Contraception in Public Policy

By Mo Woltering
HERALD Columnist
(From the issue of 3/7/02)

The day the Catholic Church is forced to pay for abortions has arrived in some states. Worse yet, paying for abortions may soon be a national requirement. The Equity in Prescription Insurance Contraceptive Coverage Act (S 104), sponsored by Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), would require all group health plans to pay for contraceptive drugs and devices. And as we know, many of these drugs and devices cause abortions when conception has already occurred.

Seventeen states have already passed similar contraceptive mandates into law and Catholic Charities in California has already lost a court battle to obtain an exemption from providing contraception on religious grounds. Now Catholic leaders in New York and Massachusetts are fighting their own battles to have conscience clauses created so that they may escape the requirement.

These developments are an outrageous injustice against the Church. However, it is a greater tragedy that the Church has elected to wage the war against contraceptive coverage on grounds of religious freedom instead of the destructive nature of contraception itself. One national Catholic leader even stated in a magazine report, "We think government should be neutral on that subject, neither prohibiting nor promoting contraception."

There is a serious problem with this position. This position says to the public that the immorality of contraception is just a "religious issue" and not something that degrades the human dignity of every person. It’s like saying that we as Catholics should be exempted for contraceptive requirements but we don’t have any problem with the rest of society violating itself.

Contraception is very much a public issue because it effects the common good of society. The Church’s teaching against contraception in Humanae Vitae is based on a natural law understanding of the purpose marriage and conjugal union. Because human nature is universal, contraception hurts everyone, not just Catholics.

So as Catholics we have an obligation, unpopular as it may be, to work against the promotion of contraception in public policy at all levels. And it doesn’t matter whether the form of contraception is abortifacient or not. It still violates human dignity, and it undermines society.

This is what true lay vocation is all about. The Second Vatican Council promoted the role of the laity with the important responsibility of "engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will" (Lumen Gentium, 31). The laity are called to shape public policy so that it promotes God’s plan for marriage and family, which can never include contraception. This also means that we should legislate toward this goal, because laws teach society what is right and wrong. Building a culture of life will simply be impossible without excluding contraception.

Some would say that we don’t have the political capital to fight contraceptive coverage on the grounds of its destructive nature. So we can only try for a religious exemption. What most people don’t realize is that the Church has a huge amount of political capital; it’s called Catholic health and social services. We run more than 1,000 hospitals and health centers and more than 2,000 centers for social services. Catholic services extend to more than 100 million people in the United States. If the government wants to force us to pay for contraception and abortifacients, then we should shut down our health and social services and see what the government does.

Yes, such response might result in considerable hardship. But it also might show America that Catholics are serious about what we believe. Either way, even the ancient philosophers, well before the time of Christ, knew that it was better to suffer from evil than to contribute to it.

Woltering is director of public policy at American Life League, Stafford. 

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