What is religious freedom?

Listen to Dave Ross Commentary: What is religious freedom?

The Senate this week rejected an amendment that would have let insurers and employers opt out of providing birth control coverage if they had moral objections.

It was going to be attached to a transportation bill because conception sometimes occurs in cars, I guess? Anyway, it was rejected, and churches are upset because it’s a violation of their religious freedom.

That’s the argument. That religious freedom means a church, or an insurance company, or any employer should be able to tell women that birth control is immoral and therefore not covered.

I find that weird. Aren’t insurance benefits part of your pay package? If they have a moral objection to a woman using benefits for birth control, what about when she uses her paycheck for birth control? What about when insurance pays for an out of wedlock birth — which many churches ALSO don’t believe in. Or a stem cell transplant?

But here’s an even crazier thing: if insurance companies can deny benefits based on their own morality, what if the companies providing liability insurance for churches decided they had a moral problem with paying claims for those notorious sex abuse cases? I’ll bet most insurance companies oppose perversion on moral grounds, suppose they decide it’s morally repugnant to bail out those abusive clergy who would otherwise have had to pay the damages out of their own pockets.

That actually happened by the way, in 1994 when 14 insurance companies refused to make payments to victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, arguing the church had failed to do the right thing. The archdiocese sued, arguing it had paid the premiums, so it deserved the coverage. I guess birth control is different somehow.

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