The birth control flap

[kengr]

Ok, the Catholic church and others are claiming that their freedom of religion is being infringed by requuiring the health plans for employees to include birth control benefits.

This is BS. What the media and others *should* be doiing is asking why the "religious" organizations in question wish to infringe the religious freedom of their *employees*.

After all, it's not remotely proper for them to force their *employees* to abide by the rules of a church they may not belong to.

If people challenged it *that* way, it'd place these jerks in a bind. Because they *can't* justify forcing people to follow religious rules that said people don't want to follow.

ETA: Consider the reaction if the Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh day Adventists objected to having to include coverage for blood transfusions. Or the Christian Scientists (or several other churches) objected to having to pay for health coverage *at all* (because they believe prayer is the only valid way to deal with health problems.

Those are *exactly* analagous to the Catholic church's position. If the Catholics are allowed to claim religious freedom to not cover birth control for employess that wish to use it, then those other faiths should be allowed to drop those *other* items. You can't have it both ways.

Comments

[xander-opal.livejournal.com]

Or, y'know, those Catholics could just choose to follow their faith and simply not make use of that benefit. But then, I'm just being logical.

[freetrav.livejournal.com]

While I agree with you, I'm going to briefly take the other side, because there's a fundamental disconnect here. More, I'm going to specifically express it in "loaded" language, because it is a topic that's inherently "loaded".

Your argument amounts to "Catholics should allow others to commit murder under the guise of it being a religious practice - that non-Catholics have the religious freedom to kill for their own convenience."

It's not just Catholics, either, though they're probably the most vocal about it right now; it's pretty much all of the Abrahamic religions, in their most 'orthodox' forms.

It wouldn't be the first time that religious practices have been interfered with or banned because the wider society disapproved; the price of Utah's admission to the US was the new "revelation" that polygamy is bad; there's the case of the Voudoun practitioners in Florida that didn't get a pass on animal sacrifice; Rastafarians are not allowed to use ganja (marijuana)[though on the other side of that, there is the allowance for peyote for that Amerind tribe]; I'm sure there are others.

So... where - and how - do you draw the line?