Sunday, December 27, 2009

Catholic Hospitals and Church Split over Abortion Coverage

As Catholic Schools don't teach much in the way of Catholicism, so Catholic Hospitals are not very consistent in following Catholic moral teaching with regard to abortion. It's unfortunate enough that liberals, getting it wrong as they often do, fail to understand the issue outside of their quest to justify sexual license and personal "liberty" that the consequences of the normalization of this situation is higher than they understand.

As those who have been following the congressional health care bill know, the Catholic Church has played a significant role, expressing its disapproval mostly over federal funding for coverage of abortion procedures. The Church backed the House's Stupak Amendment, which "bars a new government-run insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases or rape, incest or the life of the mother being in danger, and prohibits any health plan that receives federal subsidies in a new insurance marketplace from offering abortion coverage," and has expressed dismay at the new compromises over abortion in the Senate (ones which, ironically, pro-choice advocates are not happy with either).

From the New York Times, the new provisions allow "any state to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and requires insurers in other states to divide subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums would be used to pay for abortions." This makes it difficult, bureaucratic, and certainly not desirable for insurance companies to cover abortions - but it still does not ban abortion coverage completely.

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