Administration offers new tweak to birth control rule - The Washington Post

So just how asinine are the objections to the ACA becoming,,,

First we had Little Sisters of the Poor v. Sebelius who claimed that being required to fill out a short form violates their religious liberty. The court ruled, "[t]o meet the condition for injunction pending appeal, applicants need not use the form prescribed by the Government and need not send copies to third-party administrators."

Next was Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling which not only dismantled United States v. Lee (1982) - an employer cannot impose their religious beliefs on their employees - but added confusion by stating,

In fact, HHS has already devised and implemented a system that seeks to respect the religious liberty of religious nonprofit corporations while ensuring that the employees of these entities have precisely the same access to all FDA-approved contraceptives as employees of companies whose owners have no religious objections to providing such coverage,,, Although HHS has made this system available to religious nonprofits that have religious objections to the contraceptive mandate, HHS has provided no reason why the same system cannot be made available when the owners of for-profit corporations have similar religious objections. We therefore conclude that this system constitutes an alternative that achieves all of the Government's aims,,,

In short, fill out a form, you know the one they told the Little Sister they didn't have to use. Yea, OK, that will work,,,for 5 days.

The kicker in all this, Wheaton College v. Burwell where the Court once again reversed course and granted a temporary exemption from the requirement that they fill out the form. [As an aside: Wheaton basically argued, as did the Little Sisters, that filling out the form itself is a violation of their religious liberty. But as some have pointed out Wheaton objects to the "work-around" itself as their health plan would still be required to provide contraceptive coverage and it doesn't want that to happen even though it doesn't have to pay for it.]

That brings us to where we stand today,,,

The new federal guidelines address a set of ongoing legal challenges to the contraceptive requirement raised by dozens of religious nonprofit groups, such as hospitals and charities, that could again put the contraception mandate before the Supreme Court. The religious nonprofits are challenging the administration's already existing opt-out, in which the groups can ask a third party to provide the contraception coverage to their employees. However, the nonprofits say that filling out the form notifying the third party violates their religious beliefs.

The nonprofits can now directly inform the Department of Health and Human Services of their religious objections. HHS and the Labor Department will then coordinate contraception coverage with insurers and third party administrators. The nonprofits still have the option to notify a third party directly.

Which boils down to this, Hobby Lobby is appeased as is Wheaton College.  BUT,,,

Several of the country’s biggest faith groups on Friday said the revised rule was still problematic because it didn’t fully exempt organizations – for-profit or non-profit – with religious objections.

"Here we go again,” said Russell Moore, president of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination. “What we see here is another revised attempt to settle issues of religious conscience with accounting maneuvers. This new policy doesn't get at the primary problem.”-

Now the religionist want to move the goalpost yet again by claiming that they cannot take ANY action that will set in motion a chain of events that leads to someone receiving contraception, as doing so would make them complicit in the act of providing birth control.

Sorry to say but this debacle is no longer about the ACA or the birth control mandate. It goes much deeper and many fail to see where this is leading:

If you can be exempt from an insurance law that is supposed to bring medical care to everyone, why not just ask to be exempt (as some of these groups have) from pay equity statutes, from civil rights laws (effecting lesbian and gay Americans)? There is no stopping this once you go down this slope of exemptions based on religious claims for FOR PROFIT COMPANIES.

Administration offers new tweak to birth control rule - The Washington Post

The Catholic Supreme Court’s War on Women

I haven't written or posted much on this case, yet, but have been trying to follow it as well as 4 others. Three of the cases are in some ways connected to each other and to the ACA in general. The defining connection besides the obvious (Catholicism) is the American Conference of Catholic Bishops,,,

In a stay order applying to an appeal by a Colorado nunnery, the Little Sisters of the Poor, Justice Sotomayor undermined the new Affordable Care Act’s sensible policy on contraception. She blocked the most simple of rules – lenient rules – that required the Little Sisters to affirm their religious beliefs against making contraception available to its members. They objected to filling out a one-page form. What could be easier than nuns claiming they don’t believe in contraception?

Sotomayor’s blow brings us to confront an uncomfortable reality. More than WASPS, Methodists, Jews, Quakers or Baptists, Catholics often try to impose their beliefs on you, me, public discourse and institutions. Especially if “you” are female. This is not true of all Catholics – just look at House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. But right now, the climate is so cold when it comes to defending our settled legal ground that Sotomayor’s stay is tantamount to selling out the sisterhood. And sisterhood is not as powerful as it used to be, ladies.

Catholics in high places of power have the most trouble, I’ve noticed, practicing the separation of church and state. The pugnacious Catholic Justice, Antonin Scalia, is the most aggressive offender on the Court, but not the only one. Of course, we can’t know for sure what Sotomayor was thinking, but it seems she has joined the ranks of the five Republican Catholic men on the John Roberts Court in showing a clear religious bias when it comes to women’s rights and liberties. We can no longer be silent about this. Thomas Jefferson, the principal champion of the separation between state and church, was thinking particularly of pernicious Rome in his writings. He deeply distrusted the narrowness of Vatican hegemony.



The Catholic Supreme Court’s War on Women