Matt Bowman: Government funding of abortion is not like government funding of Christian social service agencies
By Matt Bowman, Esq. ________________ In Tuesday’s Washington Post blog, law professor Cathleen Kaveny tried to make an analogy between opposing government funding of abortion in health insurance and opposing government funding of Christian social service organizations that hold traditional beliefs against homosexual behavior. She contends that pro-life opposition to the first raises a “conscience violation” of “exactly the same” kind as homosexual opposition to the second. And she claims that society should compromise both objections because both end up killing the poor, at Christmas time no less. On closer scrutiny, Prof. Kaveny’s melodramatic analogy falls apart. Opposing government funding of abortion is not even remotely similar to opposing government funding of Christian social service agencies and churches. And the difference isn’t just that abortion is evil and Christian social service is good. These apples and oranges are actually not comparable. Prof. Richard Garnett correctly points out that his colleague, Prof. Kaveny, improperly frames the issue. This can be discerned by asking several questions: what is the conscience violation in each situation, who is the person claiming conscience rights, and what kind of conscience violation are they claiming? Denying funding to religious organizations that won’t give up their opposition to homosexual behavior directly imposes a conscience violation. Whereas, denying health insurance coverage for abortions does not. A Christian church or agency that receives government funding under the former restriction would be forced to actually support and advance homosexual behavior through its own programs, employees, and activities. To comply with the condition, the Christian organization might have to hire persons who publicly oppose and violate the organization’s basic teachings on sexuality or otherwise directly require it to deny traditional Christian morality. In contrast, a woman who is given government funding to buy health insurance that excludes abortion is not for that reason being forced to do anything against her conscience. The restriction does nothing more than require her to buy health care that she already wants, with merely the omission of abortion from that plan, and explicit permission to buy abortion coverage with her own money. Buying non-abortion health care is not against anyone’s conscience, nor does anyone’s conscience impose on them a duty not to buy insurance that merely omits abortion. It is simply inaccurate to classify the abortion restriction as a “conscience” violation. Second, the homosexual nondiscrimination situation involves a vastly broader conscience violation in comparison to an abortion funding restriction. In the homosexual behavior situation, the Catholic Church in Washington D.C. is raising a conscientious objection to a condition that says if they get government funding they, a church, cannot consider their core religious beliefs about sexual behavior in their own operations. The restriction on abortion funding is also much narrower. As Prof. Kaveny describes it, the “conscience-bearer” in this situation is the “policyholder,” the insured woman who wants abortion insurance. However, the notion of women clamoring for abortion insurance has little basis in reality. It is mostly the product of Planned Parenthood marketing campaigns. Some states prohibit abortion coverage in standard health insurance policies while allowing abortion to be covered under separate policies. Abortion sellers themselves admit that there is a little demand for abortion coverage in such states. By contrast, it is clear that poor people actually seek food and housing from entities like Catholic Charities. But even assuming there is some demand for abortion coverage, women seeking such coverage are simply being told they can’t use government money to acquire the coverage. The abortion restriction does not ban funding to all companies that cover abortion with their own money, or to all women who get abortion with their own money. It is not comparable to the much broader idea that the government shouldn’t fund any organization that rejects the rightness of homosexual behavior. There are other situations that Prof. Kaveny could use to create a more accurate parallel, but in those cases, not coincidentally, she would not be able to contend that cutting abortion funding would lead to disastrous consequences like cutting off funding from soup kitchens. In funding family planning within the U.S. under Title X, federal government money can’t go to a program that promotes abortion. But it can go to an organization that promotes abortion, as long as they firewall their abortion activities and their family planning activities. The federal courts’ application of the unconstitutional conditions doctrine might prevent a “no funding to Planned Parenthood because they are pro-abortion” policy. But that broad principle is precisely what proponents of normalizing homosexual behavior advocate against Christian organizations. An even more marginal example is the Mexico City policy, now defunct under President Obama, which said that international organizations can’t get family planning money if they are pro-abortion. But this still isn’t parallel to a “no government funding to traditional Christian organizations within the U.S.” policy, because it didn’t apply to organizations in our country. And the result of denying funding to International Planned Parenthood does not involve any dead and starving poor people, just smaller bank accounts for international abortionists. In contrast, denying funding to a Christian social service entity in the United States would directly harm the poor. Finally let’s suppose that domestically we could cut all funding to Planned Parenthood simply because it is pro-abortion (we can dream, can’t we?). Still the result would involve no dead people on the streets of America (actually, fewer dead people when we include the unborn, as Prof. Kaveny claims to include). Again this contrasts with cutting funding for Christian soup kitchens and homeless shelters. For these reasons, the American people are perfectly correct and internally consistent, as I argued recently, in desiring no government funding complicity in abortion, while accepting and welcoming government funding “complicity” in faith-based social services. The former is a narrow limit that harms no one, while the latter is the rejection of a broad limit harming the foundations of our republic. _________ Related post: Matt Bowman: “Abortion-philes and Religion-phobes turn the Constitution upside down” |
