Abstract

The Roman Catholic bishops of the United States have publicly opposed artificial contraception since they first issued a public statement condemning it in 1919. Thereafter, the bishops were generally unsuccessful in persuading the public that contraceptive access should be restricted. Recently, however, the bishops succeeded in a campaign to restrict access to contraceptives for Catholic and non-Catholic women alike. Their lobbying and public criticism of the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which requires employer health plans to offer preventive reproductive care coverage, forced Obama administration officials into a series of accommodations that gutted portions of the law intended to provide contraception to employees without copayment or cost sharing. In contrast to their earlier efforts to restrict reproductive freedom, the bishops successfully characterized their efforts against the ACA as a battle for religious freedom rather than against reproductive rights. This successful strategy may lead to future setbacks for women’s reproductive liberty.

Highlights

  • As representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, the American Catholic bishops have consistently counseled that the use of artificial contraception is never permitted

  • In the wake of Vatican II, for a brief time at the end of the 1960s, Catholic authorities could respect the religious freedom of non-Catholics to use contraception, downplay their political goal to make their own moral law the civil law for everyone else, and focus on the pastoral needs of their members

  • The Contraceptive Mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Consistent with their church’s teaching, the American Catholic bishops have long supported a human right to health care and advocated policies giving the poor access to health insurance

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Summary

Introduction

As representatives of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, the American Catholic bishops have consistently counseled that the use of artificial contraception is never permitted. The bishops succeeded in a campaign to restrict access to contraceptives for Catholic and non-Catholic women alike Their lobbying against and public criticism of the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which requires employer health plans to offer preventive reproductive care coverage, forced Obama administration officials into a series of accommodations that gutted portions of the law intended to provide contraception to employees without copayment or cost sharing. In contrast to their earlier efforts to restrict reproductive freedom, the bishops successfully characterized their efforts against the ACA as a battle for religious freedom rather than against reproductive rights. Anti-contraceptive drive presented a common front with evangelical Christians that was unimaginable at the turn of the twentieth century

The Bishops’ Twentieth-Century Failures to Restrict Contraception
The Bishops’ Expanded Political Role
Precursors to the Contraceptive Mandate of the Affordable Care Act
The Contraceptive Mandate of the Affordable Care Act
Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood
Notre Dame and the Religious Nonprofits
Conclusions
Full Text
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