Religious Exemptions Violate the First Amendment

In the first in our series of pieces focusing on religious issues in America, I will tackle my perception of the current hubbub involving the requirement that all insurance providers cover contraceptives for women.

To better understand this issue, we must first focus on the question at hand and break it down, piece by piece:

"Does requiring all insurance providers to cover any FDA-approved contraceptive infringe upon the First Amendment rights of religious organizations who provide health care benefits to their employees?"

We'll start with the main issue of the requirement - covering contraceptives:

At this time, there are at least 26 states with laws that require insurance providers to cover any and all FDA-approved contraceptives, and 2 more (Michigan and Montana) that require the same thing as the result of an administrative decision or Attorney General ruling.  This does, however, come with a few caveats.

20 of those states do provide exemptions from the requirement in their policies for insurers or employers (usually for religion).  This, of course, is entirely left up to the discretion of those who wrote, passed, and initiated the laws as they stand.

Here's where I don't have a problem with that: on the state level, each legislature is able to decide how individual laws in their states apply to their citizenry; if the citizens believe that this is unfair or biased, they have the ability to contest the law (thanks to the First Amendment), and redress their grievances in a court of law.  Oftentimes, this results in a court overturning all or parts of laws, and the problems get worked out.

On the Federal level, however, this does not and should not apply.  When we craft laws for the entire nation to follow, the expectation is that all citizens are required to abide by those laws.  One of the few exceptions to this rule has to do with conscientious objection to military service (also to do primarily with religion).  Obviously, citizens still have the ability to address what they see as bias in court, though it is rarer for courts to overturn either portions of or entire laws.

Requiring all insurers and employers to provide coverage for contraceptives is not comparable to being conscripted for war.  It is the provision of equal access to medical treatment for women, regardless of their convictions; whether or not they choose to personally access that coverage is up to the individual, and not the organization, to decide.  This is the heart of our democracy - that individuals can make these decisions for themselves and not have them made for them by religious institutions.

Which brings me to the second issue at hand - FDA-approved contraceptives:

The primary arguments used by religious and right-to-life organizations is that contraceptives serve as abortifacients (substances that induce abortions such as mifepristone and misoprostal).  This assertion is medically and scientifically incorrect.

Modern hormonal contraceptives and intrauterine devices have multiple biological effects.  Some of them may be the primary action of contraceptive action, whereas others are secondary.  For combined oral contraceptive and progestin-only methods, the main mechanisms are ovulation inhibition and changes in the cervical mucus that inhibit sperm penetration.  The hormonal methods, particularly the low-dose progestin-only products and emergency contraceptive pills, have effects on the endometrium that, theoretically, could affect implantation.  However, no scientific evidence indicates that prevention of implantations actually results from the use of these methods.  Once pregnancy begins, none of these methods has an abortifacient action (American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, November 1999).

Basically, contraceptives do not induce abortion.  They do, however, prevent sperm from implanting an egg most of the time.  They are not 100% effective; they are, however 99.6% effective.  When used consistently and properly, they do help to prevent implantation from occurring.  Individual circumstances, such as missing a dose, having diarrhea or vomiting as a result of a stomach illness, or using oral contraceptives in conjunction with antibiotics, can reduce the efficacy, in which case condoms or diaphragms should be used to provide greater protection from implantation.

To argue that contraceptives are abortifacients is an intellectually dishonest position because it willfully ignores scientific fact in favor of personal belief.  Providing an exemption from a Federal law to religious institutions who use this argument as grounds for denying coverage is an unacceptable approach to governance.

Which brings us to the third rail - religious people use contraceptives:

It is estimated that roughly 98% of women aged 15-44 use or have used birth control methods at some point during their life.  62% of these women are currently using birth control, while 31% of these women no longer need to use it because they are infertile (Guttmacher Institute, June 2010).

This number includes...wait for it...Catholics.

The Catholic Church consistently ignores the fact that many of its adherents completely ignore the Church's teaching that contraceptives should not be used.  That's not a shock for those of us who hold a realistic view of the Church, because they have historically ignored science in favor of faith.  Pope Hitler II Benedict XVI went so far as to give a speech in Cameroon, Africa, in which he stated that distributing and using contraceptives (in this case, condoms) increases susceptibility to contracting AIDS.  This proves that he is not only out of touch with reality, but willfully lying.  Eventually, the Pope decreed that the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS could be okay.

Final Analysis:

Religious persons have every right to follow their core beliefs and choose not to use contraceptives.  Religious organizations, however, do not have the right to refuse adherence to Federal law, as written, because they have a fundamental disagreement with science on the basis of their faith.  People who argue that their religious freedoms are being infringed upon often fail to see the fact that exempting one group based on their religious affiliation is, in my opinion, a violation of the First Amendment because it shows preference to one religion over another.

Religious organizations are made up of people, but they are not, in and of themselves, people.  They often pay no taxes (due to exemption - I'll cover that in a later article), and they often find themselves above the law due to loopholes that allow for religious exemption.  While the argument can be made that employees can just go find another employer who will provide those benefits, this argument is not realistic in our current economic circumstance.

It is unacceptable for religious organizations to be held to a different standard from every other employer or organization; this is one of the primary tenets of our Founding Fathers, their personal beliefs, and the documents that helped establish this nation.  To ignore this and provide special privileges to them is a travesty to our nationals principles of religious freedom, which include being free from religious interference in our governance.

Marcus J. Hopkins