Would you provide BC if planned parenthood did not?
Any company could claim religion, as a way to exclude benefits from their insurance packages, to the point of absurdity: deny all life-extending treatments, all psychiatric care, all drugs, all medical procedures, treatment of venereal diseases, all circumcisions, all medical imaging, body modifications, genetic treatments, stem cell treatments, care for pregnancies out of wedlock, blood transfusions, ... (LDS, quakers, Muslims, atheists, protestants, scientology.) Quakers would love not to pay taxes that fund the Pentagon.
In fact, they could claim the need to do this across the board to avoid offending the consciences of all board members, current or future stock holders, partners, investors, employees, donors, or even their customer base (brand/image)
Buying specifically health insurance, even if broad, is less likely to accidentally fund something inappropriate, for which you would seemingly feel guilty: salary can be used to buy porn, or meth, or guns, or toys containing bpa!
You make yourself less competitive on the job market by specifically carving out an exception for yourselves; you'll have to pay extra to attract workers, and that same money will go to pay for birth control after all.
If religion could exclude you from paying into a common pool, you could use this argument to avoid paying taxes altogether, as taxes are used to fund groups like planned parenthood. The IRS has taken a dim view of this.
A blanket law like this one does not target any religion specifically, it is not establishing a religion nor supporting one; by excluding true religious entities, it already tries to avoid crossing that bridge. If anything, it should exclude noons. Does God hold you responsible for following firstly the laws of the land? Does democracy change that rule, would you feel more ass-covered under a despotic regime? Would you feel it is more important not to indirectly fund BC than to feed the poor or heal the sick?
You save money by paying for birth control rather than for every kid your employees or their spouses pop out, and the attendant sick leave.
If biblical morality is about personal choices, then your non-catholic employees who get BC using your insurance have not strayed from their own faith, and you have not supported nor encouraged them to stray.
The government is, and should remain, unable to decide what is a real religion, whether people are sincere, and whether a claim of religious belief is in line with official (or heretical) teachings. To start doing so, to prevent fraud and abuse of a loophole, would be damaging to the separation of church and state.
How can companies have a religion? Who in the company decides what it believes? Who is morally accountable to God for the company's official actions, for their accounting?
Would all vendors and contractors be required to also refrain from funding BC directly or indirectly? Is it recursive ad infinitum? Should employees turn in receipts for inspection?
If your Catholic employees (hired carefully) never use BC even though you pay for it to be available, then you haven't funded it. Interesting?
Do Catholic hospitals provide regular or emergency services that are in conflict with this teaching? Such as plan B?
What about drugs that have multiple uses -- such as acne medicine that also is a contraceptive?
What must one do to avoid providing material aid (collaborating)? Not report Jews to the SS? Not do business with the Germans? Never pass up an opportunity to shoot one? There must be ethical and moral limits to indirect blame!
Obamacare was not designed to humiliate Catholics, nor force backward institutions into modern medicine, nor to snub the Catholics who supported it despite internal ignorant bashing. Laws are not modified just because you owe someone a political thankyou. Engagement and dialogue and compromise are not dead just because you lose a battle. Liberals cannot afford to have big ideas, like universal healthcare, held hostage by the sensitivities of every community. It is not a simple matter of carving out a small exception for one group -- fixing this requires nullifying the law. (Re Dione and Gerson) they can be as offends as they like, or they could reinterpreted their own teachings (as their faithful have done) and cease having an issue. I don't care.
The mistake might have been excluding even churches. There is precedent though: churches are allowed to hire on the basis of gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc. despite the civil rights act. But even that is a bit much: it makes sense when hiring a pastor, but not a janitor or secretary.
Requiring the excluded institutions to help employees find the service elsewhere (Hawaii model) is still providing material support to a practice deemed immoral. Why would they think that acceptable? Because it's not money? Except they provide that too, as salary!
I don't care if contraceptives are covered, but the church's arguments suck.
The first amendment cannot be used to protect all actions (animal sacrifice, polygamy) or inactions (not providing medical care to someone in distress, not paying taxes). As with the freedom of speech, assembly, and petition (which does not guarantee a helpful response), it is about ideas and expression only.
The closest match is actually conscientious objector status, which the UN only very recently made explicit, though not forcefully. If someone is relieved of military service, but required to perform other services during a war, enabling killing, has he been forced to kill? By making bullets or baking bread? The Nuremberg principle 4 requires that someone have an available moral choice, and I assume from context that the punishable act must have been fairly direct.
Catholics supported the law once they realized it did not cover abortions. They do not consider contraceptives to be on par with abortions, however distasteful they consider them. Therefore, this does not even rise to the level of being forced to kill.
Should Catholic small-business owners be exempted? Is the issue personal conscience, or corporate?
If it is acceptable for insurance companies to provide birth control to those who don't get it through their insurance plan, it means it's acceptable to fund it by paying too much for non-contraceptive coverage, so the insurance company can redistribute the income to subsidize contraceptive servicves. How is that different?
Is it morally wrong for any Catholic to purchase health insurance for themselves if it covers contraception? What if insurers must? And if individuals must have coverage?
Parental insurance frequently covers children; contraceptives for teenagers are therefore provided by their parent's insurance plan. Is it wrong for a non-catholic parent to purchase such insurance when their Catholic child will have access to use it? Is it wrong for a Catholic parent to deny such coverage to their non-catholic teen, who as a teen, can't contract for her own?
