U. S. Catholic bishops want contraception exemptions in continuing resolution

Think Progress is reporting that: “One week before House Republicans shut down the government in an effort to force President Obama to enact many of their preferred policies, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote House members requesting that the government be shut down — and potentially that the nation be forced into default — unless religious employers were given a special right to deny birth control coverage to their employees.”

Cardinal Sean O’Malley and Archbishop William Lori don’t explicitly say call for a shutdown, but they write: “[w]e have already urged you to enact the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (H.R. 940/S. 1204). As Congress considers a Continuing Resolution and debt ceiling bill in the days to come, we reaffirm the vital importance of incorporating the policy of this bill into such ‘must-pass’ legislation.”

As Ian Millhiser writes:

The “Health Care Conscience Rights Act” permits religious employers to exclude any “‘item or service to which [they have] a moral or religious objection from the health insurance package offered to employees.

Shortly after the Obama Administration announced rules requiring most employers to provide birth control to their employees, the Bishops rebelled, offering an unusually expansive reading of the Constitution and of a federal religious liberty law to claim that these rules are invalid. Their letter demanding a shut down unless they get their way on birth control, however, is a major escalation from their previous position. It is one thing to request a carve out from a law you do not want to follow while the rest of the nation continues its business around you, but it’s another thing altogether to demand that the government shut down because you are unhappy with the current state of the law.