When is One Theology Superior to Others?
Every so often, amidst political correctness and legitimate concerns about religious freedom, everyone can fail to even acknowledge what should be at the heart of the public debate. If you follow U.S. politics you have no doubt heard the public dispute over the Obama administration’s decision to make religious affiliated employers cover contraception. This has caused an uproar about Catholic charities and hospitals being forced to cover procedures that are in conflict with their religious beliefs. While I’ve thought, read and seen it covered from numerous angles what I haven’t seen is a discussion of what I believe is the fundamental issue: What is the difference in kind between religious inspired exemptions to providing blood transfusions and having to provide contraception?
Both Christian Science, opposed to basically all modern medical intervention, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, opposed to blood transfusions, have medical policies as part of their religious beliefs. Do you think these organizations or, more analogously, their affiliates have the right to refuse to cover life-saving surgery? Granted this is not a direct analogy as there is a difference between “letting someone die” and, if the Catholic worldview is adopted, what amounts to being forced to pay for treatment to “take a life.” However it seems to me that the Catholic church would not be accepting of contraceptives like the morning after pill or abortion if the proposed intervention was created in such a way as to “let the fetus die.”
If I am right and the Catholic Church wouldn’t suddenly decide that such procedures are acceptable in that scenario then the difference, if there is any, between refusing to cover a blood transfusion which would save a life and hence letting someone die and refusing to cover contraceptives can not be the substantive difference between the types of procedures disavowed. Still the difference could be framed as the difference between refusing to help someone that you could without any harm to yourself and actively helping someone cause harm but I have my doubts that everyone who so opposes this ruling would line up on the same side of that delicate ethical distinction.
This sadly seems to be another case where the relatively popular religious opinion trumps other similar opinions exclusively because it is popular. The intersection of government and religion is always messy, and should be avoided where at all possible, but if the Catholic position on contraceptives was a fringe belief and Catholicism a tiny Christian group like Christian Science would this even be a debate about religious liberty? Or would they be shunned by the vast majority of Christians for daring to corrupt god’s word to restrict access to a public good?
