To hear supporters describe it, of course, it sounds like the very soul of common sense. Here’s how Julie Gonen, director of family health for the Washington Business Group on Health, an organization whose members include about 160 Fortune 500 employers, told the Los Angeles Times she approaches reluctant health plans:
“We try to tell them, ‘You already cover pregnancy.’ And some cover termination of pregnancy. ‘So why wouldn’t you want to help employees have healthy and planned pregnancies?’” (How exactly something that prevents conception — and in too many instances causes an early abortion — helps anyone have a “healthy” pregnancy isn’t explained. But let’s give her credit for having such poll-tested lingo down pat.)
When Gonen’s type of reasoning doesn’t work, there are other ways to persuade. The same Times article that featured her also had Martina Alexander, a flight attendant for American Airlines who filed a complaint to get her employer to cover contraceptives, infertility treatments and pap smears. Well, if we’re seeing men get coverage for Viagra — itself a disgrace — why not run the whole gamut, right?
And so it was that Seattle-based U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik decreed in June that Bartell Drugs, a local family-owned drugstore chain, must cover contraceptives for women in its health plan.
To do otherwise “discriminates against Bartell’s female employees,” Lasnik said. “Although the plan covers almost all drugs and devices used by men, the exclusion of prescription contraceptives creates a gaping hole in the coverage offered to female employees, leaving a fundamental and immediate health-care need uncovered.”
I don’t suppose you’ll be surprised to learn that the class-action suit, filed on behalf of Bartell pharmacy manager Jennifer Erickson and several other female employees, was brought by Planned Parenthood of Western Washington? Nah, I didn’t think so.
Whether by force or by persuasion, more and more health plans are covering contraceptives these days. Since 1998, more than a dozen states have mandated what the Los Angeles Times calls “prescription parity.” Many more counties across the United States do as well and have done so for years. “I wouldn’t understand why we wouldn’t provide it, it’s a prescription drug just like any other,” Carol Zoellner, risk management director for Florida’s Palm Beach county, recently told the Associated Press.
The good news for Catholics is that — so far — most laws mandating contraceptive coverage contain exemptions for health plans that are owned and operated by groups that object to such coverage on religious, moral or philosophical grounds.
For example, the “Women’s Comprehensive Health-Care Bill,” signed on June 21, 2001, by Missouri Gov. Bob Holden, carries such an exemption. It even excludes any drugs “intended to induce an abortion,” notes The Kansas City Star. (It still covers the Pill, even though — as catholicexchange.com readers know — the drug sometimes acts as an abortifacient.)
The bad news is that this wall is starting to crumble. The California Court of Appeals recently ruled that while religious groups are exempt under that state’s “Women’s Contraception Equity Act,” the Catholic Church must cover birth control for employees in charities, hospitals and universities because such “businesses” are secular.
“It has far-reaching consequences,” James Sweeney, an attorney who represented Catholic Charities, told the Conservative News Service. “The state has imposed a mandate upon a church to engage in conduct that the church fundamentally believes is sinful and wrong.”
Worse, it’s done so without much protest from rank-and-file Catholics. Could this be because the same Catholics who stand ready to raise their voices against what might be called “conventional” abortion are too busy contracepting themselves to see anything wrong with it?
(Paul Gallagher is a freelance writer for HLI. This article courtesy of Human Life International.)
