Written by Adele Stan for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan is part of a dangerous reframing of "religious liberty."

At a gathering of Catholics in his archdiocese last year, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, the archbishop of New York, uttered a strategic point that would have done Machiavelli proud. The bishops, he said, are perhaps not the church’s best messengers.

“In the public square, I hate to tell you, the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over,” he told his flock, according to the New York Times, at a diocesan convocation on public policy. Reporting for the Times, Tim Stelloh and Andy Newman wrote of an example he gave the crowd, an apparent reference to the hiring of Helen Alvaré by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1990:

[Dolan] told a story about bishops hiring an “attractive, articulate, intelligent” laywoman to speak against abortion and said it was “the best thing we ever did…”

Dolan, as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), decided this week to operationalize his assessment by hiring Kim Daniels, a former operative for Sarah Palin’s political action committee, as his spokesperson — a new position with a much broader mission than that covered by Alvaré in the 1990s.

An attorney and youthful mother of six who echoes the bishops’ disdain for contraception and abortion, Daniels is a smart cookie with an appealing personality. In other words, an “attractive, articulate, intelligent” laywoman.

When the USCCB announced Daniels’s appointment, the thing that grabbed reporters’ attention was her work in 2010 as an operative for Sarah Palin’s political action committee, SarahPAC — a résumé entry conveniently omitted from the bishops’ announcement about their new hire. If there was any doubt remaining of the bishops’ total alignment with the most right-wing part of the Republican Party, that data point should lay it to rest. But the rest of Daniels’ career is far more interesting — and troubling.

The Reframing of Religious Freedom

Over the course of the last several decades, as reasonable people, including most lay Catholics, increasingly rejected the church’s medieval worldview on women’s rights, human sexuality, and LGBTQ rights, the political power of U.S. bishops has been on the wane. During the debate over health-care reform, President Barack Obama went around the prelates in order to confer some Catholic buy-in on the deal, ultimately winning the approval of a number of highly placed nuns, who signed a letter to that effect, as well as the head of the Catholic Health Association, who also happens to be a Catholic sister.

The bishops were incensed. At that moment, their lack of sway over their own people was revealed for all to see. They needed a new angle, one that could also speak to the hearts of those ordinary Americans who, in the wake of the church’s massive child-sex-abuse scandal, now judged them to be mere mortals, and deeply flawed mortals at that. Enter the Red, White, and Blue.

The success of the Tea Party movement, with its bigoted and misogynist underpinnings dressed in the regalia of patriotism, was apparently not lost on the bishops. On the heels of their humiliating defeat with the Affordable Care Act, the bishops found a new, patriotic-sounding cause to wrap around their attempts to codify prejudice and discrimination as secular law: religious freedom, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Summon the fife and drum!

Trouble is, the bishops’ notion of religious freedom differs a bit from that of the founders, who sought to avoid the establishment of a state religion by promising Americans freedom of worship. What the bishops seek, on the other hand, is the right to impose their religious views on those who do not subscribe to their theology. Any impediment to their totalitarian view is now framed as a breach of their religious freedom. And Kim Daniels has been deeply involved in the advancement of this strategy.

Media-Friendly and Studio Ready Church Ladies

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Written by Bridgette Dunlap for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Government lawyers filed an emergency motion to dismiss lawsuit over contraceptive coverage mandate citing exorbitant costs in responding to document requests.

This week, the government filed an emergency motion in the New York Archdiocese’s lawsuit against the contraceptive coverage mandate, requesting that the court halt proceedings and dismiss the case. The emergency is that the government is hemorrhaging money defending a regulation it will never enforce against the Archdiocese.

Roman Catholic Archdiocese of NY v. Sebelius is the only lawsuit out of the 23 brought by religiously affiliated organizations not to be dismissed at the district court level for lack of standing or ripeness. The cases have been dismissed because religiously affiliated non-profits are currently completely exempt from the contraceptive coverage requirement. They enjoy a one-year safe harbor period provided for the religious accommodation to be finalized. If you haven’t been injured, you can’t sue.

The government swore up and down from the day the case was filed that the rule in its current form would never be enforced against the Archdiocese and its co-plaintiffs and that a new rule with a new religious accommodation was on the way. As promised, the Obama administration released a new proposed rule, is now reviewing comments from the public on it, and will release the final rule by August. However, in the New York Archdiocese case, Judge Brian M. Cogan found that the administration’s assurances were not enough and that the impending threat of the rule was injury enough for the plaintiffs to proceed.

The Archdiocese et al. proceeded to serve the government with requests for every document under the sun. “Discovery” is the process in which litigating parties get evidence by requesting relevant documents from each other. To respond to a document request, a party has to review documents to determine whether they are responsive to the request and make a log of documents that are responsive but won’t be turned over because they are protected by attorney-client or another privilege. Computer searches only get you so far; a human attorney or paralegal has to determine if a document is responsive or privileged.

Plaintiffs in these cases being 1 for 23, the Archdiocese may have sought to make the most of its unique situation. It made discovery requests the government calls “enormously burdensome and irrelevant.” The Archdiocese also noticed a deposition of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Lawsuits are brought over regulations all the time — it is pretty audacious to demand a cabinet member show up in person for yours. That was indeed too far, and Judge Cogan granted Sebelius a protective order.

The plaintiffs didn’t stop there. The Archdiocese subpoenaed the Executive Office of the President (EOP), even though it isn’t a party to the lawsuit, many of the requested documents are protected by various privileges, and you must have an extra good reason to get documents from the president. Also, the EOP being in D.C., the subpoena was issued in a district that has thrown out three of these 23 lawsuits for lack of jurisdiction.

The Archdiocese later withdrew the subpoena. We don’t know why. Perhaps it realized it was an unreasonable request. This did not happen, alas, until after our tax dollars were put to work on a very lengthy motion to quash the subpoena. But whatever that cost, it pales in comparison to the expenditures of various agencies on the New York document requests; in the emergency motion, the government estimates completing the requested document production would take eight years and cost over $10 million.

We should take that estimate with a grain of salt, of course, but the government has sought to back it up. Attached to the emergency motion are declarations from officials of various offices and agencies as to what they have spent so far on this one case and what they estimate it will cost to finish. Two-hundred HHS employees have spent have spent over 2,000 hours and located over 7.6 million pages of potentially responsive documents so far. That has cost over $177,000. Those documents haven’t been reviewed by HHS or their Department of Justice counsel yet. The Internal Revenue Service has spent over a quarter of a million dollars.

The lawyers, paralegals, and IT professionals needed to complete discovery are expensive — even those of the lower-paid government variety. Offices that don’t have enough staff for this have hired contract lawyers, but they can’t afford to do that anymore because of the sequester. Lest you think it’s not a big deal to have government lawyers tied up or that the effect is minimal in the scope of things, consider one example contained in the declaration from the Department of Labor (DOL). The DOL’s Plan Benefits Security Division investigates and litigates cases of fraud or mismanagement in employee benefits. The division, which recovered $1.38 billion for U.S. workers in 2011, argues that the impact on the public interest of putting its attorneys on document review will be far greater than the financial loss.

The Archdiocese, which employs 10,000 people in programs receiving many millions of dollars in government grants each year, will never have to provide health plans with contraceptive coverage under the rule as proposed. Despite this, it is waging a legal battle that is imposing significant costs on the taxpayers who fund its work. And this is only one lawsuit. With the additional cases brought by secular for-profit corporations, over 60 lawsuits have been filed in this scorched earth litigation campaign — which we have to pay to defend.

On the same day the emergency motion was filed, Judge Cogan granted it in part, staying all discovery and proceedings until the contraceptive coverage rule is final. So the government lawyers can get back to other business for the moment. But once the rule is final, I expect we will see that some if not all of those 22 dismissed cases (the ones that haven’t already been appealed) will be refiled.

Back in February, with the sequester looming, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which, like the Archdiocese of New York, is led by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, signed a statement by religious leaders urging legislators to protect the interests of the poor. The Bishops’ litigiousness does not reflect the same awareness of our limited resources nor concern for those who will be hurt most by the sequester. Instead, the Archdiocese seeks to deprive its employees of affordable contraception — provided by an outside company — that will enable employees to limit their families to the size they want and can support, using up resources that are needed elsewhere in a time of economic distress.

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Written by Tara Murtha for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

A journalist looks at the barriers to reporting on women's reproductive freedom.

In recent days, amidst cries of a media “blackout,” a number of journalists have admitted to either missing or dismissing the story of Dr. Kermit Gosnell over the past two years. As one of the many journalists who has been covering the Gosnell story since it broke in early 2011, all I can say is: We tried to get the story out there. But more importantly, this politics-of-media framework distracts from the circuitous politics that enabled, and resulted from, Gosnell’s actual crimes and the women who were affected.

What Media Blackout?

After spending much of 2010 interviewing 58 witnesses, in January 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office published a 281-page report accusing Kermit Gosnell of grotesque, depraved crimes.

There was blood on the floor. A stench of urine filled the air. A flea-infested cat was wandering through the facility, and there were cat feces on the stairs. Semi-conscious women scheduled for abortions were moaning in the waiting room or the recovery room, where they sat on dirty recliners covered with bloodstained blankets. All the women had been sedated by unlicensed staff — long before Gosnell arrived at the clinic — and staff members could not accurately state what medications or dosages they had administered to the waiting patients. Many of the medications in inventory were past their expiration dates.

Fetal remains were stored in milk jugs and cat food containers. A janitor admitted he routinely pulled fetal parts out of pipes. Unlicensed, untrained staff, including a high school student, pumped cheap, powerful drugs into the veins of women who were chemically coaxed into zombie-like stupors that sometimes lasted days.

Last week, Kristen Powers published an op-ed in USA Today that sparked a Twitter shame campaign, directly asking prominent national journalists why they hadn’t covered the case. And it worked. Now, more than three years after the raid and more than two years after the grand jury report, some national journalists who ignored the case entirely are suddenly wildly interested.

After years of coverage from outlets in Philadelphia and Harrisburg, outlets focused on women’s health issues, and yes, mainstream media outlets, apparently all it took to catch the attention of writers such as Slate‘s Dave Weigel, The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf, and Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg was to target their collective egos — specifically, their insecurity about being perceived as having a liberal bias.

Weigel, one of the first writers to develop a sudden interest in Gosnell after Powers’ piece, wrote that when he read about Gosnell back in 2011, he didn’t “see a political story to chase.”

At 3801 Lancaster, the site of Gosnell’s clinic, patients chose their medicine and painkillers a la carte. In other words, the more cash a patient could give Gosnell, the more painkiller she could get. The poorer the patient, the more she would suffer. With all the talk about the Affordable Care Act, you’d think that such starkly stratified access to quality health care would be an interesting political story. The story touches on poverty, abortion, civil rights, state rights, healthcare, increasing inequality and race, to name a few topics of political interest that, if nothing else, came up quite a bit during the presidential election.

What Weigel really meant, of course, is that he didn’t see a story worth chasing. “Bored media,” indeed.

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Written by Amanda Marcotte for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

See all our coverage of the Kermit Gosnell case here.

Kermit Gosnell goes to trial soon for his torture of vulnerable women.

Kermit Gosnell, the sadistic monster who exploited lack of access to safe abortion care among poor and immigrant women to both torture women and kill actual babies, is finally on trial and anti-choicers are having a feeding frenzy. Unable to muster actual compassion for Gosnell’s victims, anti-choicers got right to work seeking ways to exploit his crimes to further reduce access to safe, legal abortion — and to create more Gosnells in the future. In order to achieve the goal of driving more women to monsters like Gosnell and away from safe, legal clinics, anti-choicers are telling more lies than usual. (Which hardly seemed possible, but once you wind them up, they can really get going.)  I don’t usually feel comfortable speaking for pro-choicers as a whole, but in this case, I believe we’re all on the same page, so I thought I’d use this space to get the facts straight.

So here is a list of the facts about how pro-choicers are reacting to the Gosnell case. Anyone who denies these facts is lying, and you have to ask yourself why they feel the need to lie to make their case.

Pro-choicers condemn Kermit Gosnell and hope that he sees justice. When the story broke, there was a rush of feminist journalists who covered the case and the tone was universal condemnation and advice on how to prevent such crimes in the future. A quick search of RH Reality Check demonstrates that, and you can read other feminist takes around the internet. For people who aren’t trying to prop up lies to confuse the situation, this universal pro-choice condemnation of Gosnell was entirely predictable. Not only do we believe he is a murderer and likely a sadist, but we believe he exploited the desperation of low-income women who need abortions but struggle to afford quality care. We agree with the prosecutors who wrote that Gosnell “ran a criminal enterprise, motivated by greed.” As advocates of quality health care for women, we have tried, sadly in vain much of the time, to remind people who simple fixes, such as offering Medicaid coverage of abortion, could take the issue of cost off the table and make it easier for women not to resort to illegal operators who use unsanitary and sadistic methods, like Gosnell.

Pro-choicers are the ones trying to prevent future Gosnells. Gosnell made money exploiting desperate women, so the way to prevent future monsters like him is to make sure women aren’t desperate. Pro-choicers raise money for abortion funds, so more women can afford quality care. They set up volunteer-staffed help lines to get women through the process of seeing a reputable provider. They demand an end to the Hyde Amendment, so low-income women can use Medicaid to pay for quality providers. As pro-choice blogger PZ Myers wrote, Gosnell “could get by with criminally substandard treatment because our government has been actively destroying the ethical and competent competition.” We try to keep the ethical competition afloat to keep men like Gosnell from getting business. Which should not be conflated, as lying anti-choicers are doing, with trying to stop regulation.

Pro-choicers support holding abortion clinics — and all medical facilities of any type — to a high safety standard. Pro-choicers want women to receive safe, clean, ethical abortion care. We fully and completely support government regulations of all medical facilities aimed at making sure patients get this kind of care. We are so supportive of safe, clean abortion care that we have our own organization called the National Abortion Federation to certify quality clinics. (NAF unsurprisingly refused to certify Gosnell, even though he cleaned his clinic up and pretended to have medically trained staff in an effort to trick them.)  The key here is that we believe that abortion clinics should be subject to the regulations like other medical facilities, and that those regulations should be aimed at making sure women get quality care.

Regulations demanded by anti-choicers have nothing to do with securing quality care for women.

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Written by Bridgette Dunlap for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

The Obama administration is considering who should be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

The Obama administration is accepting comments from the public until April 8th on the Notice of Proposed Rule-Making for the birth control benefit or contraceptive coverage rule. The proposed rule amends the exemption for houses of worship and their affiliates and adds an accommodation for other non-exempt non-profits opposed to birth control.

The accommodation requires that insurance companies offer separate contraceptive coverage directly to the employees of objecting organizations at no additional cost. To take advantage of the accommodation, an organization need only self-certify to its health insurer or plan administrator that it is a non-profit opposed to some of the required contraceptive services and that it “hold[s] itself out as a religious organization.”

It is not enough for an institution seeking special treatment to simply assert that it holds itself out as religious. I expect the Obama administration is loathe to define what it means to be a religious organization or police whether an institution is in fact holding itself out as such, and rightly so. Nevertheless, the institution should have to make a statement describing how it holds itself out as religious and what that religiousness entails. This statement should be made easily available to the public and organizations should have give to notice of it to those with whom it seeks to contract, such as employees, students, patients, and funders.

This is necessary due to a pattern of religiously-affiliated institutions characterizing themselves one way when recruiting or seeking public funding and another when demanding to be exempt from laws that govern secular institutions. The trend in First Amendment Establishment Clause jurisprudence has permitted increasing public funding for religious organizations. This means we need whatever protections the free market can provide individuals from the imposition of religion by institutions active in the public sphere. We can only avoid involvement with institutions that will discriminate on the basis of religious control if we know which institutions those are.

To understand some particularly flagrant examples of religiously-affiliated institutions trying to have it both ways, we turn to a bit of state constitutional law. Over 37 state constitutions contain explicit prohibitions on the use of public money for religious institutions or instruction. New York is among them and its Constitution prohibits public funding of any educational institution “wholly or in part under the control or direction of any religious denomination.”

In the mid-60s many private universities throughout the country were in dire financial straits. New York sought to rescue its private universities with taxpayer funding through a program known as “Bundy aid.” However, giving public funds to religiously-controlled universities was clearly unconstitutional. So religious universities, particularly Catholic ones, underwent re-organizations to separate themselves from the control of their founding religious orders and other church authorities and endeavored to become more suitable places for people of any or no faith to work and study. By becoming non-sectarian, while maintaining only a religious affiliation, they qualified for public funding.  The motivation behind secularization was not exclusively financial, but part of a larger attempt by Catholic universities to strengthen their academic and intellectual legitimacy.

By accepting funds each year, a New York college makes a representation to the state that it is an independent institution free from religious control. Despite this, a number of universities receiving Bundy aid, have asserted that they are church-controlled in order to be free from various generally applicable laws.

In 2010, adjunct professors at Manhattan College sought to unionize. To block them, Manhattan College claimed it was not subject to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Review Board because it is “church-operated.” Among the evidence on which the NLRB board relied in rejecting the claim Manhattan College holds itself out as a religious institution was the fact that Manhattan College deliberately eliminated church control to get Bundy aid and continues to claims to be non-sectarian by accepting it.

In 2009, St. John’s University argued it was exempt from the Americans with Disabilities Act because it is “controlled by a religious organization.” Prior to that, St. John’s successfully argued it was eligible for an exemption from New York’s Human Rights Law for the same reason. In agreeing that St. John’s is controlled by a religious organization, the Court did not take notice of the fact that St. John’s represents to the state that it is not controlled, even in part, by a religious organization in order to get taxpayer funding each year.

Multiple universities that receive Bundy aid have health policies that are controlled by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops through the USCCB’s Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.  The Directives are 43 pages long and as detailed as a statute. These schools tend to be less than forthcoming as to how the Directives are implemented in school policy, and some fail to give notice that the Directives control at all.

For a further example of conflicting self-characterizations, we now turn to the permissibility of funding under the federal Constitution. In 2000, the University of Notre Dame received a $500,000 federal grant that funded a program that included training teachers to work in parochial schools. Taxpayers sued the federal government, alleging the grant violated the First Amendment’s prohibition of government establishment of religion. Notre Dame intervened in the case as a defendant to defend its interest in the funds. Inherent to Notre Dame’s argument that the funding did not violate the First Amendment, is the fact that Notre Dame engages in many secular activities. In fact, just by applying for the grant, for which the “[u]se of funds for religion” was explicitly prohibited, Notre Dame represented to the government that despite its religious affiliation, not everything it does is an exercise of religion.

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Written by Lindsey Hennawi, Scott Jelinek and Alicia Johnson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Condoms

Four years ago, the vast majority (90 percent) of students at Boston College (BC), a Catholic university, voted in favor of having access to sexual health-care education and resources, including contraceptives, on campus. We are proud to have been among the passionate group of students who led that campaign and formed the unofficial student group Boston College Students for Sexual Health (BCSSH). But we quickly learned that the university would ignore the overwhelming call for reform.

Safe Sites is one of the programs we designed to meet students’ need for sexual health care. Boston College administrators knew it existed and let it operate under the radar for years—until this month. Now, their shocking backlash against the program is inspiring news coverage around the world.

The Boston College administration recently sent letters to Safe Sites locations threatening disciplinary action for distributing condoms. Speaking publicly this week, Boston College spokesperson Jack Dunn speculated that students who continue to provide condoms to their peers could face expulsion from the university.

Expulsion. From a major American university. In the 21st century.

As three recent grads who have all gone on to pursue careers in health education and advocacy, we strongly condemn the administration’s abrupt and cowardly interference with students’ attempts to educate their peers and provide them with the tools they need to lead healthy lives. All people deserve access to the information and resources they need to make informed decisions about their own health, including students at a Catholic university.

Why? Because one in two sexually active people will get a sexually transmitted disease by age 25. Half of all women will experience an unplanned pregnancy. And don’t even try to use the “Catholic universities are different” argument; 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women will use contraception in their lifetime.

So since the university isn’t willing to provide sexual health information and resources to its students, who better to step up and do so than students themselves?

We are so proud of the students of BCSSH who continue to fight for health-care access on the BC campus. The BC administration’s threats against them are an embarrassment for an institution that prides itself on being a “new Ivy.” BC is in its sesquicentennial year, but still has so far to go. And making public statements threatening to expel students is a surefire way to discourage new applicants.

Have no doubt: If what is happening today had happened during our senior year of high school, we would not have chosen to attend BC. And we say this as scholarship recipients and student leaders—the kind of young people BC should and does endeavor to recruit.

Still, we often find ourselves defending our alma mater. For all its backwards policies, BC did challenge us to develop and defend strong convictions and to organize effectively in an environment hostile to our cause. But it’s time we stopped backing BC up. The administration’s actions are indefensible.

People ask why “radicals” like us would choose to attend a Catholic university in the first place. We believe college students should not have to choose between the world-class education that BC offers and having their health needs met.

Further, we chose to go to a Catholic university, not the Catholic Church. We were never warned that students who advocate for basic health-care access would be silenced and undermined at every turn. In every tour and orientation, student guides proclaim that BC is a welcoming campus for people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

We know now that isn’t true.

It wasn’t true when a conservative student who used the “Holy Father’s teachings” to justify his claim that condoms have no impact on curbing the spread of HIV was invited to the same sexual health policy meeting we, as BCSSH board members, attended with BC administrators; he was given the same platform and afforded the same legitimacy.

It wasn’t true when another student organization on campus was punished for collaborating with BCSSH for a World AIDS Day event.

It wasn’t true when a campus priest harassed BCSSH volunteers during a routine condom distribution off campus.

It isn’t true while the Pro-Life Club is a recognized, funded student organization and BCSSH is not.

It isn’t true when students can’t rely on the campus health center for accurate, evidence-based, judgment-free health information and treatment.

And it isn’t true now, as the administration proves once again how little it cares for the health, wellness, and autonomy of the very students it’s charged with representing and protecting.

We always used to lament that “change is glacial” at BC, but now it’s going backwards. It’s disgraceful that the administration chooses to interpret its Catholic mission so limitedly. To us, BC’s motto, “Ever to Excel,” its commitment to social justice, and its call for students to act as “men and women for others” do not entail the judgment, shaming, or repression the administration is showing to BC Students for Sexual Health.

Boston College encouraged us to follow St. Ignatius of Loyola’s creed to “set the world aflame,” to fill it with the light of our passion, intellect, and hope in order to change it for the better. Perhaps it’s time the school takes its own advice.

You can sign a petition showing your support for BC Students for Sexual Health here.
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Written by Erin Matson for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Erin Matson argues that pregnant women should refuse to be taken to Catholic hospitals.

The reason I don’t want to be taken to a Catholic hospital isn’t because of abstract notions about morality, the separation of church and state, or when different faiths say life begins. Rather, I refuse because in Catholic hospitals patients may be refused medical treatment on the basis of church teachings. That’s a pretty big deal if an ambulance or well-meaning relative brings you to one while pregnant, after a rape, or any time you need urgent medical care.

Refusal to Perform Abortions Allows Women to Die

In October 2012, severe back pain brought Savita Halappanavar to a Catholic hospital in Galway, Ireland. When it was revealed that her 17-week pregnancy was unsustainable, doctors ignored her pleas and refused to perform a life-saving abortion, citing Catholic doctrine. Savita died. Her death has implications for all women, knowingly pregnant or not, who enter a Catholic hospital anywhere in the world.

Here in the United States, Sister Margaret McBride was excommunicated after authorizing a life-saving abortion in 2010 for a gravely ill woman at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix.

It is unreasonable to expect that every Catholic hospital in the country will have a dissenting nun willing to be excommunicated or a doctor willing to be fired to prevent women from being killed by “no abortion under any circumstances” rigidity. It seems it’s only a matter of time until the United States has its own Savita — a pregnant woman who dies needlessly in a Catholic hospital because the all-male Catholic hierarchy has decided barring all abortion, no exceptions, is the “pro-life” thing to do.

If Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) had gotten his way in 2011 and HR 358 had been signed into law, under federal law all hospitals would be allowed to refuse life-saving abortion care to patients; they also would be able to refuse arranging transport to another hospital that would provide such care. Pitts even had the nerve to name the bill the “Protect Life Act.”

It’s important to note that discrimination is dangerous and wrong, even when it doesn’t kill you. When we consider abortion only in life-and-death situations, we ignore the health and economic consequences women also face when they are denied constitutionally protected abortion care in the Catholic medical system.

Furthermore, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has claimed that abortion is, well, whatever they say it is. Scientific facts do not back up the bishops’ repeated assertion that emergency contraception is an “abortion-inducing drug”; in reality, emergency contraception prevents pregnancy before it occurs. When facts don’t matter, the next substance that the bishops deem an “abortion-inducing drug” could be anything — routine over-the-counter treatments, standard vaccinations — if the person controlling the medical care available to you is in a Catholic medical facility.

Scope of Problem Is Vast, Hits Rural Areas Hard

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Written by Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

Every day, it seems there is a new article highlighting the growing number of restrictions on abortion and reproductive health care. We are only a few months into most states’ legislative sessions, yet in Alabama and Mississippi, we’re already seeing a revival of “personhood” and TRAP laws, which threaten to prevent medical professionals from providing care. In Texas, lawmakers continue to try to find more ways to block women from basic health services.

Like all women, Latinas need, and seek, reproductive health care, including abortion, contraception, sex education, and prenatal care. In spite of outdated stereotypes perpetuated in the media, our data shows that Latino/as are in favor of protecting women’s health, and have compassionate views on abortion. Eight in 10 Latinos say they would support a close friend or family member who had an abortion.

A Latina who decides to end a pregnancy should have our community’s support and respect. But even with the support of friends and family in place, structural barriers, including poverty, discrimination, immigration status, and language prevent many Latinas from accessing these health care services. It doesn’t help that 87 percent of U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion provider, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Providing abortion can present significant challenges to doctors, nurses and clinic staff. Many of these providers face hostile, life-threatening environments, threats to their families, invasions of privacy, and endless legal assaults, creating tremendous obstacles to treating their patients. In spite of that, they go to work each day and provide the care that women urgently need. That’s why at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH), we are taking the time to thank and reflect on the invaluable service these providers give their patients.

Doctors like Nilda L. Moreno-Ruiz, MD, an ob-gyn on the NLIRH board of directors who has dedicated her life to providing the full range of pregnancy-related care for her patients. For Dr. Moreno-Ruiz, patient care must be holistic in order to be effective, and that means getting to know her patients and their families and the daily struggles they may face.

When Dr. Moreno-Ruiz talks about providing abortion services, she talks about sitting with her patients, many of whom she has known for years, she talks about comforting them, listening to them, and connecting with them. She cares deeply for her patients, and for women everywhere: that’s why she’s chosen to provide the full range of care a pregnant woman might need, including abortion.

Or providers like Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a community advocate both here and abroad for Latina women living in some of the world’s most under-served and under-resourced communities. From his travels in the Andes, Dr. Rodriguez has seen the misery and suffering many Latinas endure to access birth control and safe abortions as reproductive health care becomes less and less available, a growing concern many providers share for communities in the U.S.

Dr. Moreno-Ruiz and Dr. Rodriguez, and others like them, provide bilingual, culturally competent, and compassionate care. They understand the need for a broader advocacy framework that addresses how these issues are connected and work daily to help women overcome the structural barriers Latinas face in accessing health services.

Today, we take the time to thank these heroes, and all abortion providers, for the role they place in ensuring that every woman is able to make her own decisions about her pregnancy, family and her future.

Through NLIRH’s Yo Te Apoyo (I Support You) campaign, we are sending messages of support for Latinas who are making critical decisions about whether and when to become a parent or have another child. On this day, we also say, “Yo te apoyo,” to abortion providers, as well as their staff, supporters and defenders. We support them as they have supported us.

Join the conversation on Twitter at: #Thx2ABProviders

Written by Rabbi Dennis Ross and Rev. Tom Davis for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

The Myth of Judeo-Christian Tradition by Arthur A. Cohen reminds us that no one group speaks for all members of these religions.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently responded to the concerns of some religious groups and individuals by proposing yet another plan to provide prescription birth control insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Although this HHS initiative respects religious concerns and ensures access to birth control, it received a negative response from the Catholic Bishops, just as the other initiatives had. New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, explained the rejection, saying, “In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs they proclaim on the Sabbath.”

Now, it would be reasonable to come away from these words thinking that all Jews and Christians are of one mind about birth control — that is to say, opposed. On the contrary, many U.S. rabbis and ministers have long recognized the moral wisdom of ensuring wide availability of safe and effective birth control. Beginning in the late 1920s and the ’30s, many Jewish and Protestant groups formally endorsed access, including rabbis from Reform and Conservative Judaism, and ministers from Episcopal, Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. Clergy came forward with the support of their faith teachings, underscored by their real-life experience. The pastors were invited into the daily and private lives of congregants to witness, first-hand, that the ability to control one’s child-bearing makes for healthier children and mothers and for stronger families and communities. Today, one thing is certain: Differences in religious teachings remain, and no religious group or leader speaks for all of the nation’s faithful about birth control insurance coverage under ACA.

The recent HHS announcement affects employees of religiously-affiliated hospitals and the like; churches, synagogues, and mosques remain exempt. The reality is that these hospitals are not the same as houses of worship that conduct weddings or confirmations. They are not-for-profit businesses serving the larger public with secular services that are not specifically religious, like setting a broken ankle or performing an appendectomy. What’s more, a hospital employs staff from all walks of life, including faithful individuals in our communities whose fully informed moral decision may lead to a conclusion that differs from the faith of an employer. Besides, these workers earn their insurance along with wages and pension. The insurance belongs to the worker; an employer’s religious objection is irrelevant. A woman’s private decision about her birth control has a higher moral standing than her employer’s problem with her using it. And all we are talking about is insurance paperwork passing quietly through a human resources office — no one is being asked to use birth control.

Notably, the ACA’s birth control insurance provisions resemble those of New York state and California. These insurance requirements, tested in the highest courts of those states, were upheld as an equitable accommodation. And, as clergy, we emphasize that imposing a religious teaching about birth control into the private, personal home life of an American is an egregious violation of church-state separation. But all this is not enough to satisfy birth control opponents.

Arthur A. Cohen’s book, The Myth of the Judeo-Christian Tradition, encouraged a robust dialogue on our religious difference. He argues that the term “Judeo-Christian tradition” represents “a myth which buries under the fine silt of rhetoric the authentic, meaningful, and irrevocable distinction which exists between Jewish belief and Christian belief.” So let’s take Cohen’s advice and recognize that no one religious body or leader represents all Jewish belief — or Christian belief, for that matter. Where religions disagree, policymakers must not play umpire and pick their favorite “team.” Instead, they need to respect the boundary of church-state separation, leave it to the woman to decide about her health care, and ensure her access to the safe and legal preventive medicine she decides she needs.

Cohen calls our religious differences “meaningful.” So let’s ditch the rhetoric, embrace the wonder, grace, and strength of spiritual diversity, and enter a full-hearted and “meaningful” conversation across denominational lines and within religious groups about pressing issues, such as addressing the needs of the poor, the homeless, and immigrants. And let’s take the moral high ground by recognizing that women own their health insurance and deserve protection from the religious objections of others.

Written by Bridgette Dunlap for RH Reality Check. This diary is cross-posted; commenters wishing to engage directly with the author should do so at the original post.

On Friday, Notre Dame filed a notice of appeal in its lawsuit challenging the contraceptive coverage rule.  So, game on. It was not exactly a surprise when the bishops rejected the Obama administration’s latest overture to religiously-affiliated institutions. And it is now clear that no “compromise” short of freeing all health plans from any regulation whatsoever having to do with contraception will suffice. I didn’t expect all of these lawsuits to go away, but I was hoping, perhaps naively, that Notre Dame might accept the court’s dismissal of its lawsuit given the vocal disagreement with the legal and theological claims therein that has come from students and faculty at Notre Dame. (See here, here, here, and here. A dissent here.)

The lower court dismissed Notre Dame’s lawsuit for lack of standing and ripeness because Notre Dame is not currently required to provide contraception, having taken advantage of the one-year safe harbor period the Obama administration provided while the rule’s accommodation for objecting religiously-affiliated institutions is amended.  All but one of the courts to consider the issue have essentially said that no final rule means nothing to sue about. These cases are pre-mature. (Like I been sayin’!) The Obama administration released a new proposed rule on January 30th, but the rule still isn’t final yet.  Still, the closer we get to implementation of whatever the final rule is, the stronger the plaintiffs’ arguments become that it is time to reach the merits in these cases. (Though I believe Notre Dame lacks standing for other reasons that the government hasn’t argued.)

So why did I think Notre Dame might accept the court’s decision?  My general theory is that the administrators of these plaintiff universities would like to do what is in the best interest of their students and employees and understand that going out of their way to provide a substandard, discriminatory health plan is not the best route to doing so. But the administrators of these institutions are under significant pressure from bishops, donors, and other off-campus orthodoxy-enforcing bullies like the Cardinal Newman Society. The promoters of the litigation campaign against contraceptive coverage likely saw Notre Dame as the crown jewel of plaintiffs, given its place in the American Catholic imagination. Plus, there are few big name schools that could be plaintiffs since so many of them currently have health plans with contraceptive coverage: at least for employees that is, who have more legal protections and bargaining power than students. (I’m looking at you, Georgetown.)

Still in hot water over inviting President Obama to speak at Notre Dame, I doubt University President Rev. John Jenkins had much choice about the lawsuit. Once the suit was dismissed, I thought the Notre Dame administration, having done its part for the bishops’ campaign, might turn its energies to more pressing concerns. Or, if it wants to make sure its health plans are consistent with Catholic concern for access to healthcare, it could fix the inadequate maternity coverage in the student plan. Instead, it is doubling down on claims about contraception that are inconsistent with the legal and theological understandings of the majority of the Notre Dame professors and students who have weighed in on the issue.

This is especially unfortunate given the important role Notre Dame played in the development of Catholic thought on contraception historically. Adding to the history of Notre Dame faculty members’ advocacy for contraceptive access I recounted previously, Kathryn Pogin pointed me to the voice of Notre Dame students in the debate within Catholicism in the sixties. For example, in a 1965 letter (page six here), a Notre Dame student argued for a change in the Vatican’s position and noted Dr. John Rock, a devout Catholic who was integral to the development of modern contraceptives, had lectured on Notre Dame’s campus the year prior.

Since that time, the number of Catholics who accept the Church’s teaching on contraception has dwindled to almost nothing.  Even those who do accept it must make a further leap to accept the claim that the Catholic ban on birth control translates to the impermissibility of compensating employees of varying beliefs with a normal health plan, or even allowing employees access to separate coverage provided by third-party plan administrators per the new rule proposal. In the case of students, they must accept the claim that Notre Dame has a sincere religious belief that requires interference in a money-for-health-insurance transaction between the student and a third-party insurer that involves no university funds at all.

I believe these lawsuits are bad for Catholic education. How bad, only time will tell. Multiple professors at Catholic-affiliated schools have told me they don’t want their kid going to their own universities now that their student health policies have come to light. I’ve tried, with mixed success, to convince concerned students admitted to Fordham Law that the University’s health center policies are not reflective of the Fordham experience, we are working on the problem, and they should come here anyway. More generally, the uncritical acceptance of the idea, by the media and even the Obama administration, that Catholic-affiliated institutions are conservative places where women should have expected discrimination in their healthcare benefits (and who knows what else) is making prospective students and employees rightly wary.

These cases have further implications for our academic reputations. Notre Dame claims to have a sincere religious beliefs that Plan B and Ella are abortifacients, when in fact science has proven otherwise. Are Notre Dame biologists expected to accept the authority of the bishops as to how a drug works? In what other disciplines should we expect Catholic doctrine to trump the knowledge of academics?

These lawsuits are a warning not to accept the assurances of recruiters that any given Catholic-affiliated school is a welcoming place for scholars of all faiths, genders, orientations, or academic persuasions. They undermine the idea that Catholic-institutions are home to research and education equal to that of secular schools, painting them as places one should expect to be controlled and indoctrinated. And sadly, these lawsuits must be viewed in the context of an ongoing crackdown on Catholic nuns, scholars and scholar-nuns.

I’ve been to more Catholic school than most priests. (I stole that line from a Notre Dame grad, but I’ve been to more than him.)  I am extremely grateful for my education and experience, but the claims of Notre Dame and other plaintiff schools cause me to question whether I can continue to recommend it to anyone else.

**If you are an employee or student of a Catholic affiliated institution of any kind and would like information about potentially signing onto a comment to the proposed Health and Human Services rule, an amicus brief in one of the lawsuits challenging the rule, or other cross-campus organizing and advocacy, please send me your contact information via this link.