February 6, 2012 | 12:16 PM |

Cardinal O’Malley: Either Violate Our Consciences Or Drop Health Coverage

FILED UNDER: Insurance, Medicine/Science, Politics, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Catholic Church, contraception

It appears that Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, is gearing up for a fight.

Responding to the federal government’s recent ruling that most health insurance plans, even those provided to employees of Catholic hospitals, colleges and charities, must cover free contraceptives for women, O’Malley lashed out at the ruling calling it “an alarming and serious matter” that “strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith.”

In a letter dated January 2012 posted on his blog, O’Malley adds that “the federal government, which claims to be by, and for the people has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.”

Then he issues this call to action:

…unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled and must be prepared either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply. We cannot simply accept this unjust law now proposed at the federal level.

Listen to Martha Bebinger’s full story here on WBUR and then, please, weigh in on this…

About the author

Blogger, CommonHealth Rachel Zimmerman worked as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal for 10 years, most recently covering health and medicine out of the paper’s Boston bureau. Rachel has also written for The New York Times, the (now-defunct) Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the alternative newspaper Willamette Week, in Portland, Ore., among other publications. Rachel co-wrote a book about birth, published by Bantam/Random House, and spent 2008 as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Rachel lives in Cambridge with her husband and two daughters. View all posts by Rachel Zimmerman →

  • Jack

    What’s the problem Cardinal?  It’s simple.  The government requires this of ALL employers.  Take your folks off the insurance rolls and start providing self insurance.  Then, you can restrict what insurance your “followers” will receive.  Of course, one has to wonder why this is an issue?  The vast majority of your employees are Catholic, so you can trust that they won’t be using birth control choices provided by the insurance carrier? Right?  I mean all these good Catholics who have only 1, 2, 3 children are relying solely on abstinence and don’t use birth control, right?  Isn’t it odd that the only way you can keep Catholics in line is by eliminating their choice all together?

  • DJ Wolfe,sr

    The Affordable Health Care Plan does not force anyone to use contraception.  Some religions do not believe in many medical procedures(blood transfusions, etc;).  Their employers may provide coverage, but no one is forced to use them.

  • Joe

    Where do I sign up for the Cardinal’s protest movement.  I’ll be in my garage creating anti-Obama signs as soon as the word goes out.

    • Lynda Christian

      Are you claiming that you have never used any form of birth control?  I think that most Catholics lie about their sexual practices when they condemn premarital or extramarital sex or have abortions.  Sex has a life of its own and does not ask for permission to do what it wants to do.  Look at all the Catholics who have conceived babies in vitro–also condemned by the church.  I haven’t noticed too many Catholics who have 15 children–which would be par for the course if no one was using birth control.

  • Alyson

    How is denying health care to ALL of your employees not a violation of conscience??  Also, they can start paying taxes if they want to opt-out. 

  • Guest

    Isn’t it true that if Catholic institutions don’t want to be required to offer birth control in their health insurance plans, they can stop taking federal funds?  Citing religious freedom is one thing but I don’t think you can ask for religious freedom while taking government money.  Why should my tax dollars be given to an institution that thinks birth control is a sin?

    • Reasonable?

      Most private health plans don’t take federal dollars UNLESS they offer services to Medicare/Medicaid recepients.  I’m not sure what the case is here.

    • http://twitter.com/617patrick Patrick O’Malley

      its against the Catholic religion to not take money

  • Reasonable?

    This issue brings up some important philosophical points about our health care system.

    In principle insurance companies should be able to select which drugs categories they cover. However, I don’t think this principle can be reasonably defended under the largely employer based insurance system that we have here in the US.

    Employers choose insurance policies for their employees, and the trend is to have fewer choices (my company only offers BCBS HMO).  So the individual consumer choice is severly constrained by employers.

    A direct to consumer oriented health insurance system could reasonably have variable coverage of some drug categories. 

    Maybe various state connector programs could be the beginning of an consumer based system as Jon Stewart alluded to in his conversation with HHS Secretary Sebelius which was posted here a few weeks back.