Notre Dame responds to updated contraception mandate
In response to the outpouring of religious outrage, President Obama offered an altered plan in response to protests that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s birth control mandate violated religious liberty.
On February 10, Obama assured the nation that under his compromise, “Religious liberty will be protected and a law that provides free preventive care will not discriminate against women.”
As he defined the new plan, religious hospitals and universities would not be required to pay for health plans that include birth control. Insurance companies would instead both cover the services at no additional cost to consumers and bear the cost of informing religious employees that their plans include birth control services.
Despite the purported changes, the new plan met much criticism. On February 12, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released a statement condemning both the president’s retention of the HHS mandate and the attempt at compromise. The bishops stated that “the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders – for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals – is unacceptable and must be corrected.”
Many at Notre Dame have also condemned the president’s attempted compromise. Notre Dame Law Professor O. Carter Snead wrote a letter co-signed by Catholic University President John Garvey, Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton Professor Robert P. George, Hertog Fellow Yuval Levin, and over 300 scholars and leaders across the country, including more than 70 Notre Dame faculty and staff.
Titling the letter “Unacceptable,” its authors condemn the “so-called ‘accommodation’” as something that “changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise.”
“It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the employee,” the letter states. “The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.”
“By sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches, auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy (like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty,” the letter concluded.
“Unacceptable” is not the only prominent Notre Dame response. On the MSNBC morning show “Up,” Fr. William Dailey, CSC, a visiting law professor at Notre Dame, criticized the compromise as meaningless.
“Now that some of the labeling has changed, I guess the idea is the University of Notre Dame shouldn’t feel bad because we won’t have to inform people these services are grave and unjust,” he said. “Being revenue neutral doesn’t mean being free.”
Not all the reaction from Notre Dame, however, has been negative. University President Rev. John Jenkins, CSC, described the development as a “welcome step.”
“We applaud the willingness of the administration to work with religious organizations to find a solution acceptable to all parties,” he said in a February 10 press release.
Despite this praise, Fr. Jenkins did not express total satisfaction.
“There remain a number of unclear and unresolved issues, and we look forward to joining the U.S. bishops and leaders from other religious institutions to work with the administration to resolve them,” he stated.
Scott Englert is a junior political science and Arabic major. Contact him at senglert@nd.edu.
To see the most recent signatories of the “Unacceptable” letter, go to becketfund.org/unacceptable/.
