The Hill News

As John Feehery pointed out in his article “Obama and the Catholic vote,” there are some “regulations run amok” in the recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decision to mandate contraception coverage in employer insurance plans. The problem is not, as he suggested, because contraception and Catholicism are somehow mutually exclusive. The otherwise sound regulation goes awry because of the refusal clause that has been written into the rule.
 
The amended regulation infringes on no one’s conscience, demands no one change her or his religious beliefs, discriminates against no man or woman, puts no additional economic burden on the poor, interferes with no one’s medical decisions, compromises no one’s healthâ€"that is, unless it includes a ref! usal clause. For all these reasons, millions of Catholics, including Catholics for Choice, support the IOM’s recommendation, but not an implementation by HHS that would deny some women access to preventive healthcare they need.
 
Government should indeed listen to what American Catholics want. But they should let Catholics speak for themselves. Most U.S. Catholics disagree with the bishops and their lobbyists who claim to speak for usâ€"notably, 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used a form of birth control prohibited by the Vatican. When Catholic voters considered healthcare reform in 2009, more than six in ten supported health insurance coverageâ€"whether it is private or government insuranceâ€"for contraception and family planning.

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