From the editors
Last week Health and Human Services continued their rollout of regulations detailing the implementation of the landmark health care legislation. Among its more controversial points, HHS has granted a one-year exemption to all religious based organizations in order to fully implement the requirements of this law.
Think about this reality: Catholics (and others) by their faith believe that the use of contraception is morally unacceptable. Nevertheless, under federal regulations, they will now be forced to pay for birth control pills, Plan B Emergency Contraception, and other basic contraceptive items. So when your typical practicing Catholic places a dollar in his Sunday collection, his family’s money will be going to provide his child’s teachers, his parish secretary, and all other staff with something that goes against his faith.
If Jews and Muslims were forced by HHS, for dietary reasons, to serve pork in their cafeterias, would that law stand very long?
Let’s be clear: the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, starts from a dubious premise: that insurance instead of measuring and shifting the cost of risk ought to cover the cost of service, and quite frankly, engage in social engineering. Today it is contraception. What if tomorrow HHS states that no insurance plan may cover the cost of any child, beyond two. What’s stopping the Federal Government from enacting such a measure?
This isn’t an issue of separating religion from morality, whatever that means. It is a matter of conscience: government and law cannot compel any person to act against his or her conscience. Unfortunately for Catholics and many others, the only real option left, save the courts, is conscientious objection. We sincerely hope some large insurance companies are ready to “step up to the plate” and disobey this unjust law.
In the meantime, when even the liberal Washington Post editorial page states its displeasure, the President has done no favors to his Solicitor General who must defend Obamacare before the Supreme Court this spring. Now, as applied, it is without question that this law violates the Constitution and the long-standing common law tradition of respect for one’s beliefs.
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5 Responses to Conscience Protection for All
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Tagged: http://rustbeltphilosophy.blogspot.com/2012/01/for-last-time.html
I can choose not to eat a ham sandwich or to use a condom. I can choose not to purchase either. But in this case, I can not choose not to fund someone else’s choice to purchase a condom. Land of the free? Nice try, Eli.
“government and law cannot compel any person to act against his or her conscience”
What errant nonsense, posted under the anonymity of “the editors.” I guess you’re all wrong collectively, then.
Of course government can do this; it does it all the time. Your conscience may oppose paying taxes for all kinds of reasons; you still have to pay them. You may think you have a god-given right to drive 80 mph on the highway, persecute unbelievers, or sacrifice people at an altar, but trying to refrain from or commit various actions in the name of this “conscience” will soon get you locked up, to the relief of the rest of us.
So what is to stop government from enforcing the WRONG moral rules, like restricting insurance from covering more than two children? Or for that matter, from *not* seeing to it that all people, children and adults alike, have access to health care, as has been the situation up to now? Well, in short, democracy and the rule of law, which ideally will more or less often check our laws against the higher-ordered fundamental desires of people to live decent lives (not merely against our first-order desires, which sadly often are immoral, because they lack any consistent or law-like higher-order justification, though politics often fails to distinguish between these). Obviously these mechanisms don’t always work, but that doesn’t show that they can’t work, far less of course does it excuse people from criticizing them precisely when they do work, and start moving closer to providing moral equality and well-being of all affected people, just because somebody’s inconsistent first-order desires got stepped on. Nor does it excuse anyone, including “the editors,” appealing to absolutely absurd and morally corrupt claims like an absolute right of “conscience” against government, a claim that is so palpably false that it exposes the probable absence of any more sensible arguments for your position, and shows the logical desperation thereof.
Your definition of conscience is way too expansive as to be useful for discussion, or how it seems to be presented, it is hard to follow your argument. Could you please define conscience?
Well, the article didn’t define it, so that’s part of my objection. Following your conscience is, of course, right if your conscience points just towards morally correct actions or values. But obviously a lot of people have feelings of conscience, meaning just any moral conviction, which is often not morally justified. So I’m saying that if it’s defined the latter way then the original claim is obviously false; if it’s defined the former way then it’s true, but then the original conclusion it was designed to support does not follow without a substantive argument which was not given. If you want to define it some other way in which the claim about conscience, and its application to this particular case, look to both be true or at least more plausible, be my guest, but it’s not my job to make your argument for you, only to show that the way it was made is worse than fallacious.