my two cents

[MajorMajor]

I honestly want to keep mine as short as possible but I seem to go off into a stream of conciousness rant when I'm reading and re-reading posts to make sure I'm getting everything. It really doesn't take me more than about an hour to type my posts. If I'm doing a blog post it might take me a few more. I spend more time on those but I haven't done one in ages.

I about died laughing when I read this though:

By the law as written, Catholics are not being prevented from sacrificing people to a manatee (false or not)

When I wrote my original post I really wasn't thinking of abortion, for the most part. I was thinking mostly of the law requiring insurance to cover birth control. So your reply post ended up taking a much deeper path of discussion. It is, of course, to some extent also applicable to abortion. In the context of birth control, as it was mostly intended, I think my argument makes a lot of sense. In light of your objection, that the rulings against Jehovah's witnesses involved the government intervening to save lives, I would point out that the same could be said of this law requiring the coverage of birth control.

There are illnesses that can be simply treated by birth control which, if not, can become much more damaging to one's health, even fatal. I will not say that these are common. Whether they are common or not has nothing to do with the matter. What does matter is that by the Catholic Church's religious objection to birth control, for the purpose which it is generally used, the Church would deny these people good, necessary, acceptable medical treatment. My point was that the Church appears unwilling to allow people to decide for themselves, based upon their own moral convictions, when they can yews treatments, such as birth control pills. This seems to come from a fear that some people will yews them immorally and a belief that because of this other people should have a choice. There is a matter of control here. Do you believe that religious institutions should have an amount of control over other people's lives? I don't. I believe that people should be allowed to make their choice, right or wrong, with the guidance of those institutions to which they choose to belong, not with those instutions looking over their should and saying "No, we can't let you do that".

ON TO ABORTION:

This could end up being incredibly long so I'm going to try to simplify it by making some assumptions.

Assumption #1: Human life is equally valuable.

Therefore a mother's life and her child's life are of equal worth.

Assumtion #2: There are situations in which either a mother can be saved from death or her child can be saved but not both.

Therefore a decision of which one to save must be made or both will die.

Assumption #3: A good mother would give her own life for her child.

Assumption #4: A good child would give his/her life for his/her parent(s).

A child is incapable of making such a decision while in the womb and for sometime thereafter. This time may vary based upon the maturity/intellectual capacity of the child.

The mother is capable of making such a decision.

Therefore, it is the mother's decisions whether to sacrafice herself for her child or live.

The good mother sacrafices herself for her child but the bad child lives because the good child would have sacraficed him/herself for his/her mother.

The bad mother lives by sacraficing her good child.

But how can either be bad when the value of both lives are considered to have equal value?

You may notice that the assumptions of good and bad don't make sense here and that there is the question of whether the child can be bad or good because it couldn't make a decision. That question is a hole new sack of potatoes that I'm not touching. It'd just take too much time and too many pages. So lets make all things equal and change the situation just slightly by taking away the mother's decision.

Same scenario but we'll make the husband decide which one to save because the mother is unconcious.

So, both the mother's life and the child's life are of equal value.

Because of this, deciding which one lives is either up to a coin toss, which one he loves more (Subjective), or we must consider other factors.

In considering other factors we must realize that the mother has the ability to bring more children into this world. This means the mother would be the logical choice to save. But wait... the child would eventully be capable of procreating as well. The mother's ability exists now though and the child's doesn't. So she still must be the logical one to save. That is, if we place value on the proximity in time of this ability. But wait... won't the child, since he is younger, have a longer and therefore more valuable life than that of the mother? We can't say, because no one knows how long they will live. Although we can say within a reasonable time frame that the mother's life will soon end once being sacraficed for her child or vice versa. We can see from all this conjecture that trying to value one life more highly than another by using outside factors is a tenuous moral grasp at best.

So what then are we left with to decide? Our coin toss or our subjectivity. The husband is left with the unenviable task of deciding using either of these methods, which leave something to be desired. It is a bad situation he is in. Whichever one he decides to save he will be blamed with the death of the other. That is unless there is no blame in such a situation. In fact, by saving one he is making the most of the situation he possibly can. Doing the best he can we might say.

So if he can't be wrong in deciding the fates of two other people then in the previous scenario the mother couldn't possibly be wrong for deciding her fate and that of one other person. No matter the choice.

And that, my friends, is why the Catholic Church is wrong and why it is right to be pro choice.

Note: I restrict this view of abortion entirely to cases of medical necessity to save mother or child. Those that would yews abortion simply as a way to get out of childcare have no moral ground to stand on. But since the Catholic Church is so happy to be uncompromising in its views on the yews of abortion I can safely say it is morally wrong. Maybe in 200+ years they'll admit it, like they did with the torching of Joan of Arc.

[Maximus]

When I wrote my original post I really wasn't thinking of abortion, for the most part. I was thinking mostly of the law requiring insurance to cover birth control. So your reply post ended up taking a much deeper path of discussion. It is, of course, to some extent also applicable to abortion. In the context of birth control, as it was mostly intended, I think my argument makes a lot of sense. In light of your objection, that the rulings against Jehovah's witnesses involved the government intervening to save lives, I would point out that the same could be said of this law requiring the coverage of birth control.

There are illnesses that can be simply treated by birth control which, if not, can become much more damaging to one's health, even fatal. I will not say that these are common. Whether they are common or not has nothing to do with the matter. What does matter is that by the Catholic Church's religious objection to birth control, for the purpose which it is generally used, the Church would deny these people good, necessary, acceptable medical treatment. My point was that the Church appears unwilling to allow people to decide for themselves, based upon their own moral convictions, when they can yews treatments, such as birth control pills. This seems to come from a fear that some people will yews them immorally and a belief that because of this other people should have a choice. There is a matter of control here. Do you believe that religious institutions should have an amount of control over other people's lives? I don't. I believe that people should be allowed to make their choice, right or wrong, with the guidance of those institutions to which they choose to belong, not with those institutions looking over their should and saying "No, we can't let you do that".

In the case of hormonal methods, yes we're aware that they can have legitimate medical uses. My sister had a rather bad case of acne and the doctor prescribed birth control pills. Being a premed student with access to a number of prolife doctors and some incentive to read the relevant medical literature, she did not fulfill the prescription. She wrote her honors paper that semester on the side effects of the pill, which was accepted by the university faculty; she sent me a copy of it, which I intend to read at some point. Moral issues aside, more and more information is coming to light about all the harm that these previously thought wonder-drugs can do. The story of Big Pharma, like Big Tobacco and most other large corporations, is to a large extent a story of greed; modern people want a quick fix, a pill to solve any problem, without any effort. My sister went to a dermatologist and was able to resolve her acne using other methods.

Anyone with a basic understanding of moral philosophy will understand the differences in morality of the same action taken under different circumstances. There is no moral issue inherent in using hormones to treat a medical condition. On the other hand, all possible effects of that action must be considered, no matter the intent for which the action is taken. The abortifacient effect of the Pill must be forseen and considered in the moral calculation. The pill is intended to primarily work by preventing ovulation, which it generally succeeds in doing. However in some cases ovulation can occur, and there is a chance of conception (defined as fertilization; some people like to play word games and define it as implantation). At this point the Pill also serves to prevent the normal implantation of the blastocyst (at this point some hundreds or thousands of cells, several days after fertilization) in the uterine wall, and causes an early abortion, or you could call it an artificial miscarriage. So called Plan B, the “morning after pill”, “emergency contraception” all work in the same way, by preventing implantation after fertilization has already occurred. We prefer to call these chemical methods by the somewhat more accurate name of chemical abortifacients. The IUD also works to prevent implantation but not fertilization. This is by far a worse consequence of the Pill than simply preventing ovulation. Morally you could put these in a more serious tier than methods that simply prevent fertilization such as barrier methods and sterilization, because they terminate a life already created, rather than preventing it from existing in the first place.

“But we're only going to yews so-called birth control methods to treat medical conditions, not just to prevent pregnancy.” Right, I can totally take your word for that. The same line of logic is used for abortion (“only in case of rape/health of the mother”), and we have 4,000 a day. We know rape is underreported but there's no way there are 4,000 rapes a day, and if pregnancy was that commonly a serious threat to women's health, humanity would have gone extinct a long time ago.

Another example from a few days ago, not related to life issues: It is illegal for people in Florida to yews fireworks for celebratory purposes. However, there is an exemption in the law because Florida is an agricultural state; apparently some farmers yews fireworks to scare birds away from their fields. When you buy fireworks you must sign a form saying you are buying the fireworks for agricultural reasons. What a coincidence then that a few nights ago I saw quite a large number of fireworks in my local area where there is no significant agricultural activity. Therefore we must be very careful about “legitimate medical” exceptions. In the case of abortion specifically, the “health of the mother” exception as defined in Doe vs Bolton concerning abortion restrictions is broad enough to incorporate everything from headache to “emotional distress”. The exception becomes the rule wide enough for anyone to enter. 95% of the time when people are referring to birth control, they are using it precisely for pregnancy prevention and nothing more. If it were possible to create a foolproof system to distinguish between the actual uses of various chemicals and procedures, the moral case against providing coverage might dissolve; but this is of course not realistically possible, and any attempt would be more invasive and from your view “controlling” than simply not providing coverage at all.

Other methods of birth control, besides the estrogen/progesterone based chemical methods, have no legitimate medical function, to my knowledge. I'm not aware that sterilization has any other effect than prevention of pregnancy. Ditto for condoms, IUD, Depo-Provera and the other injectable/inplantables, spermicides, etc. Birth control is not medicine because pregnancy is not a disease. I heard the argument tossed about during the Sandra Fluck days that “why will you pay for Viagra but not the Pill”. The answer is erectile dysfunction is a legitimate medical condition, the reproductive system not working the way it should. Pregnancy is not a dysfunction; it is exactly the correct function of the reproductive system. It is the prevention or interruption of pregnancy that is foreign and unnatural.

So on the issue of “freedom of choice”:

It's interesting that the same people who go around chanting “Don't force your morality on me” and “Keep your rosaries off of my ovaries” are the same people who think they are entitled to reach into our pockets to finance their version of morality. If you want to smoke, that's your choice, but you buy your own cigarettes, I'm not buying them for you. If you want to drink, you buy your own beer, I'm not buying it for you. If you're married, by all means have all the sex you want, just don't expect me to finance your activities. You may have some sort of a “right” to sex, within marriage at least, but you don't have a right to sex without babies. It's unnatural. Nothing that is unnatural can be a right. A right is something other people owe you, as a matter of justice; something you deserve. As our founding documents say, you deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (also known as private property); you also deserve free speech, freedom of religion, free press, the right to self defense, freedom from searches and seizures without cause, etc. No one anywhere anytime has a right to sex without babies, or for that matter concerning reproductive technologies, babies without sex. (Interestingly a right to free or at least cheap medical care is not enumerated in the Constitution, so we could make a legal argument that the government has no business providing it to anyone in the first place.)

The whole freedom argument is extremely hypocritical as well, in light of the growth of political correctness. “People need to be free to make their own decisions! Stop trying to control them!” Oh you want to put a banner in your office that says Merry Christmas? Oh I'm afraid we can't have that, a Hindu or a homosexual might be offended. You want to pass out Bibles in a VA hospital? We can't have that, people proselytizing on government property. Prayer before a ball game with the school coach, participation completely voluntary? The ACLU has laywers straining on the leash to sue the participants for violating the First Amendment (which they understand completely backwards). So in other words you're free to be whatever you want, on the public dime even, unless it's religious and especially Christian, because somebody's feelings might get hurt, and we must avoid that greatest of all evils. But you can have as much free sex as you want, because that's your God given right, and it's everybody else's responsibility to pay for whatever consequences may or may not occur or be desired to occur or not occur, because the Sixth Amendment clearly enumerates this right (… or not). Really this is the core of the entire issue. Sterile sex on demand is the sacred cow that people are fighting to protect.

How's this for freedom: let people pay out of their own pocket. During the Sandra Fluck episode, the value I heard quoted for birth control during that episode was around $9 a month, at least for standard pills and condoms. I assume it's trivially easy to find a doctor to prescribe pills or devices. I've driven by any number of vasectomy clinics, which is now an outpatient procedure; I doubt it costs more than a few hundred dollars, certainly not more than the abortion which it ostensibly prevents. It is difficult to understand why liberals (who are for “freedom of choice”) find it so important to not give Catholics a choice in paying for something for their employees that is 1) promiscuously available (bad pun?) and 2) relatively inexpensive. About the most expensive thing I can think of is probably tubal ligation or abortion and those run maybe a few thousand dollars on the outside. Which is the greater evil? Force a few million people to skip buying a case of beer every month so they can afford their pills, or put off buying a new smartphone a few months to get a procedure? Or force a few million people to act against their consciences to materially cooperate in an intrinsic evil, the murder of millions of human beings per year?

Another issue with your Jehovah's Witness analogy, in the immediate context of this discussion; I don't think the issue there was who would pay for coverage, but its availability. Any functional adult in this country can get their hands on condoms and pills if they so choose, regardless of their employer. A woman who believes her life is in danger due to pregnancy, can at this time, find abortion services. So the question here is not so much “are we denying women lifesaving treatment”, but who is paying for it.

Please explain how the people of this country can be considered “free” when the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Belmont Abbey College, EWTN television and numerous others, which are religious institutions with the express purpose of spreading the belief and practice of a religious faith, but who also happen to employ a number of people not of their faith, are not allowed to exercise their beliefs as soon as they enter the commercial sector? Religion has already been largely excluded from the government sector, government property, and government funding. Now the move is to exclude it from the commercial sector as well by these coercive types of laws. When you open your door for business suddenly you lose all your rights and must conform to the lowest common denominator of “anything goes”; all behavior no matter how immoral must be tolerated, or you will be punished for “discrimination”, which is apparently for liberals the greatest of all possible evils. “Catholics need not apply” signs have been seen in this country before; the Irish and the Italians had to fight very hard to establish their place here. There is no reason, if the intent of the First Amendment is ignored, why “Catholics need not employ” signs cannot be seen here again.

Why can't it simply be a matter of contract; employer A provides benefits X, and employer B does not? If getting their $10 a month pills or once in a lifetime sterilization paid for is that important to someone, they can simply choose an employer with insurance that provides that benefit. If the demand is as large as proponents of this law would have us believe (running around saying “98% of Catholics yews birth control anyway”, though the number I heard from my sources is more like 85%), the free market will tend to move those people who care about such benefits to the employers that provide them, and the people that do not care will be willing to forego the coverage they don't care about. Employers who do not want to provide birth control coverage are a tiny fraction of employers; I don't see any lack of jobs resulting from this policy. We have been at full employment before without such a mandate, and I've never heard of Catholic institutions having trouble hiring people due to the supposed deficiencies in their health insurance plans.
This is freedom, this is capitalism. Telling Cardinal Dolan that he has to pay for his janitor's abortions etc using money I donated to advance the cause of the Church is not freedom.

It is not a coincidence that only now that we are becoming an “entitlement” society is this becoming an issue. A lot of people, particularly the Democrat voter base, hear “free stuff” and immediately rush to clamor for whatever the stuff is, consequences on society as a whole being an afterthought at best. We can go point and counterpoint on the details of Obamacare all day long, but simply the fact that it's a government program and considering the current state of government-run healthcare (Medicare, VA, etc), common sense says it isn't going to achieve its goals, certainly not without significant side effects. It's like we say at work, tongue in cheek: We do three kinds of jobs, Good, Fast, and Cheap; you can pick any two. Obamacare promises Lower Costs, More Benefits, and Expanded Coverage, and there's no realistic way it can deliver all three, and would have to be a departure from historical trends to deliver even two.

Then of course as I mentioned previously there are the effects on the medical personnel. From what I understand it's very difficult to become an OB/GYN without participating in an abortion. Somewhat less but still serious issues exist for general practice doctors. The (presumably unintended) effect of these types of laws are to discourage people of conscience from entering the medical profession at all. I may be confusing Obamacare with other regulations, but the issue has come up numerous times before and will only continue to get worse. How can we discuss freedom where the litmus test to enter one of the most important professions in the world is actions which are contrary to every major religion? As I said before, the alphabet soup does not have the legal (let alone moral) authority to override the First Amendment, no matter what their professional opinion is.

This is probably how it will be resolved, given the current political climate: a move to “defined contribution” style of funding health insurance, primarily due to the rising costs moreso than the freedom of conscience issue. Employers will simply add a particular amount to current salaries/wages and allow individuals to purchase their own health insurance. The employers will get out of increasing their contributions at the same rate as rising health care, as well as the moral and legal questions of precisely what coverage they are required to provide. Eventually this situation will lead to the collapse of the private health insurance market (for all but the extremely wealthy) and a transition to a European like socialized medicine system; some more cynical elements believe this was the real intent behind Obamacare.

Obviously I will need to address abortion itself at a later time; I didn't read any of your post beyond what I quoted above.

[MajorMajor]

My sister went to a dermatologist and was able to resolve her acne using other methods.

Good for your sister, seriously. We all know the pill can treat acne. That is probably as close to a common yews as that of birth control. There are many alternatives for acne treatment while it is not the case for other issues.

Anyone with a basic understanding of moral philosophy will understand the differences in morality of the same action taken under different circumstances.

Seriously? You're going to start believing in a type of moral relativism now? After we had this discussion repeatedly on the RCB forum? I don't know what to say.

However in some cases ovulation can occur, and there is a chance of conception (defined as fertilization; some people like to play word games and define it as implantation).

I don't know anyone, who knows what they are talking about, who thinks implantation is the same thing as conception. Two different things there. Implantation actually often doesn't occur. This leads to some interesting discussions about how and why God lets millions of people die every year after fertilization and failure to implant. Why even create a soul for those? Seems a bit of a waste. This is a side issue though.

“But we're only going to yews so-called birth control methods to treat medical conditions, not just to prevent pregnancy.” Right, I can totally take your word for that. The same line of logic is used for abortion (“only in case of rape/health of the mother”), and we have 4,000 a day. We know rape is underreported but there's no way there are 4,000 rapes a day, and if pregnancy was that commonly a serious threat to women's health, humanity would have gone extinct a long time ago.

Yes, obviously people abuse the system. People do that with anything, fireworks included. My argument was, and is, that just because people abuse the system does not mean anyone has a right to deny proper medical treatment to those who need it. Whether there are millions of people abusing the system or only a few doesn't matter. The right thing to do is to try to provide it to those you can and do the best you can to prevent abuse without compromising the treament of those who are innocent of that abuse. Denying access to everyone completely compromises the treatment of those who need it for valid reasons and that is why such a position is wrong.

Also, there are more like 4,000 rapes a year, we know of, that result in pregnancy. Its not common. Just because its not common is not a valid, or moral, reason to deny them access to abortion. I have noticed you seem to like to say in your posts that just because something is uncommon there is no reason to consider the different circumstances when judging the morality of the actions. (You might want to reconsider the earlier quote on actions and different circumstances because your view seem completely inconsistent with some of your other statements).

NOTE: I never argued above for the valid yews of abortion in rape cases only in cases of medical necessity. I just point out that your reasoning that commonality matters sucks as an argument.

95% of the time when people are referring to birth control, they are using it precisely for pregnancy prevention and nothing more.

I think you pulled that percentage out of thin air but, if not, then it still probably doesn't consist of many Catholics. My argument regarding birth control was that Catholics should be able to yews it for the other 5% of reasons because they aren't abortion.

If it were possible to create a foolproof system to distinguish between the actual uses of various chemicals and procedures, the moral case against providing coverage might dissolve; but this is of course not realistically possible, and any attempt would be more invasive and from your view “controlling” than simply not providing coverage at all.

There is absolutely no reason to be concerned about an embryo that has failed to implant when on birth control if you never had sex anyway. So basically your entire argument so far has been one big worry about people getting it on rather than using things appropriately.

This is a completely irrational fear because anyone who gets pregnant on that birth control while using it appropriately for other reasons was going to get pregnant without it. You can't completely stop people from doing the wrong thing. They find a way. You know this. But what I say is you can help those who need it, who yews it appropriately. There is no reason to fear something you can't change so much that you stop yourself from doing something good for those who are trying to do the right thing.

What I'm saying is that denying usage makes little difference in the outcome for this group of people but you can make a big difference for good people by treating those with dangerous reproductive problems.

I'm not aware that sterilization has any other effect than prevention of pregnancy.

It can treat over active hormones and prevent child molestation. I don't recommend it though.

“why will you pay for Viagra but not the Pill”. The answer is erectile dysfunction is a legitimate medical condition, the reproductive system not working the way it should.

Here we get to the meat and potatoes of my argument. Your sister's case was different in that she had options for treatment that were relatively equivalent in effectiveness (some medication for acne are probably actually better than birth control for that purpose). For people with polycystic ovaries treatment with birth control is the best option i.e. the least invasive and damaging. This condition also happens to be a legitimate medical condition where the reproductive system is not working as it should. Therefore, it satisfies fully your criteria for taking the pill and why it should be paid for along with viagra.Yet still the Catholic Church provides no waver in its opposition to the yews of birth control in this situation.

Again the Church's position is wrong. Really only because it provides no exceptions. Even for good moral uses of treatments.

It's interesting that the same people who go around chanting “Don't force your morality on me” and “Keep your rosaries off of my ovaries” are the same people who think they are entitled to reach into our pockets to finance their version of morality.

I'm not with those people. I value logically sound arguments, supportable, reasonable actions, and consistency in yews and explanation of them. I have no interest in anyone's money. I fault the Church's logic and reason as much as any claim to morality it makes. In fact, I find fault with its moral decisions simply because it lacks reason.

A right is something other people owe you, as a matter of justice; something you deserve.

I disagree. A right isn't something owed to anyone. It is something we fight to secure for ourselves and then fight every day thereafter to keep. I value that you are fighting for what you believe to be your rights. I just find myself disagreeing with you because the line where you believe your rights end conflicts with where other people's rights begin.

pursuit of happiness (also known as private property)

Ok... you've lost me here. First, I have never heard of the pursuit of happiness used as a reason for the right to private property. I honestly don't think it applies to that at all. Second this is only in the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. Therefore, it would have no legal standing to begin with.

There are parts of the constitution establishing a right to private property though.

(Interestingly a right to free or at least cheap medical care is not enumerated in the Constitution, so we could make a legal argument that the government has no business providing it to anyone in the first place.)

True but then a lot of rights aren't specifically expressed in the constitution. We've secured them as time went on through legal battles, sweat, and blood. The constitution is called a living document specifically because of this struggle.

Also, the Constitution does charge the government with providing for the general welfare of the people.

But you can have as much free sex as you want, because that's your manatee given right,

I laughed my ass off to this manatee.

, the value I heard quoted for birth control during that episode was around $9 a month, at least for standard pills and condoms.

$9 dollars maybe for condoms (Several packs really). If that figure is for actual pills it is probably subsidized. I know you hate to hear about your tax money going to it but thats the truth.

It is difficult to understand why liberals (who are for “freedom of choice”) find it so important to not give Catholics a choice in paying for something for their employees that is 1) promiscuously available (bad pun?) and 2) relatively inexpensive.

I'm for freedom of choice. You can't not be since you always have one. But sometimes the choice is between a cushy job at the post office and a very steep drop. (Read Going Postal by Terry Pratchett).

Basically, your argument here also sucks because you are saying you don't want to pay for something that is easy to get and inexpensive. I'd leave that part out if I were you. Stick with the anger at having to pay for anything at all. It makes more sense.

I get the general drift though. The government has never let anyone decide what their tax dollars pay for, directly anyway. If you can elect enough people then they get to decide what we all pay for. That is how the system works. Essentially, I think you are suggesting we should change the system. I'm not entirely opposed to the idea depending on what it is you'd want in its place. It is a bit unrealistic to expect it to happen and certainly won't happen easily.

Please explain how the people of this country can be considered “free” when the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, Belmont Abbey College, EWTN television and numerous others, which are religious institutions with the express purpose of spreading the belief and practice of a religious faith, but who also happen to employ a number of people not of their faith, are not allowed to exercise their beliefs as soon as they enter the commercial sector?

Because it is the commercial sector. You answered your own question really. It is not the Church at the point the Church is buying a commercial institution. Commercial institutions are subject to anti-trust rules. It could be thought of as trying to create a monopoly for one religion inside the workplace or out. Especially if the institution is the only healthcare provider for a town or area. Having to drive to another state to get a prescription for birth control is more than a simple inconvenience.

But seriously, while its similar to a corporate monopoly anti-trust rules wouldn't apply. What would apply is our amendment concerning our freedom of religion which I know is your reasoning for why the institutions should be allowed to make their own healthcare rules. However, it doesn't just work as a right for those institutions. It is also a right for everyone who doesn't believe as they do. When Catholics and others bring their beliefs into the workplace, especially in federally funded institutions like universities, and then go a step further and try to impose those on non-believers then they have passed the border of their rights, taken a hard right, and driven over the rights of others. Atheists, if you can call them a religion, have a right to not have Catholics denying them healthcare just because they want to go to a good college or hold a good job. Things like that could get seriously out of hand if any religion held a great deal of control anywhere.

Think about me being able to deny the yews of my tax dollars for funding a soldier going to college at a religious institution that didn't agree with my views. This is why we don't do this kind of thing.

Which is the greater evil? Force a few million people to skip buying a case of beer every month so they can afford their pills,

You really seem to have negative stereotypes of peolpe on welfare. I assure you most aren't like that. You do meet some though and besides using food stamps to buy alcohol isn't even legal anymore. I suggest reexamine your idea of these people, maybe spend some more time with them.

Or force a few million people to act against their consciences to materially cooperate in an intrinsic evil, the murder of millions of human beings per year?

I've always been a bit stunned at the amount of material cooperation with evil. You really can't avoid it. You buy a shirt somewhere across the world they used slave labor to make it. I suppose we should try to avoid what we can but then again it isn't the person buying the shirt or paying the taxes that is doing the evil. Maybe if the person could specifically earmark his tax money for killing babies or if I could order my shirt directly from companies I knew used slave labor then, yeah, there would be a case for immorality.

Another issue with your Jehovah's Witness analogy, in the immediate context of this discussion; I don't think the issue there was who would pay for coverage, but its availability.

No, the Jehovah's witness analogy is more applicable to the government being able to override the religious views of a group when it is in the general welfare to do so. Much like overriding the religious views of Catholics in this case provides for the welfare of those who need birth control for valid and invalid reasons.

A woman who believes her life is in danger due to pregnancy, can at this time, find abortion services. So the question here is not so much “are we denying women lifesaving treatment”, but who is paying for it.

If you want to make the case that we shouldn't pay for things for other people. I can go with you there. We probably shouldn't pay for medicare/obamacare, social security, more wars (not that we've paid for the last two), or veterans' lifetime medical benefits because A) we can't afford it B) we have a moral objection to big government. C) we never yews it or it isn't applicable to us.

Though I have to say it would be incredibly cheap, selfish, and heartless to deny anyone lifesaving treatment. This, however, is exactly what the Catholic Church attempts to do when it tries to outlaw all abortion simply because of its ideology or as you seem to be arguing just because some people will abuse it.

It is not a coincidence that only now that we are becoming an “entitlement” society is this becoming an issue. A lot of people, particularly the Democrat voter base, hear “free stuff” and immediately rush to clamor for whatever the stuff is, consequences on society as a whole being an afterthought at best.

Again you seriously need to reexamine how you are assigning people to your stereotypes. Not all, or even very many, democrats vote the way they do just because of "free stuff". Most are big on social justice. Some are bad at finding reasonable ways to do things, or as you say don't fully examine the consequences. But even those aren't in it for the entitlement. Many are democrats simply because the Republicans don't offer a viable alternative because they don't make sense. (Why do they expect hispanics to vote against their own interests anyway? That's like saying please deport me to a country where I don't speak the language).

I really don't think the entitlement syndrome is any greater for democrats than republicans. I also think it is more of a symptom of the people we elect than the electorate. The only difference between the two is what they would spend the money, we don't have, on.

Then of course as I mentioned previously there are the effects on the medical personnel. From what I understand it's very difficult to become an OB/GYN without participating in an abortion. Somewhat less but still serious issues exist for general practice doctors. The (presumably unintended) effect of these types of laws are to discourage people of conscience from entering the medical profession at all.

You're understanding isn't very good. Then again mine isn't the best either. But from what I remember the med students have to learn how to do the procedure even if they never intend to yews it. There is no participation, only observation. Like when they take them into the viewing gallery of the operating room for other surgeries to see how its done. There may also be training with dummies and observation of fetal cadavers but I don't really know about those. I do know that fetal cadavers have been used to demonstrate the stages of development for many years. Also, they had some on display at the Chicago museum ages ago. I have no idea if they still do.

You are totally wrong about these being intended to discourage anyone. The reason, as I stated above, is so the doctors know what they are doing even if they never hope to yews it. As I proved in my last post even a Catholic Doctor should have no moral problem with using such a proceedure to save a mother's life. It sucks that the child dies in such cases but much worse if both the child and mother die. And if you have to trade one for the other then you just have to do your best and save who you can.

The employers will get out of increasing their contributions at the same rate as rising health care, as well as the moral and legal questions of precisely what coverage they are required to provide. Eventually this situation will lead to the collapse of the private health insurance market (for all but the extremely wealthy) and a transition to a European like socialized medicine system;

I agree with the idea that the private health insurance market may collapse but it was headed there anyway. So in reality we're no worse off in that respect than if we hadn't tried anything. Plus we may get lucky and it won't. I doubt any politician or economist can fully predict the future and neither of us have a crystal ball either. As for a transition to socialized medicine, we could do worse. I'm sure its hard for you to see how but try parts of South America or Africa. Socialized medicine isn't entirely on topic anyway.

@Guard: I second Sakke's motion to remove the yews filter. I love the Manatee though.

[Maximus]

Apparently I need to take morality from the top since you confused my statement with endorsing relativism, which of course I have argued against on many previous occasions.

In morality we have both objective good and evil, and subjective guilt. The factor in objective good and evil is the act itself. For subjective guilt, there are the added factors of knowledge and intent. In Catholic theology, these three factors make up the criteria for distinguishing between mortal and venial sins.

It is not objectively evil to blow up a building with dynamite; it's simply rearranging inanimate matter. My subjective knowledge might be that the building is empty of people and the intent of the demolition is to make way for future construction. In this case my action can be considered morally good. If my subjective knowledge is that there are people in the building and my intent is to kill them, then my action is morally evil. If I lack knowledge that there are people in the building (someone sleeping in a closet) then I might be partially guilty depending on how thoroughly the building was checked. With somewhat more difficulty we can construct a scenario in which I know the building is occupied but blow it up anyway, but do not have the intent to kill the people; maybe to make way for an aircraft that would otherwise crash into the building a la 9/11 and kill even more people. At that point we would have to consider the principle of double effect and such.

Our laws reflect these degrees of subjective guilt, and attempt to apply punishment appropriately. Thus we have the harshest punishments for first degree murder (murder is objectively evil, and done with full knowledge and intent is the most evil kind), less punishment for lesser degrees of murder; less punishment for manslaughter; and the least punishment for criminal negligence (like leaving electric wires exposed that someone touches). If self defense can be reasonably established then there may be no punishment at all. We have the distinctions of felonies and misdemeanors, etc.

Some actions which are objectively evil we classify as “intrinsically evil”, because by their very nature they can never be good. Abortion is one such action. Some individuals can beg ignorance and so avoid some of the subjective guilt, as could the Supreme Court to some degree in 1973; the powers that be cannot claim ignorance, not today. More on this when I get around to discussing abortion specifically.

You really seem to have negative stereotypes of people on welfare. I assure you most aren't like that. You do meet some though and besides using food stamps to buy alcohol isn't even legal anymore. I suggest reexamine your idea of these people, maybe spend some more time with them.

The average person on welfare owns at least one car, has a computer and a television, a cell phone, and plenty of food. My friend used to work at a welfare office and told me about the tricks people would try to yews to game the system and get benefits they didn't really need. He is pretty sharp though so I don't think much got past him. Additionally if you think if you think I have no connection at all, my mother grew up in “the projects” so the life isn't completely foreign to my family's experience.
The welfare life isn't luxurious by American standards but “poverty” in this country is still wealthier than a large percentage of the rest of the world. People in this country have no idea how well off they are. It would be a good experience to visit a third world country to better appreciate what we have. But some people are just flat out selfish, lazy, and entirely short sighted and superficial, and if someone else has one nickel more than them, they just burn up with jealousy until they get their hands on it. Thus the result of our materialism, where the most important thing in life is amassing the biggest pile of stuff.

Though I have to say it would be incredibly cheap, selfish, and heartless to deny anyone lifesaving treatment. This, however, is exactly what the Catholic Church attempts to do when it tries to outlaw all abortion simply because of its ideology or as you seem to be arguing just because some people will abuse it.

The problem you have with your morality is not that it is too logical, but that it is too emotional. The “emotional intuition” that people have about morality may not be correct upon sober, thorough review of all the relevant factors. Someone who is suffering or watching a loved one suffer is not in a state to make good logical decisions, as any doctor can tell you.

The spirit of your statement flies in the face of the sacrifice of millions of people throughout the centuries who, motivated by Christian charity, have dedicated their lives to the care of others, and asked nothing in return. I pointed out earlier than a significant number of the hospitals in this country were founded by religious organizations, Catholic and otherwise. Can you place a dollar amount on the value of someone who dedicates 60 years of their life to nursing others who are sick, and asks nothing in return but food to survive and a chapel to pray in? We would say it is priceless, and for every one of them declared formal Saints, thousands lived and died in obscurity, remembered only by the God they served. See Mother Teresa and the 5,000 sisters of her order for the most recent example.

The Catholic philosophy especially is suited to the care of physical needs. Unlike some religions, we don't believe the dualism that says the soul is good and the body is evil; the Incarnation and Resurrection of Christ raises the dignity of the human body to the divine (his by nature, ours by grace). Catholic morality would tell you to exercise, eat healthy, get enough sleep, drink alcohol only in moderation, don't smoke or get tatoos, avoid unnecessary injuries, etc. Some characteristically ironic Chestertonian wisdom might be that the world does not care about the body too much, but rather it cares too little. The moral way is a balance between prioritizing care of the soul, but in no way neglecting care of the body.

I've always been a bit stunned at the amount of material cooperation with evil. You really can't avoid it. You buy a shirt somewhere across the world they used slave labor to make it. I suppose we should try to avoid what we can but then again it isn't the person buying the shirt or paying the taxes that is doing the evil. Maybe if the person could specifically earmark his tax money for killing babies or if I could order my shirt directly from companies I knew used slave labor then, yeah, there would be a case for immorality.

Your analogy is still incorrect since you may be able to beg ignorance as to the shirt companies but adding abortion coverage to a lot of health care plans really has only one purpose. As discussed before and later, abortion is an intrinsic evil and has no legitimate uses.
If Lee Jeans goes down to Georgia and puts some black people “back in chains” and makes them make jeans for free, would you buy the jeans? Then the government decides that wearing jeans is in the public interest since it cuts down on health care costs of band-aids for skinned knees, and mandates that you buy Lee Jeans with your own money and fines you if you don't, completely ignoring the slave labor aspect. That is a more accurate analogy.

The people who like government and despise religion see only one answer to any given problem; raise taxes and throw more money at it. The Catholic Church and its various organizations are the largest non-governmental provider of education in the country. I don't remember the numbers, but I heard some estimate of the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year the private Catholic education system saves the government. A number of countries in Europe have privatized education; the free market system has driven down the cost, and driven up the quality. The government is not the answer to every problem. Perhaps if you encouraged people to live their faith more and not less, that would actually result in more people being cared for instead of less.

Also, the Constitution does charge the government with providing for the general welfare of the people.

Of course everything the Communists do is always “for the good of the people” as well, so that's just a matter of interpretation. Basically using that logic you can justify becoming a socialist state so the government can take 100% of the GDP and distribute it “for the general welfare”. Mark Levin hammers this point pretty much every night on his show, and cites Plato's Republic, Hobbe's Leviathan, and More's Utopia as examples of this idea taken to its logical conclusion; an ubiquitous all-powerful authoritarian government that controls every aspect of every individual. Then he describes how these are exactly the opposite of what the Constitution was meant to provide. We've come pretty far already, and can see the next steps; you can own a gun, but only a small handgun with small clips and limited ammunition that you can't carry out of your house; you are protected from searches and seizures without cause, unless of course you are boarding public transportation or entering any public gathering of significant size, in which case you must be searched since you might be carrying weapons; you can exercise your religious conscience, but only on your own private property; you can do what you like with your money, after the government takes most of it to provide “for the general welfare”; you have a right to a trial by jury, unless of course you're suspected of terrorism, then you can be held indefinitely without charge or trial, or summarily killed by a drone lick.
Quite a few people view the Constitution only as an obstacle to “what needs to be done.” I think it was the CEO of GE who was quoted as saying he admired China because “they know how to just get stuff done.” Yeah, they don't let little things like human rights get in the way of the “general welfare”.

I don't know anyone, who knows what they are talking about, who thinks implantation is the same thing as conception. Two different things there. Implantation actually often doesn't occur. This leads to some interesting discussions about how and why God lets millions of people die every year after fertilization and failure to implant. Why even create a soul for those? Seems a bit of a waste. This is a side issue though.

The pro-aborts like to define “conception” as “implantation” so they can claim that the pill and IUD's “reduce the number of abortions by preventing conception”. If we define conception as fertilization then yes they have reduced the number of surgical abortions, but by moving death earlier in the developing human's life.
Yes it is a side issue as to the creation and seemingly premature death of quite a few individuals, born ones as well, such as children who die young. For the purposes of the moral discussion at hand, we are only responsible for the actions that we take, so we need only note the difference between natural miscarriage and abortion is the same as the difference between natural death (from say heart attack) and murder (from say a gun). Both may be in some objective sense evil (theologically at least, all death is considered an evil), though there is only subjective guilt in the latter case.

Yet still the Catholic Church provides no waver in its opposition to the yews of birth control in this situation. Again the Church's position is wrong. Really only because it provides no exceptions. Even for good moral uses of treatments.

I'm not sure if this is the case. I don't know the legal details of the insurance plans. I have certainly seen the question discussed in the moral theology/philosophy circles and it is agreed that there is no issue with using medications, specifically for this purpose. As I said before, the difficulty lies in separating the legitimate claims from the illegitimate ones. Most of the responsibility lies with the medical professionals and their degree of honesty. If we make an exception for the pill as treatment of menstrual cramps, then next month the number of prescriptions for menstrual cramp treatments goes up by 7800% above normal so the amount of pills being sold remains about the same, that would be rather suspicious.

However the legitimate medical exceptions is almost an academic question because that's not really what both sides are arguing about here. I suppose we could say you are arguing for a moderate position whereas the Catholic Church argues for an absolute position on one side and the pro-abortion lobby for the opposite absolute. The abortion lobby wants unrestricted abortion on demand any where any time for any or no reason whatsoever, and they want someone else to pay for it, especially since so many of their clientele are from the low-income demographic. In some states, Planned Parenthood has been building new and larger abortion clinics than they ever have before, in anticipation of the massive amounts of money that Obamacare is going to provide for the “reproductive health” industry. They fought for FOCA (Freedom of Choice Act) for years and it was narrowly defeated in Congress. If memory serves, this act would remove the Hyde amendment language and enshrine abortion as a human right (in the way that the UN tries to), and making it one of the most privileged “medical” activities (eg basically blank check to pay for it). Obamacare is (in small part) its spiritual successor and meets a lot of the pro-aborts' wish list in similar ways that FOCA did. A lot of the people who are “pro-choice” are really just pro-abortion and anti-children/anti-population. They are far less logical than you and yews the “hard cases” (rape/health) exceptions just as a last ditch wedge to keep the door open, but those limited cases are never their real objective. You may disagree with the Catholic's position but you're unlikely to spend a lot of time in court fighting it, whereas they will, partially for ideological but quite a bit more for economic reasons.

In fact, I find fault with its moral decisions simply because it lacks reason.

There are too many people in the world and not enough resources. People will die if we do not reduce the population and reduce global warming. Therefore we can carpet lick China and India and reduce the world population by 2 billion, for the common good of course.

There, I have constructed an argument that is completely logical and completely immoral. Constructing an argument that is illogical and yet moral would be equally trivial and pointless.

To say that the Church lacks reason is rather ignorant of the Church's philosophical tradition, though understandably so in today's world. The Catholic Church and its members to a large extent created, protected, advanced, and transmitted the philosophical foundation for the entire of Western civilization. We still read Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, and down through the ages with other great minds such as Augustine and Aquinas.
The Church recognizes the equal need for both faith and reason, and the dangerous situation that occurs when either one is neglected. Faith without reason leads to blind superstition and becomes irrelevant to the very real world in which we live, while reason without faith results in a sterile science devoid of morals like compassion and mercy (think Aperture Science, or the Nazi medical experiments). In fact, John Paul II wrote an entire encyclical on the relationship between faith and reason.

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_ ... io_en.html

First, I have never heard of the pursuit of happiness used as a reason for the right to private property.

According to Mark Levin, “pursuit of happiness” and “property” are interchangeable formulations of a fundamental human right, in addition to life and liberty. I don't spend a large amount of time on political philosophy so I can't tell you precisely from where each one comes, only that they supposedly mean the same thing in this context. See John Locke et al.

A right isn't something owed to anyone. It is something we fight to secure for ourselves and then fight every day thereafter to keep. I value that you are fighting for what you believe to be your rights.

Your definition unfortunately is becoming the working definition of our modern times; more precisely, “a right is something you can keep/own/do if you have the guns and/or lawyers to defend it with.”
The idea of a right is precisely that it is something that cannot be morally taken away from you, especially when you are unable to fight for it. This is why it is morally worse to rob an old lady than to rob Chuck Norris, though it is of course evil to do both. Might never makes right; that is the law of the animal kingdom, not of civilized rational creatures.
You never have a right to commit a moral evil. You may have the ability to commit it, and existing law may not reflect the moral status of such an action (re: slavery), but you still do not have the right to do it. Do not confuse the idea of “free will” with “permission to do whatever you damn well please.” You have a free will in order that you may choose what is right. Without the ability to choose what is wrong, there cannot be a real choice, which is the essence of love; and we would all just be robots running programming that God wrote. Our free will is therefore precisely the ability to love, though it is of course the potential to do evil, the actualization of which leads to the atheists' typical first argument which is the existence of evil.
As mentioned before, the entire purpose of law is to instruct and direct people into doing what is right, and punish them when they commit evil, in hopes of preventing further evil. An law that promotes an evil or forbids a necessary good is therefore unjust and not binding, since it is opposed to the ultimate purpose of its own existence.

manatee

I did a replace on some words to get around the filters but I missed some.

You are totally wrong about these being intended to discourage anyone.

Much in the same way that Christianity is being marginalized in the public sector at large, so it is being marginalized in a lot of professions, including medicine. You know the stereotype; if you're not all in for abortion/gay marriage/whatever else you're a backwards stupid superstitious Bible-thumping anti-science racist misogynist homophobe and think everyone not a member of your little local church is going to hell.

I have heard the statements from people who have gone through the experience and say it is not pleasant. There is a subtle kind of hostility that is not legally provable as discrimination, but it can make life very difficult. A lot of professions, especially medicine are the “in-club” types and the existing members have a great deal of power regarding your opportunities. My sister interviewed for medical school a short time ago. Three times they asked her about Obamacare in various aspects including the contraceptive mandate we are discussing. She got the distinct impression there was a “correct answer” to that question and she wasn't giving it. Once the law is the law, then naturally the people with hiring/admission discretion are going to start using it as a criterion to weed out the people who don't subscribe to the establishment idea of ethics.

Because it is the commercial sector... etc

I heard an update on the status of the legalities this morning. Two federal circuit courts have issued injunctions against the mandate, and two have let the mandate stand. The legal question is ultimately going to be answered by the Supreme Court. I can of course remind you that at one time the Supreme Court unanimously upheld slavery in some cases, and it took additional laws being passed for the Court to come to the morally right decision. Of course, whether Obama gets to appoint any more justices before the case is heard may have a significant impact on the outcome.

It may be the case that in the current political climate, the government will wind up sticking to its current position, and the courts will let it stand. In that case, there are any number of institutions that will simply not comply. There is plenty of precedent for non compliance with unjust laws, re: slavery again. Persecution has been present in almost every chapter of the Church's history, and there is no reason to think this one must be any different. The Church, both members and leaders, have enjoyed a relatively comfortable position in this country for the past century or so, and in some sense may be “due” for some pressure which will force its individuals to seriously consider the depth of their commitment. Quite to the surprise of its detractors, the Church often experiences its greatest periods of renewal and indeed growth during persecution; “as gold is refined through fire”, etc. What happens to the perpetrators is of course God's business.

[Maximus]

FYI my January weekend calendar is pretty full already and since break is over I can't stay up until 4:30am writing. I intend to make my abortion treatment thorough (in multiple posts of my usual size) so it may take some time. It's actually still on my to-do list to write something about so-called same sex marriage, particularly in how it affects society at large and not just the two people in question.

These two topics are in addition to the other half-dozen philosophical or theological things I am reading or writing at any given time...

Upon rereading my above posts I notice my attempt to get around the filters failed. Apparently the php engine auto removes pairs of tags (i)(/i) etc with nothing between them. I doubt I'll bother fixing the previous but I will keep it in mind for the future.

---

Didn't intend to put any actual content here, but I was reminded of this point by an email today, and I've mentioned it before:
The whole argument of "we have to ensure everyone has access to the coverage they need, and we can't make any exceptions because that would be unfair to the people who need these medications" rings pretty hollow when approximately 2,000 organizations have exemptions from Obamacare altogether. My understanding is that most of them are Democrat-leaning organizations such as unions and the like. You can try to argue that their health care plans already include contraceptive coverage (being Democrat after all) but we wouldn't really know without sitting down and taking a survey of their various plans.
So it's not really a question of "we can't provide exemptions because women who need pills will die if we don't", it's a matter of having friends in DC, scratching the "right" backs and making campaign donations to the "right" people.
Also the Amish are exempt though presumably they don't normally purchase/yews health insurance at all. For all I know they may not even yews hospitals; I have no idea. Still it is an example of the government respecting the time-honored traditions of a minority group who have conscientious objections to certain activities.
Oh yea: Congress also exempted themselves from the law, as they do for most laws. So much for equality...
For your position to be logically consistent I suppose you would advocate removing all the above exceptions so the law did indeed apply equally to everyone; but I do think it is notable to point out the differences between the idealism you seem to think the law is following and the reality of its implementation.

[GUARD!AN]

What filters were you trying to get around? I can just remove it if it is causing problems.

[MajorMajor]

Quick Post:

I never made an argument for idealism or said that the healthcare law was ideal. In fact, I have a vastly different opinion of what I think they should have done. I will not bring that topic up here but I will reiterate the main points I have been arguing.

#1. Giving religious organizations exemptions from laws they don't agree with can compromise the religious freedom and possibly the welfare of those who don't agree with them. Most notably when the reach of the religious organizations extends outside the church to hospitals, media organizations, universities, and various non-profit organizations which employ non-believers.

#2. The Catholic Church's stance on birth control is consistent but not reasonable. There exist valid medical uses for birth control, aside from preventing births or causing abortions, which the Church provides no exemptions for. Nor are they willing to cover these uses in any insurance plan because of their unreasonable position.

#3. The Catholic Church's stance on abortion, and to a broader extent that of many other fundamentalist Christian groups, is inconsistent and unreasonable. Despite their belief that life is sacred, in cases in which a mother's life could easily be saved by an abortion their position would have doctors let the mother die. In cases where there is an equal chance of saving either mother or child their position would favor one life over another i.e. letting the mother die in all cases rather than the child.

On to the healthcare law:

NOTE: I wrote something about congress, of course, being greedy bastards and exempting themselves then I did some fact checking. Turns out that one is a lie. They aren't anymore exempt from have a plan that meets the minimum standards for coverage than you or I am. http://www.factcheck.org/2010/01/congre ... alth-bill/

You're argument implies that you think the healthcare law should be ideal in order for it to be applicable to you or religious organizations.

In reality, any law or argument can be applicable to you without it being applicable to anything else. This isn't an ideal world after all and just because something is wrong about one thing doesn't mean it isn't right about another. Nor does that justify disregarding the thing which it is right about. Its merely a convenient distraction from having to argue the specific point one doesn't want to address in favor of arguing the wrongness of the others.

The whole argument of "we have to ensure everyone has access to the coverage they need, and we can't make any exceptions because that would be unfair to the people who need these medications" rings pretty hollow when approximately 2,000 organizations have exemptions from Obamacare altogether.

I never made the argument that we can't make exceptions. What you are refering to is the Democratic argument. See #1 above for most of my argument for why giving exceptions in certain cases may be a bad idea depending on what you want to accomplish.

Of those exempted organizations many of them are religious institutions. Obama has been giving them exemptions because they are basically organizations where everyone believes the same way. He appears to be against giving them out to institutions where many of those employed aren't of the same belief system. There are also many unions and corporations on the list. The state of Maine also got an exemption.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2900475/posts

These exemptions do not mean these organizations aren't required to provide benefits under the healthcare law. Odds are they are only partially exempt from some provisions like.... the state of Maine, for instance, has an exemption allowing its insurance companies to spend 65% of its premiums on healthcare expenses rather than the mandated 85%. Everything else is the same. These waivers are not universal.

The unions themselves are getting waivers because they are contractually obligated with companies for their benefits. They cannot get more money from those companies to pay for additional coverage until their contract is up for renegotiation. No doubt these unions mostly support Obama but their reasons for seeking a waiver are still legitimate. Support for him does not immediately translate to having an illegitimate reason for an exemption. You can't break a contract. At least, not without paying huge penalties.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/healt ... d=all&_r=0

[Ramshi]

What filters were you trying to get around? I can just remove it if it is causing problems.

How about the g-0-d filter as well as the u-s-e filter

[Magyk]

What filters were you trying to get around? I can just remove it if it is causing problems.

How about the g-0-d filter as well as the u-s-e filter

God filter stays.

[MajorMajor]

NOOOOO!!! Not my Manatee filter! I love the Manatee filter

U-S-E should go. Tis just annoying.

The Tesh filter is annoying too but only because it does weird things to Virginia T-e-c-h and I attended that university so... kind of a personal point of pride there.