Mandate is a threat to religious freedom

Headlines declared “free birth control for all” when the federal government recently issued an interim rule mandating health care plans to cover sterilization and prescription contraceptives, including the abortifacient drug Ella. But an underreported provision of the same rule proposed an incredibly narrow definition of religious employer for exemption from the mandate.

The Catholic Church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception and sterilization as a rejection of God’s life-giving design may lack popular support. However, our nation’s commitment to protecting the free-exercise of religion has led to long-standing conscience exemptions from mandates concerning abortion, contraception and sterilization in both federal and state law for health care professionals, insurers and purchasers.

But the newly defined exemption for religious belief is stricter than anything found in current federal law. Exemptions may now be unavailable to individuals or insurers and apply only to religious employers that meet the extremely narrow criteria of 1) having the purpose of teaching religious values, 2) primarily hiring persons who share the organizations’ religious tenets, 3) primarily serving people who share those tenets and 4) being a nonprofit. Under this proposal, an organization would not be “religious enough” if it served people of different faiths, failed to hire based on religion or did not restrict its mission to the teaching of religious values. As organizations striving to serve all people in need, Catholic hospitals, universities and social service agencies would be denied the exemption.

Astonishingly, Jesus Christ and the early church could not qualify for the exemption, as his ministry was not confined to members of the church.

The new rule abrogates existing law and undermines the free-exercise protections of the First Amendment. Left unchanged, the Catholic Church will either be forced to withdraw from public ministry or violate deeply held beliefs. Illinois residents surely cannot accept this threat to religious freedom.

Zach Wichmann

Director of Government Relations

Catholic Conference of Illinois

Springfield