PLATTSBURGH — The North Country Catholic community is speaking out against an Obama administration ruling that would require certain religious-affiliated institutions to provide health insurance with free contraceptive services for women.
Under new rules, Plattsburgh's Seton Catholic Central School and Seton Academy must provide employee health insurance that includes free preventative services for women.
"It puts us in a terrible position of choosing between assisting care for people and violating our conscience," said Msgr. Dennis Dupery, pastor of St. Peter's Church in Plattsburgh, which is linked to the two schools.
The issue is one that the Catholic Church and others opposed to it on moral grounds saw coming.
In August 2011, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued an interim rule that required most health-insurance plans to cover preventative services for women without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or deductible.
The mandate said most new and renewed health plans would be required to do so by Aug. 1, 2012. The interim rule included an exemption allowing certain religious employers — among them churches and synagogues — the option of whether to provide contraception coverage.
After a comment period, the ruling was made final on Jan. 20, but gives nonprofit religious employers that are not exempt and don't currently provide contraceptive coverage in their insurance plans an additional year to comply with the new law.
Among them religious-affiliated schools and hospitals.
BISHOP RESPONDS
The ruling would mean that health-insurance plans would need to include coverage for sterilization, contraceptives such as birth control pills and the emergency contraceptive Plan-B.
But the Catholic Church is morally opposed to such measures, which the Most Rev. Terry LaValley, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ogdensburg, says includes abortion-inducing drugs.
"The federal government, which claims to be 'of, by and for the people,' has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful," the bishop said in a letter to the Catholic community and public at large"
LaValley's letter says the government "refused to broaden the religious exemptions to these rules."
"As a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics must be prepared either to violate our consciences or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so)."
'SINGLED OUT'
Duprey thinks the Obama administration made a "terrible mistake" with the ruling, and he said is concerned for Catholic-run health-care facilities and schools.
It frustrates him, too, that other denominations don't seem to be put in the same position.
"We feel we've been singled out."
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
There are other religious institutions that oppose the ruling.
The Rev. Russ O'Neill, pastor of the Independent Baptist Church in Keeseville, said he does not agree with the government's interference on such an issue.
"I would be 100 percent against that ruling," he said. "(With) a moral issue concerning the decision of life or birth control, the government has no business being involved in that. That would be my very strong feeling."
LaValley's letter says the same — that such government interference "strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith."
The bishop said the Catholic Church cannot and will not comply.
His letter urges Catholics to contact their congressional representatives to support a reversal of the decision.
Email Rebecca Webster at: rwebster@pressrepublican.com
