02 June 2012
Church Is Still Not State
Daniel Henninger’s Opinion essay in the May 31, 2012 Wall Street Journal misleads his readers by confusing the provisions of the HHS Affordable Care Act pre-regulatory guidelines allowing sterilizations and abortifacients with the Act’s mandate that all approved healthcare insurance policies offer free birth control medications. The decision to insure abortion and sterilization services is voluntary for both the insurer and the insured and nothing is mandated as far as payment is concerned. The insured, on the other hand, must be relieved of responsibility to pay anything for birth control medications.
The freedom of religion protected by the U.S. Constitution has never given any church the right to impose its practices on others. Nor, for that matter, does it prevent members of any church from ignoring certain of its strictures such as condemning artificial birth control, which is used by many otherwise practicing Catholics, for example. Freedom of religion is an individual right, a personal privilege, not an institutional authorization.
Even the Act’s mandate of free birth control medications under approved healthcare insurance plans, therefore, does not impinge on the individual’s freedom to practice any religion as he or she wishes. It does prevent the Catholic Church’s hierarchy from using HHS regulations to enforce their own doctrines on their adherents; but they have plenty of other power in their spiritual arsenal.
Daniel Henninger’s Opinion essay in the May 31, 2012 Wall Street Journal misleads his readers by confusing the provisions of the HHS Affordable Care Act pre-regulatory guidelines allowing sterilizations and abortifacients with the Act’s mandate that all approved healthcare insurance policies offer free birth control medications. The decision to insure abortion and sterilization services is voluntary for both the insurer and the insured and nothing is mandated as far as payment is concerned. The insured, on the other hand, must be relieved of responsibility to pay anything for birth control medications.
The freedom of religion protected by the U.S. Constitution has never given any church the right to impose its practices on others. Nor, for that matter, does it prevent members of any church from ignoring certain of its strictures such as condemning artificial birth control, which is used by many otherwise practicing Catholics, for example. Freedom of religion is an individual right, a personal privilege, not an institutional authorization.
Even the Act’s mandate of free birth control medications under approved healthcare insurance plans, therefore, does not impinge on the individual’s freedom to practice any religion as he or she wishes. It does prevent the Catholic Church’s hierarchy from using HHS regulations to enforce their own doctrines on their adherents; but they have plenty of other power in their spiritual arsenal.
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