night – late in college basketball season in CT at night usually means “cold” and maybe “very cold.” So the deer was fresh and refrigerated. In fact, it was fresh enough that it produced quite a lot of “steam” when they first cut it open. There was a little stream at the bottom of the hill behind the guy’s house, so they did what seemed to this non-hunter a quick and dirty (oxymoron, I know) cleaning out of the carcass by flashlight in the running water. (It wasn’t too cold for some bad smells to hit my nose when they spilled its guts.)
I know one of those guys brought some venison jerky to work at some point, which may have come from the same deer, but I’m not sure. It was 13 or 14 years ago.
(It wasn’t too cold for some bad smells to hit my nose when they spilled its guts.)
Yep, venison jerky is pretty tasty though. Never ate the heart.
I foresee a slippery slope leading inevitably to Mississippi armed with nuclear weapons.
LOL
It is an ultrasound, almost certainly not vaginal unless I get some suggestion other than the rhetoric of its main opponent
Having discussed this with an ultrasound technician at our local hospital, for the first two months of pregnancy, an abdominal ultrasound is basically worthless. It won’t show you anything. During most of that time period, if you want to see anything, you’ve got to do the transvaginal ultrasound. That’s not politics, it is just basic human biology.
Now, perhaps the VA law is structured so that the ultrasound requirement can be satisfied if the woman is presented with a picture in which the fetus is not visible at all. To me, that makes no sense whatsoever, but such a law would not require a transvaginal ultrasound. On the other hand, if the woman must be presented with a picture that actually shows the fetus, then for most abortions, that necessitates a transvaginal ultrasound.
if folks could recognize and acknowledge that folks who oppose abortion generally, or at least very often, don’t do so because they are hostile to women, or want to invade other people’s bodies or bedrooms, but because they think it’s a matter killing a person.
This is very difficult to square with rape-and-incest exceptions as well as all the stupid-access-roadblock-that-only-blocks-poor-women. I’ll happily stipulate that there are some anti-abortion folks who consistently believe that it all boils down to killing a person, but that viewpoint seems to be a small minority at best.
Moreover, the killing-a-person argument is really incompatible with any legal framework except those that charge women who gets an abortion with murder. Again, that is a tiny fraction of anti-abortion folks. If you buy into the killing-a-person theory but don’t think women who get abortions should get charged with murder, I really don’t know what to make of you: do you think that pregnant women are clinically stupid and can’t be held accountable for their actions? Or is it all women? Seems pretty hostile to women.
“This is very difficult to square with rape-and-incest exceptions as well as all the stupid-access-roadblock-that-only-blocks-poor-women. I’ll happily stipulate that there are some anti-abortion folks who consistently believe that it all boils down to killing a person, but that viewpoint seems to be a small minority at best.”
There is also the view that the fetus gains more rights that need to be protected as it becomes more viable without the mother. It is by far the most common position, but it seems to get very little attention from pro-choicers.
“Moreover, the killing-a-person argument is really incompatible with any legal framework except those that charge women who gets an abortion with murder.”
I have said this before, but I believe in many places killing a pregnant woman can get you two murder charges.
So, my opinion, we have a legal framework that specifically exempts the mother and the doctor from that accountability.
I am not against exempting them. It just seems there is a legal framework for the discussion.
There is also the view that the fetus gains more rights that need to be protected as it becomes more viable without the mother. It is by far the most common position, but it seems to get very little attention from pro-choicers.
“More” rights? Just prior to birth, how many rights does a foetus have? What is the first of these rights? When does the second one come “on line”? Who makes these decisions and how? If we at some time in the future have the technology to grow babies from conception in the laboratory does that move viability back to conception? Would such a lab be a virtual human rights machine?
Right now these decisions are codified in Roe, a decision based, as we all know, on a concept of ‘viability’. Imperfect as it may be, the overwhelming majority of pro-choicers either support or are willing to live with this framework. On the other hand, most anti-choicers want it restricted, curtailed, or overturned alltogether. That’s where the attention is.
To assert otherwise is simply risible. The fact that you might spend a good deal of time debating this issue with pro-choice absolutists (guilty as charged, your honor)or getting your blood pressure up about “icky” subjects like late term abortions does not alter this fact one iota.
If the anti-abortion crowd could just cool it, Roe would be pretty much accepted as a done, and no big, deal.
But noooooooooooo……!!!!!!
“Right now these decisions are codified in Roe, a decision based, as we all know, on a concept of ‘viability’. Imperfect as it may be, the overwhelming majority of pro-choicers either support or are willing to live with this framework.”
I guess that depends on what you mean by pro-choicers. It is very common on this blog for example (and in a recent crooked timber post by tedra osell that I know you’re aware of because you commented on it more than 25 times) to hear that abortion should be completely unrestricted in any way until the baby leaves the woman’s body. Frequent commentor phil for example believes that even if a viable baby is born in a botched abortion, it should be killed.
That is most certainly not buying into the viability framework and it is most certainly not the framework that most Americans pro-choice or otherwise believe in.
During most of that time period, if you want to see anything, you’ve got to do the transvaginal ultrasound.
As best as I can make out, the point of the VA law is to make the woman see a picture – any picture – of the fetus, so as to dissuade her from having the abortion.
The vaginal probe part is lagniappe.
This is very difficult to square with rape-and-incest exceptions
Again as best as I can make out, most people’s positions on the topic are prone to, if not fraught with, inconsistencies.
There is also the view that the fetus gains more rights that need to be protected as it becomes more viable without the mother.
That’s more or less the traditional common law position (if I understand it correctly), and is also basically the doctrine held in Roe.
Sebastian: There is also the view that the fetus gains more rights that need to be protected as it becomes more viable without the mother. It is by far the most common position, but it seems to get very little attention from pro-choicers.
I can see how “viability” is something easy to grab onto as a purported dividing line, but I really don’t think that’s the case. First of all, it’s not really this gradual mother rights vs. fetal rights curve, but instead a cliff whereby at viability (let’s just assume we all agree on it’s 24 weeks) the State can trump all of the rights of the mother.
Second, we’re not talking about “real” viability here, in the sense that the 24 week old fetus is going to get a job, rent an apartment and shop for groceries. Instead, “viability” means that more than one person can care for the fetus and it will survive. But in that case I would think the “pro-life” (or “pro-life after viability”) position would be that, in the case of a woman who wants to end her pregnancy after this point, the state should step in, remove the fetus from the woman’s body, and provide all the necessary medical and other care necessary itself (or find someone willing to do so), and compensate the woman for pain and suffering.
I know of no prominent pro-lifer or group who has proposed this. Instead the “pro-life” position seems to be that the state can seize control of a woman’s body post-viability (or effectively do so through post-viability abortion bans).
But should that be proposed, then it seems to me the viability distinction makes even less sense, because since pre-viability the woman is the only person capable of caring for the fetus, then I would think the state has an even greater interest in barring abortion, since that’s the only way to protect the life of the fetus (since after all post-viability the state can do the caring itself).
So I don’t think the viability distinction is intellectually coherent at all, and mayb even backwards.
As for the rape/incest exceptions I agree with the general sentiment of some of the comments above, in that it seems to me the only distinction is that the woman did not consent to be pregnant, whereas outside those cases she did because she voluntary had sex, so it really is about slut-shaming/punishing women for having sex.
It is very common on this blog for example (and in a recent crooked timber post by tedra osell that I know you’re aware of because you commented on it more than 25 times) to hear that abortion should be completely unrestricted in any way until the baby leaves the woman’s body.
I confessed my position. The CT thread following Osell’s was overwhelming populated by “liberals” who had a real problem with her thesis (which, by the way was not about ‘unrestricted abortion anyway–and by the way, how many comments did you have there…hmmmm?)
“Choice” is a frame adopted by those appalled by attempts to roll back Roe. It has its problems. But the pro-choice coalition has a much wider array of belief than Roe’s opponents, since it does not start with the assumption that abortion is murder.
To argue otherwise is simply making it up.
You think that Roe’s opponents are only those who think that [all] abortion is murder? I don’t agree.
From the text of the VA law:
…shall perform a limited ultrasound examination on the patient undergoing the abortion to confirm the presence of a viable intrauterine pregnancy. Once the physician or medical professional determines whether such pregnancy exists, a print of the ultrasound image shall be made and a copy of the print, along with documentation of the physician or medical professional’s determination as to the viability of the pregnancy, shall be maintained in the woman’s medical record.
The purpose of the ultrasound requirement is to confirm the presence of a viable pregnancy. But for the first two months, an external ultrasound cannot do that. It can’t show you the presence of the fetus and it can’t even show that a fetal heartbeat is present. To do that in the first few months in most cases, you need a transvaginal ultrasound.
Frequent commentor phil for example believes that even if a viable baby is born in a botched abortion, it should be killed.
I suppose as an alternative it can be given to you to raise or sent to the workhouse. What’s your recommendation? Give it to the woman who just tried to murder it? Since that’s what you think she was doing, after all. Would she be a particularly fit mother? Shouldn’t we, at the very least, charge her with child abuse while her feet are still in the stirrups?
By the way, how often does this happen? I don’t need an exact figure, just ballpark it for me: 1 in every x abortions ends in a viable live birth. Solve for x.
And if we’re going to get personal, front-pager and moderator Sebastian has stated outright that he believes that a mentally ill woman seeking a post-viability abortion of a perfectly healthy fetus should, in some cases, be held in restraints and forced to give birth. So there we are.
When you made the original comment, hilzoy suggested that adoption was a possible option. I still think that sounds reasonable.
And how many of these babies will you be adopting? Do you have that ballpark number of how many of them there even are yet? I assume it’s a number somewhere between zero and a trillion but I’m going to need it more refined than that.
Well Gosnell was charged with infanticide on 8. So there are at least 8 in Pennsylvania in a three year period.
And it wasn’t ‘getting personal’ in the sense you seem to think. Bobbyp seems to think the radical pro-abortion stance is rare, I was merely pointing out that there seems to be a very noticeable presence of opinions that ‘viability’ is not a framework they wish to work with. But if you object to having your opinion used in that manner, I’m sorry.
As for my opinion, I also believe that if a mentally ill man is going to kill himself, the state will often physically restrain him until they can feel that he won’t injure himself. If a mentally ill man is going to harm someone else, the state will often physically restrain him until the feel he won’t injure anyone else. In fact there is a whole sub set of mental illness law around the concept of “danger to one’s self or others” that codifies when the state can do that. There are wards in every single major city where the state deals with such people every single day.
So it is odd that you would think of that as an opinion worth mentioning.
There is also the view that the fetus gains more rights that need to be protected as it becomes more viable without the mother. It is by far the most common position, but it seems to get very little attention from pro-choicers.
I’d agree with that statement (at least as far as the US are concerned) but would add that pro-lifers are in my moderately humble opinion not much different. The most vocal about the topic on both sides tend to be absolutists that (with justification) fear that any concession is a slippery slope that will lead to the win of the opposite position.
If I were in the US I’d likely go for a no compromise position too. Over here I moved reluctantly from ‘abortion only under certain circumstances’ to ‘legal in the first trimester, after that only if certain conditions are met’ because I had to realize that in some regions the standards were applied so restrictively to become essentially a total ban and a licence for harassment of both women and doctors by zealots (some of them in the state courts). But compared to the US the German debate even at its most heated and acrimonious was and is harmless (and with no significant violence involved).
I could say similar things about the topic of voting, voting rights, voter IDs etc.
“Bobbyp seems to think…”
1. About 1/3 of those surveyed believe abortion should be “generally available” (NY Times survey, 2007). Whether or not all of these folks would agree that the woman has the unrestricted choice to make the decision strikes me as questionable. I’d wager that if push came to shove only a strident minority of even this group would assert a woman’s unrestricted choice to make the decision under ALL circumstances. A few of them constitute Seb’s “pro-choice” crowd with whom he debates this issue on the internets. True, viability is not a meaningful concept in our framework of the debate.
2. About 40% believe abortions should be available, but access “more restricted” than “now”. Again, the imprecision of the survey leads to many further questions. I’d wager that the nearly all of this group sees the question in terms of some kind of viability framework. Thus, under certain circumstances, I would say they believe abortion to be murder (3rd trimester, etc.) I would guess Sebastian falls somewhere in this group? This seems a reasonable surmise from what I have read.
3. Anti-abortion absolutists of one stripe or another. Again, the survey did not distinguish finer positions here (rape, incest exemption)…but I would take it that those in this camp generally opine that abortion is murder.
It would seem then that abortion is viewed as murder under some or all circumstances by a majority of the population. It also seems reasonable to assert that nearly all of those opposed to Roe fall into this camp somewhere.
Further, I am curious regarding those (Sebastian says they exist)who oppose Roe and yet do not believe abortion to be murder under [at least some] circumstances. What, exactly, do these types believe?
I’m genuinely curious.
There are legal terms for killings that do not meet the criteria for murder. Without thinking I can come up with at least half a dozen in German. Legally murder requires ‘base’ motives and (malicious) intent.
Btw, the rabbinical interpretation of abortion with the intent of saving the woman is ‘killing in self defense’, attributing the intent to kill to the unborn. Christian theology on this cannot be separated from the theory of original sin and thus is to be blamed on St.Augustine (no need for ‘originalist’ speculation, he was as explicit about that as possible: what dies in the womb goes straight to hell, no exceptions). Through Luther that also entered protestant theology (although most mainline protestants dropped that belief since then).
Thanks, Hartmut. I’d forgotten about the abortion is like committing a really serious parking infraction viewpoint. Yes, I have to admit, many would see it as a type of manslaughter…or something…something that is not quite murder even though there is means, motive, and opportunity and an “innocent human life” is snuffed out.
Similarly, the political battle over illegal immigration emits a lot of heat over what is currently a minor civil offense.
Makes you wonder.
We have manslaughter rules in the US as well. We also have anti cruelty to animals rules that can land you in prison. The idea that the only possible definition of abortion is ‘murder’ if you want to make it illegal at some points is really odd.
I’m pretty sure that rape is considered a very grave offense but it isn’t called murder. I’m entirely sure that tying your cat in a bag and throwing it in the river is punishable offense but it isn’t murder. Even if the question of “is the fetus a full blown human person deserving of legal protection such that killing it at seven months is a homicide” were resolved by 100% of the population as “no” that doesn’t mean that 100% of the population would say that killing it at seven months should be a crime of some sort (in fact it appears that about 2/3 of the population believes that).
Making it murder or nothing is a pro-choice rhetorical move.
We have manslaughter rules in the US as well. We also have anti cruelty to animals rules that can land you in prison. The idea that the only possible definition of abortion is ‘murder’ if you want to make it illegal at some points is really odd.
Well, yes, we do have manslaughter laws. And if we read them, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to find any that encompass the premeditated act of causing the death of another human being, with a specific and fixed intent to kill them and consideration of the act intended to kill them. That would be what is generally referred to as, well, murder. Specifically, premeditated murder. And if someone wants to argue, as you have, that (possibly only consensually, non-incestuously conceived) fetuses are human beings with the same rights to life as any post-natal human being… then, um, abortion has to be murder, or we need to re-define murder.
Making it murder or nothing is a pro-choice rhetorical move.
Arguing that unequivocally establishing that before the law a “fetus [is] a full blown human person deserving of legal protection such that killing it at seven months is a homicide” would not legally make abortion murder is a pro-life rhetorical move of the genus dubius apologia, and rather strange to see coming from a lawyer.
But the polling so far as I can tell supports much stronger restrictions on late term abortions, but short of making them murder.
This fact is used by the pro-choice side to suggest that because they aren’t willing to call it murder, it *must* mean something about illegitimate oppression of women.
Now I’m certainly willing to call the Gosnell abortions murder and infanticide. But that doesn’t mean that the polity as a whole couldn’t come to some other conclusion without it being classified as murder AND without it being a non-crime (the pro-choice position).
The problem is that both of the extreme sides want to keep discussion of the non-extreme sides to a minimum. The hardcore pro-choice side is fine with the hardcore pro-lifers talking largely about murder because it lets the hardcore pro-choicers completely avoid the majority opinion that abortions should be more regulated than they are now *short of making it murder*. Both hardcore sides are willing to focus on the other sides’ hardcore positions because they know that about 2/3 of the country don’t like the hardcore positions and it is easy to demonize the other sides’s hardcore position while ignoring your side’ hard core position (humans are GREAT at downplaying the problems of people they identify with and demonizing the problems of people they don’t identify with).
But the reality is that an enormous majority would like stricter abortion rules (like France or Sweden) without going through the murder route.
WHY they want that is very likely for a huge number of various reasons. Maybe they feel sympathy for the burden of pregnancy. Maybe they feel that the fetus is on its way to being human and deserves at least the protections that we would give a common dog. I don’t know that for sure. Maybe it is muddled, and if push came to shove they would be ok with the murder characterization. I don’t know. But the only reason we are talking about binary solutions is because the reactionary pro-choicers and the revolutionary pro-lifers don’t want to talk about what most people really think.
[terms reactionary and revolutionary chosen intentionally. Think about who wants to do what with the direction of the law.]
[terms reactionary and revolutionary chosen intentionally. Think about who wants to do what with the direction of the law.]
…because reactionaries would never support reversion to century-old strictures when they could instead preserve legal novelties whose age is measured in decades. Nope, nope, nope!
…and revolutionaries always want to roll back social/legal changes they don’t approve of, so as to restore the ancien régime. Yep, yep, yep!
(Even taken at face value, and ignoring the problematic points with your clever little narrative inversion highlighted above, I’m rather at a loss to see what this rhetorical flourish is supposed to accomplish, let alone prove…)
Sebastian:”France and Sweden”::Jesurgislac:”2nd Amendment/brown M&ms”
Well, even the RCC has changed its position on abortion several times and the idea of a legal or semilegal first trimester abortion did come from the Christianized Aristotelic theory that the soul enters the unborn not at conception but later (earlier for boys than for girls). After fiddling slightly with the numbers it came out as 40 days for boys, 80 for girls. Aborting an unborn before the soul enters was only (or at worst) a lesser sin while after that it was double murder (of the body and the soul, because the latter would go straight to hell). That shyster-salomonic solution got overturned only because of the problems it created with the doctrine of the immaculate conception of Mary that required ensouling at conception. In other words, the RCC was anything but consistent historically about abortion (as with so many other things. But reminding ‘true believers’ is about as polite as telling the truth about St.Ronnie to modern Republicans).