ARTICLES
January 2000 ARTICLES
Contents © 2000
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
This We Will Not Accept!
California Bishops Fight Law Assuring Insured Abortions
BY JAMES MCCOY
"Viagra has been the can opener to open the can," said a long-time Catholic pro-life activist in Sacramento. The activist said that proponents of the legislation which requires that employer-paid health insurance plans (covering prescription drugs) also cover FDA-approved contraceptives had a potent argument -- "If insurance companies pay for Viagra, surely we have a right to mandate that they must provide contraceptives."
The law, which was to go into effect January 1, does contain an exception clause authorizing "certain religious employers, as defined, to request a health care service plan contract without coverage for those contraceptive methods in certain circumstances... [A] religious employer may request a health care service plan contract without coverage for Food and Drug Administration approved contraceptive methods that are contrary to the religious employer's religious tenets." The law defines a religious employer as: 1) a nonprofit organization, as described by the Internal Revenue Service; 2) one whose purpose is "the inculcation of religious values"; 3) one that "primarily employs persons who share [its] religious tenets"; and 4) that "serves primarily persons who share [the] religious tenets..."
Except for the IRS criterion, "this is a brand new definition that they thought up," said Carol Hogan, a spokeswoman for the California Catholic Conference, the public policy arm of California's bishops. "We are very uncomfortable having that stand in statute," she said in a phone interview from Sacramento.
In an official conference statement, Hogan has written: "That this bill will become law without granting Catholic organizations a conscience clause exemption is a gross violation of our religious freedom, one that we will not accept." I asked her why the above exemption amounted to no exemption at all. Did it wobble on the word "primarily"? For example, what does "primarily employs" mean -- that the majority of employees share the organization's religious beliefs? Hogan agreed, but her chief objection to the bill was the "inculcation of religious values" clause -- "that's not the mission of Catholic social service agencies and hospitals," she said. "Our mission is not to inculcate religion.... We were told to feed the hungry and care for the sick."
In her written analysis, Hogan noted that one of the bill's authors "contended that since Catholic healthcare organizations and charitable institutions 'cared for the sick and feed the poor' they weren't really religious, but secular.'" She also noted that: "To date, 17 states have laws similar to California's 'Woman's Equity Act.' However, most have an effective conscience clause so that Catholic organizations are exempt."
I asked Hogan what would be an effective exemption. "Basically," she replied, "we want the definition that the IRS has for religious organizations." In an early version of the bill, such an exemption had been written into it, "but Planned Parenthood dropped their sponsorship, and the bill languished." From this it became clear," Hogan wrote, that "it was the intent of the proponents to force all employers, religious or not, to follow the mandate."
Precisely the point, says the Sacramento pro-life activist, who took the Catholic Conference to task for fighting only for a Catholic social service and hospital exemption. "What about a Catholic business man," he asked, "or just ordinary Catholic Joe Blow who didn't want to participate in this plan?" When I asked Carol Hogan whether the California Catholic Conference would work for an exemption not only for just Catholic hospitals and social service agencies, but for any Catholic employer, she replied, "No. This is strictly an organizational religious freedom issue."
"For those who don't believe that such is right," said Rosemary Perez of Buena Park, "I don't think it's right to be taking money out of their paycheck to pay for those kinds of things." Perez, who works as an X-ray technician, gets her health insurance through ValuSure, a Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based corporation which does not reimburse for abortions, sterilizations, or contraceptives. Until she read about ValuSure in a brochure, "I wasn't totally aware that the insurance that my employer [Fountain Valley Imaging Center in Fountain Valley] gave me paid for abortions and sterilizations," she said. Perez declined to name her former insurance plan.
Ironically, while proponents of the Women's Equity Act argued that it would increase women's choices, Perez thinks that it's actually "limiting my choices here."
As former president of ValuSure, Mike O'Dea is concerned that "people in California can't get a healthcare plan now that's in accord with their Catholic beliefs." O'Dea, who now heads the Christus Medicus ("Christ the Physician") foundation, also in Bloomfield Hills, still speaks for ValuSure. He noted that not only contraceptives -- some of which induce abortion anyway -- but even an outright abortifacient like RU-486 are FDA-approved -- and therefore must be covered by insurance. As the new law stands, "I'm not gonna sell insurance in California," O'Dea said.
I asked Carol Hogan whether the Catholic Conference planned a legal challenge: "We're pursuing both political and legal remedies," she said, "and that's all I can say about that." The preferred remedy, the political one, would be "another bill that fixed" the current law.