WASHINGTON (CNS) — Eighteen Catholic colleges have asked the Obama administration to exempt all religious individuals and institutions from being forced to participate in the federal requirement that health insurance plans cover contraceptives and sterilisation.
The 13-page appeal was sent to the White House on September 29 and called the Department of Health and Human Services’ exemptions for religious employers as “potentially so narrow as to be not only nearly inconsequential but insulting to religious entities, in particular to Catholic colleges and universities”.
Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, the chairman of the United States’ bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education, also signed the letter.
The Catholic institutions join the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Health Association in support of stronger religious exemptions under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Health and Human Services (HHS) was accepting comments on the proposed religious exemption until September 30.
Msgr Stuart Swetland, the vice president of mission at Mount St Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Maryland, told Catholic News Service that the proposed mandates under the healthcare law threaten the operation of Catholic colleges and universities.
“It’s unprecedented in federal law. Religious exemptions were always written to accommodate sincere religious beliefs. This is written so narrowly,” said Msgr Swetland, who also is the executive director of the Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education, a division of the Cardinal Newman Society, which helped organise the colleges’ appeal.
The letter said the mandates violated several federal laws, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution.
It pointed to the possibility that the mandate could be used to require future insurance coverage of abortion-causing drugs as long as the Food and Drug Administration classifies them as contraceptive in nature.