Some writers and pundits, troubled by the obvious problems with the HHS mandate but still unwilling to denounce the administration wholesale, have been looking to Hawaii for a possible compromise position. Yesterday, however, Richard Doerflinger, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, cast doubt on that proposal as insufficient:
A key official in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the Hawaii bill — repeatedly cited in media commentary — would not resolve the conference’s
concerns and would, in any case, be overridden by the federal rule.“I’ve reviewed the Hawaii law, and it’s not much of a compromise,” said Richard Doerflinger of the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities and the bishops’ chief lobbyist on life issues in the nation’s capital. “The Hawaii contraceptive mandate has many of the same features as the new federal mandate.”
The probelem is that, essentially, even though Catholic schools and hospitals in Hawaii are “exempt” from the requirement to pay for the contraceptives they find morally objectionable, “ the Catholic Church [still] must directly send women to drugs and devices that are morally wrong and can do harm to them,” Doerflinger claims.
Read more of his argument here .
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