In recent days, the Republican world has overflowed with outrage over the requirement under existing healthcare laws that all employers (excepting actual churches whose dogma specifically regards contraception as a “sin”) provide health care coverage for their employees, including copay-free contraceptives. That this requirement has existed for some time in the majority of states has not heretofore triggered the sort of self-righteous frothing that it does, now that it can be labeled (at the risk of coining a term the right will find irresistible) an Obamanation – (something defined as immoral primarily because it is connected with President Obama and must therefore be, by conservative logic, of necessity bad) is neither here nor there, except that it indicates the majority of the country is okay with it.
The argument seems to be that, if hospitals and universities affiliated with the Catholic church [which holds any form of contraception except “rhythm” (having sex only when the woman is not ovulating) is sinful] are required to provide the same sort of full-spectrum health coverage required of any other employer, this somehow violates the right to freedom of expression protected under the First Amendment. That provision of healthcare coverage should be regarded as a meaningful form of self-expression seems to me odd to begin with. It conjures up visions of a future in which black box theaters off-Broadway will present radical forms of health insurance plans for the titillation of scandalized audiences and ecstatic reviewers.
The concept also suggests that institutions, such as churches, hospitals and universities, as distinct from the individuals who work, study, or worship in them, have rights that are protected under the constitution. Certainly, institutions have the right to own property, but to extend to them (“corporations are people”) the status accorded American citizens seems to open a can of legal worms that, if this is its beginning, has at least no readily discernable end. For example, it would be absurd, but under this logic unavoidable, that if churches have constitutionally protected rights, they should be able to vote, to marry (presumably other churches, though same-sect marriages would doubtless encounter resistance) and, if found in violation of a law (maybe building codes?), be tried by a jury of their peers, again, presumably, other churches. If a church wishes to close down its operations, is this suicide? Can churches be drafted in time of war? Can they run for public office? And (switching from the silly to the serious) if churches are people whose rights are protected under the constitution, why shouldn’t they pay taxes like the rest of us? Surely, if institutions are accorded the protections that go with citizenship, does that not also imply the duties and obligations inherent in citizenship? And if, as seems obvious from the above discussion, churches (and their affiliate organizations) are NOT people, is it necessarily the case that their rights of self-expression, etc. , are protected under the Constitution?
Further, the Catholic Church is not the same as the Little Brown Church in the Vale. It is an independent, sovereign nation that exists within the geographical bounds of Rome, Italy, and has representatives all over the world. The Pope is its king. It makes its own laws, has its own security and police forces, and, through the agency of the Holy See, conducts diplomatic relations with other sovereign states. Therefore, laws promulgated by the Vatican should have precisely the same standing as regards American institutions as do Swiss laws, Japanese laws, or Nigerian laws, that is to say, none. To assert otherwise is inevitably to open the door to Sharia law which, at any rate, is only a cultural tradition and not something foisted upon the United States by a foreign country. To assert that the present issue has anything whatever to do with conscience is absurd. One’s conscience is the province of one’s own reason, which has nothing to do with the blind obedience to the dictates of a foreign potentate; this is about jurisdiction, about who will make the laws by which the United States of America is to be governed.
BUT, if it be insisted nonetheless that laws promulgated by the Vatican supersede the force of American law, the Church cannot in principle then invoke the Constitution (the basis of all American law which the primacy of Catholic law presumably sets aside) as the principle under which they claim protection.
Therefore, because insurance coverage is not reasonably construed to be a form of self-expression, because institutions are not human beings whose right to life and liberty are reasonably protected by Constitutional guarantees, and because the laws promulgated by the Catholic Church are those of a foreign, sovereign nation, it is not proper to accord them the same status under the Constitution as American laws which must meet the test of according with that constitution in order to be valid.
Therefore, while individuals may, of course, do what they wish regarding contraception, including use or not use their health insurance to provide themselves with contraceptives, employers (however sincerely devoted to the Catholic Church) may not deny their employees the right to equal protection under the law (in this case, in the form of adequate healthcare coverage). If this were allowed, the door would be open for employers to deny their employees safe, sanitary working conditions, or impose any other form of mistreatment on the plea of personal reservation. Laws exist so that people are required to do what is presumed to be right irrespective of their personal reservations. We don’t need laws to make people do what they would do anyway voluntarily in accordance with their own preferences. The laws of the United States of America exist so that the citizens of the United States of America may live under a system of rules which they, themselves, the citizens of the United States of America, deem to be right and proper for them as a nation and in their best interest. This has traditionally been construed as being without reference to the laws of Switzerland, Indonesia, Lithuania, Uzbeckibeckistanstan, or the Vatican. And long may it remain so.
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