It’d be nice if the Catholic Church could decide whether or not this issue is about women’s sexuality — because this doesn’t sound much to me like a reasonable critique of infringing upon religious liberty:
The White House is “all talk, no action” on moving toward compromise, said Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “There has been a lot of talk in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular,” Picarello said. “We’re not going to do anything until this is fixed.”
That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for “good Catholic business people who can’t in good conscience cooperate with this.”
“If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I’d be covered by the mandate,” Picarello said.
Ed Kilgore is right when he says that this is an over-reach. As I rather artlessly attempted to express yesterday, people are pretty ambivalent about the idea that women should have a choice over whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. And while I don’t agree with a lot of people on that issue, I understand their ambivalence; it’s not unreasonable to think that a fetus is, if perhaps not quite a human, still something more precious than any other mass of cells.
But the mainstream in society no longer finds the prospect of women being autonomous sexual beings nearly as bothersome as many in the Church’s hierarchy seem to. That’s not to say that American culture is enlightened on these issues (an understatement if ever there was one), but even people who wouldn’t consider themselves feminists are likely to find something viscerally distasteful about the kind of fanaticism Picarello represents.
What’s probably most salient in this situation is the brazen way in which the Church is, potentially, about to give up all pretense of this being a defensive struggle. What was too often being obscured to begin with — that there are real human beings who work in these Church-run institutions that have rights, too — will become patent, as the scope of their intended reaction grows ever-larger. The somewhat facile image of a big, mean, oppressive bureaucracy harassing the comparatively powerless and marginal minority then changes. Instead of the Church playing the role of the meek, it now assumes the stance of bedroom Big Brother, with women all over the country becoming the righteous resistants.
Recall, in politics, how the most damaging narratives tend to be those which confirm the public’s already-held notions. While the Church right now is playing the role of the besieged, it should be careful — it’s not as if the image of an arrogant, out-of-touch, and imperial Church hierarchy is one the people will struggle to perceive.
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I believe this position is ideologically more sound, but politically far worse. The Freedom of Religion argument is, in my opinion, weak (at least when it comes to hospitals). The Freedom of Conscience argument*, is stronger. I would be more inclined to support their position if it were a matter of conscience, rather than a matter of “We’re a church, g’dangit!”
But politically, this is a tough sell. At least when it comes to contraception. It’s one thing to say “Hey, look, this comparatively tiny sector of the workforce would not participate.” But (politically, again) a different one to say “And if your boss is Catholic, he may not participate, either.” Regardless of ideological merits, being perceived as coming between women and their contraception – whomever they work for – is a political loser.
* – Of course, FoC is nowhere in the Constitution, but the Constitution doesn’t justify their reading of FoR. I’m thinking more of ideological concepts than specifically constitutional ones.
Good stuff.
Another unfortunate side-effect? I find the debate over rights-privileging to be stimulating and challenging. Falling back into the old culture war pattern, as this would demand, is definitely way less interesting. (First-world blogger problems.)
I think there’s still room for a rights-privileges discussion, regardless of whether we’re talking about FoC vs FoR.
Not that it’s the discussion that would occur if we fell back to FoC. But that’s not the discussion that occurring now.
The two arguments are intertwined, at least as I’ve tried to make them, but I concur that striking the provision from the bill altogether will be a harder if not a near impossible sell. For this the Church would have to make the case on purely secular grounds that a mandate requiring the coverage of contraceptives is unjust and immoral, but as few people buy natural law arguments, which is how the church has historically argued philosophically for its moral understanding of human sexuality, I don’t see it making a successful case.
Oh to live in a country that had fredom from religion instead of one that has freedom of religon. If your god says that you can’t do certain things then it is perfectly fine to not do those things, but you don’t get to say I can’t do those things. If the church wants federal money then they must either obey the law or face the consequences.
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