Catholics' health care complaints unfounded

3:05 AM, Jul. 7, 2013  |  Comments

In reading the Jacob Kanclerz article "Fortnight for Freedom" (June 30), I was stunned to realize that the Catholic Church was engaged in an attempt to attack the Affordable Care Act through fear-mongering and deception. And the article simply restated their claims without questioning them, sad to say. At the very least, this is poor journalism.

The act mandates that employers provide health care, including access to contraception, to their employees. Somehow the Catholics have gotten it into their heads that making it possible for employees of Catholic-controlled institutions such as hospitals to choose to use contraception is an infringement of the church's religious liberty. This according to one cited pastor "threatens all of our freedom," including somehow even the "freedom" of women seeking normal health care coverage. This I find extraordinary.

No one is forcing the Catholic Church to provide abortion or contraception to church employees, who have been granted an exemption. Any choice of contraceptive use would rest entirely with the secular, female employees making the choice, not the church. And yet somehow, this is an "incremental, gradual threat to religious freedom in our country" according to the near-hysterical complaints of one local pastor. Not only do women have a right to use birth control independent of any religious authority, they have a right to health care that includes among its provisions access to such medication. For any religious entity to try to deny their employees, even in a secular institution such as a hospital, such access is itself a violation of personal freedoms. Church and state are separate in America, and the last I checked we were not ruled by some sort of Christian Taliban.

The Catholic Church is the last institution that should be making a fuss about women's health care. This is an institution that for decades ignored the most horrendous abuses of its own parishioners, young people molested by Catholic clergy. It is still coming to terms with that abuse, and with other more mundane financial scandals, as well. For them to demand their "freedom" and portray themselves and their employees as martyrs over birth control and health care is the most grievous and unbelievable hypocrisy in memory.

The church should apologize for pretending that our government is "endangering religious freedom." This is nothing but self-serving religious and partisan nonsense.

Leland W. Chapin


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