HHS vs. Catholics?
November 1, 2011, 1:29 pm
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
At the request of Bernard Dauenhauer 11/01/2011 – 11:59 am
Yesterday the Washington Post published an article titled “Obama administration ends funding to Catholic group over abortion,” written by Jerry Markon. This story is troubling. It deserves a thread here. Would someone open a discussion of this piece? thanks.
Here you go: Wash Post
Read carefully and all the way through–a few complications intrude.
It does look like hardball is being played by the White House. Or just plain politics. The bishops have opposed Obama completely. In fact with few exceptions the advice from Catholic parishes has been consistently pro-Republican. Therefore…. I am interested in an objective evaluation as to how the bishop’s conference did in serving this serious area of human abuse. If another body can do as well or better than the bishops in this area, then the bishops will have to deal with their obvious politics. Their politics may have more to do with this matter than anything else.
The bishops conference says the language essentially stacked the deck against the group and violated federal laws barring discrimination based on religion.
I think the issue isn’t Catholicism or religious discrimination. It is not discrimination against Catholics when a Catholic organization applies for a grant to provide an array of services, the government feels those services should include contraception and abortion, the Catholic organization says it won’t provide contraception and abortion, and the government says they’ll look elsewhere.
Unless the government is out to deliberately harm Catholics, it is not discrimination to require all employers who provide insurance to provide coverage of contraceptives. It may disproportionately affect Catholic employers, but it is not discrimination.
This is not to say there aren’t important issues, but the issue isn’t religious discrimination. The issue is how much, in the name of freedom of religion, the government should accommodate Catholic organizations that are out of synch with the culture. The USCCB may oppose contraception, but the culture in general approves of contraception, and even the vast majority of Catholics approve of contraception. When considering the needs of the insured, how much is HHS supposed to bend to accommodate the USCCB when 95% of Catholics of childbearing age are using contraceptives?
As I said, this is not to say that there are not many important issues involved, but many of them seem to involve the Church in the narrowest sense—the USCCB, the heads of “conservative” organizations, and a minority of the Catholic laity. It seems to me a good question why, in the name of freedom of religion, the government should accommodate the USCCB instead of the majority of Catholics.
This issue is not quite breaking news -there was a thread at America’s “In All Things” 9sorry, Matthew) on October 12.
I was given (mistaken?) impression that the administration was to meet with reps from the catholic conference.
I don’t think that will settle the matter of ACLU and how it views the rights of the general community -especialy as abortion is interywined with a traditionalist view of contraception -especially as the issue at stake was helping victims of human trafficking.
It seems to me a good question why, in the name of freedom of religion, the government should accommodate the USCCB instead of the majority of Catholics.
Perhaps because it is the USCCB, and not “the majority of Catholics,” that runs the organization whose contract was not renewed. The article provides a link to Sister Mary Ann Walsh’s blog post on this decision by HHS. I’ll provide it again here; it’s worth reading. According to Sr. Walsh, one of the people at HHS responsible for this decision, Eskinder Negash, was until 2009 the vice-president and chief operating officer of one of the three organizations that HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement chose instead of the USCCB’s Office of Migration and Refugee Services (MRS). According to the Post story, an independent review board at HHS recommended that the money be given to MRS, and political appointees at HHS ignored the recommendation. There’s no way to explain this one away.
Isn’t the exclusion of the Migrant office from the contract for refusing to refer abortions, a violation of the spirit of Obama’s executive order to not fund abortions? I say yes. The contraceptive ban is another matter because who but the hierarchy will PUBLICALLY say that contraception is intrinsically evil.
If the program is as good as Sr. Walsh describes in the post Matthew Boudway links to (above), and the replacement programs as untested as she describes, than the HHS decision sounds like ideology rather than real concern for the victims of human trafficking.
Those are big IFs; anybody know anything apart from her statement?
The underlying lawsuit, ACLU of Massachusetts v. Sebelius, is pending in the federal court in Boston. The HHS secretary and other HHS officials named as defendants were sued in their official capacities and not in their personal capacities. This is common when a plaintiff is challenging the regulatory activities of a federal agency. The Obama administration moved to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the plaintiff lacked “standing,” i.e., the requisite constitutional interest that would allow it to seek redress. The Government argued in support of its motion to dismiss that the case was not really about the use of taxpayer money to advance a religious interest (the position argued by the ACLU), but about abortion. The judge agreed, however, that the ACLU had sufficient standing for at least the the present to allow the lawsuit to continue so that arguments about the merits of the suit can be considered.
http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?xmldoc=in%20fdco%2020100322870.xml&docbase=cslwar3-2007-curr
In the context of the lawsuit, the HHS continues to oppose the ACLU’s position. Some may be asking, therefore, why the HHS decided to drop the USCCB as a grantee under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act? Was the HHS seeking, as part of a litigation strategy, to undercut the arguments the ACLU is making in the Boston suit? Or has there been an actual shift in HHS policy that now excludes the USCCB from TVPA grant consideration because of the USCCB’s position on abortion and contraception? My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that both motivations are involved.
Some may also be wondering where the Hyde Amendment is in all of this. The Boston court addresses that issue in a footnote in its ruling on the Government’s motion to dismiss:
“The issue is not rendered moot by the so-called ‘Hyde Amendment,’ styled after Henry Hyde, Congressman from Illinois and a staunch opponent of abortion. The Hyde Amendment is a rider (not a statute) which, if attached to an appropriations bill, bars the use of federal funds for abortions. Congress has annually attached the Hyde Amendment to HHS’s general appropriation causing its impact to be felt primarily by recipients of Medicaid funds. The Amendment has also been used to deny abortion services to U.S. military personnel, federal prisoners, and Peace Corps Volunteers. To the best of the court’s knowledge, it has never been attached as a rider to the TVPA.”
” The issue is how much, in the name of freedom of religion, the government should accommodate Catholic organizations that are out of synch with the culture. ”
Including when it comes to adoption by same-sex couples and health & welfare benefits for same-sex couples.
Again, in the context of organizations that accept taxpayers’ money from government entities.
As I have stated more than once: If you want to accept the Queen’s shilling, then you must do the Queen’s bidding.
Two paragraphs missing from the latest WAPO version:
————
But some HHS staffers objected to the involvement of the secretary’s office, saying the goal was to exclude the Catholic bishops, individuals familiar with the matter said.
“It was so clearly and blatantly trying to come up with a certain outcome,’’ said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak to the media. “That’s very distasteful to people.’’
————
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/281886/catholics-need-not-apply-kathryn-jean-lopez
Perhaps because it is the USCCB, and not “the majority of Catholics,” that runs the organization whose contract was not renewed.
Matthew Boudway,
That remark was intended as a comment on the new rules about employer-provided insurance, the religious exemption for which, according to Catholics, is too narrow.
It’s the ABC Rule, Anybody But Catholics.
I see two possible reasons offered in the blog post you link to: A lawsuit by the ACLU, and a possibility of favoritism in awarding the contract to an organization one HHS official had formerly been associated with. I really don’t see evidence of “anybody but Catholics” there. One may disagree strongly whether or not victims of human trafficking should be given access to abortion and contraception, but if you come down in favor of them having access, that doesn’t make you anti-Catholic if the Catholic organization applying for the grant won’t provide those services and you have a lawsuit over the issue.
As I said, all of the Catholic “non-negotiables” are, outside of the USCCB and some conservative organizations, very debatable issues. And I think crying “anybody but Catholics” is kind of the religious equivalent of playing the race card.
Thank you, Margaret, for starting this thread.
In the latest issue of “America” there is an editorial that is relevant to this topic.
Maybe I’ll have something more to say later today.
Does Kathleen Sebelius, as a Catholic, have a moral duty to work within the framework of the law to minimize the number of abortions that are performed or referred by programs she oversees?
Ok, a few comments:
1. For present purposes, I don’t want to say anything about Sr. Mary Ann Walsh’s remarks on this issue.
2. Apparently, the ACLU notwithstanding, the Justice Department lawyers saw no legal barrier to funding the USCCB’s proposal. They argued that the bishop[s had been “astoundingly successful in increasing assistance to victims of human trafficking.”
3. The USCCB proposal had won higher scores by the independent review board.
4. Two political appointees, Sheldon and Parrott, acknowledge that changes in policies that they support affected the determination of who would receive funding.
Why should the Catholic community not vigorously contest this change of policy that has led to defunding of the “astoundingly successful” program that has shown its worth to the victims of trafficking? Whether this in evidence of bias or of blind ideology is not the point. The point is that a successful program has been replaced by other, less well certified, programs.
It looks like there’s some shoddy reporting (or biased editing, based on Patrick’s findings) going on at the WP. After the following statement from Sheldon, claiming that he was responsible for the decision to exclude the Catholic organization:
“Ultimately, I felt it was my responsibility — and I’m not trying to get anyone off the hook here — to do what I thought was in the best interests of these victims.’’
How could the next words out of the reporter’s mouth not have been, “If you were so concerned about the best interests of these victims, why did you overrule your own panel, who rated the Bishops’ application significantly higher than 2 of the 3 groups you awarded the damn funds to?”
And, pace MOS, if what Matthew links to is accurate, it was much more than mere ideology or anti-Catholicism, it also involved the worst kind of self-dealing–a fireable offense. How can Sebelius not be “asked” to resign? Who’s in charge here?
This is a pretty straightforward government contracts dispute. You don’t even need to get to discrimination or discriminatory intent — if referrals for abortion and contraceptive services are part of the RFP, then they contribute to the score — if they are considered “essential” to the contract, it doesn’t matter how much better one applicant is on any other area or combination of areas. If they are not considered essential, well, you would have to look at the nuts and bolts of the procurement and try to figure out how they were supposed to be weighed.
The article notes that USCCB was awarded another kind of contract within a week of the procurement for the one that is the subject of the article. No one has a right to a federal contract. Abortion and contraception are legal. Trafficking victims are often sexually exploited and have difficulty finding services of all kinds. Prior performance is important, but there are all kinds of situations where the government wants to make awards to multiple contractors. A lot of contracts of this type use the same subcontractors to provide services, so the “success” of a single organization can often be duplicated by others. I am not trying to be jaded here, but this so smacks of a disappointed bidder trying to make a lost contract into more than it is. There are tried and true vehicles for contesting such awards.
“Abortion and contraception are legal.”
According to the HHS, such contentious policies are not only legal and “neutral”… but are now mandatory for Catholics to even participate in the public square: in hospitals, universities, and charity programs.
This is complete overreach and discrimination against religious conscious and programs – but this is simply part of the trend of anti-Catholic policy out of the current president and liberal quarters.
These things can always be parsed in a dozen ways. The end result, though, seems to be that the Catholic service was considered defective because it didn’t offer abortions. That’s where we are now.
It looks increasingly as though Catholic social services – including hospitals – are being marginalized if not excluded in this country. We may simply have to live with that. Christians in general have gone from dominant culture to subculture. That doesn’t prevent lobbying, though, and that must be done, of course, with the understanding that success probably depends a lot on how the political winds are blowing.
That depends on what kind of Catholic she is, politically. The American Church has effectively broken into several parts, each of which, apparently, considers itself the only True Church. It’s sad to watch, though interesting. Lots of words are being spilled in lieu of blood.
No, as other comments here no doubt make clear, the American church is divided on this – and the politicians understand that. They no longer need worry about offending even most Catholics by thumbing their noses at the bishops – or, for that matter, at the entire Catholic social-work structure. There is no longer one “Catholic community”.
Barbara, certainly it is a dispute over a contract award, but your analysis doesn’t really address the merit of the award decision. The incumbent contractor scored considerably higher than the bidders to whom the contract was awarded. If abortion and contraceptive services were considered substantive aspects of the bid, then presumably the scoring would have been designed to reflect their importance, and presumably the USCCB wouldn’t have outscored its competitors.
In my experience with government bids, the award decision factors and the weight accorded to each factor is laid out in the request for proposal. Bidders tailor their bids to the scoring. As reported in the Washington Post (and expanded upon by Sr. Walsh), it appears that Obama Administration senior political appointees swooped in and rigged the decision-making such that the scoring was set aside.
I don’t doubt for a moment that the RFP also contained language to the effect, “the soliciting agency reserves the right to revise its decision criteria at its sole discretion.” From time to time, there are legitimate reasons for requiring that flexibility – and as we seem to see here, also political reasons.
This award scenario really is no different than the mayor awarding the town garbage collection contract to his brother-in-law.
It seems to me that if the issue is whether or not any institution, religious or not, can contract with the U. S. government to provide *only some of the services allowed by U. S. law*.
The ACLU maintains that a governmment contractor must provide *all* serices of a certain general kind or no such services at all. The Catholic Church says there is no denial of a client’s rights to abortion/contraception when it (the Churhc) offers only a limited number of gynecological services.
I do not see why all organaizations must provide all services of one general kind (e.g., gynecological ones). for an organization to provide only some services dotes not deny anyone of their rights to go somewhere else for other services. In other words, the Catholic Church breaks no law in offering only some services of a kind. If people want the Church’s services, I don’t see why they should be denied. (This is a separate issue from whether or not contraception and abortion are moral or not.)
Right on, Bernard, that is the issue — were some people denied the Church’s admittedly highly successful program for no good reason. Put another way, did the Church’s contribution given what it *does* offer outweigh some of the other programs which offer different services, and it seems the answer is Yes.
It seems that what needs revision is the way the scores of the programs are generated.
Interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, topic because whatever happened is mostly conjecture. Except for Barbara, who has a privileged POV as a lawyer, ISTM that people read into this what they already believe: Obama is anti-Catholic vs. the USCCB is using taxpayer money to push its religious agenda.
Barbara, since I am not a “disappointed bidder,” I can still try to make sense of changes in policy that seem to have taken place after the competition had begun. Changing the rules midstream is not obvious good procedure.
Jean. I think that you oversimplify, in two respects. First, lawyers have some technical expertise, but that doesn’t give them special insight into sensible public policies. At most, their technical expertise allows them to say what counts as legal at the moment, not what ought to be legal.
Even if in this case we are stuck with a fait accompli, is it not appropriate for citizens to consider how this particular “fait” became “accompli?” Perhaps even to work to prevent it from recurring?
Yes, except that this seems to be perfectly legal, whereas the mayor might be liable for corruption charges.
And depending on the timing of events, they could say political intervention was necessary in this case because the rules changed after the evaluation process had ended. Perhaps the abortion requirement didn’t exist when bidders were being evaluated.
Politicians can often do whatever they like, no matter what the law seems to say. They’re ruthless b… creatures.
Why is the USCCB competing for government funding when it knows it cannot meet the criteria for that funding with regard to contraceptives and abortion? Did they want to lose the bid to make political hay out of it? Why not slough it off and say we will keep our principles and raise the money elsewhere?
Irony Alert: Tapestri, one of the groups selected by HHS even though ranked below the USCCB group, lists on its page of donors, partners and supporters none other than the U.S. Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
http://www.tapestri.org/Supporters.aspx
Irony Squared — I wonder if the no doubt highly scientific HHS scoring system awards Tapestri additional points for their above demonstrated cultural competency in dealing with Catholic individuals.
” Why is the USCCB competing for government funding when it knows it cannot meet the criteria for that funding with regard to contraceptives and abortion? Did they want to lose the bid to make political hay out of it? Why not slough it off and say we will keep our principles and raise the money elsewhere? ”
And the people say: Amen!
The Huffington Post has picked up this issue and more including the bishops’ new moves against contraception.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/01/the-men-behind-the-war-on_n_1069406.html
Quite possibly, the rules were changed after the bidding had run its course. After all, under Bush, there were almost certainly no rules that government contractors provide abortions. It may have taken Obama a while to get around to changing that. The bid-submission and bid-evaluation periods can take years.
Ann, the HP headline says it all: The Men Behind the War on Women
No need to read the article :O)
I’d bet some of the Obama people are getting a little kick out of helping widen the fissures in the American Catholic community. How could they not? The wider the breaks, the less effective a once-formidable opponent is for them. It’s sad, though, to see the Catholic left play into their hands.
I know, I know.
David S. –
That headline is as bad as the one that said Sr. E. refused to talk to the Cardinal. OK, so some of them are terribly sexist, but that doesn’t mean they’re waging a war on women. Such exaggerations are also lies.
“Why is the USCCB competing for government funding when it knows it cannot meet the criteria for that funding with regard to contraceptives and abortion?”
Probably the USCCB didn’t realize it was bidding on a contract to provide contraceptives and abortion. It thought, naively no doubt, it was bidding on a contract to assist victims of human trafficking; that it is the mission of the church to provide this kind of assistance; and that the USCCB and its network of affiliates is better-positioned to help these victims than any other bidder.
That headline is as bad as the one that said Sr. E. refused to talk to the Cardinal.
Ann,
Thirty percent of women in the United States will have had an abortion by the end of their childbearing years. A reasonable guess is that 90% of women have used, are using, or will use artificial contraception. The USCCB would, if it could, prevent all abortions by law, including abortions to save the life of the mother. The USCCB would, if it could, prevent women from using artificial birth control.
The American bishops would opt to have a pregnant woman die rather than obtain a lifesaving abortion, and this is not a purely theoretical position, as we saw in the Phoenix case, where the head of the hospital ethics committee was excommunicated for approving a lifesaving abortion.
Now, if you are of the opinion that artificial birth control is gravely evil, or using condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS is gravely evil, or abortion for any reason is the equivalent of murder, then you may find the headline unfair. But if you believe (as most people do) that contraception and the use of condoms are not evil, and that a woman has a right to at least a lifesaving abortion, then it seems to me the “war on women” headline, given that it is in the Huffington Post and not the Washington Post or the New York Times, is not untruthful.
What the Catholic bishops do affects people’s lives—people who are not Catholic and don’t want to be bound by Catholic morality. They fight against women’s rights (as a great many women understand women’s rights) and gay rights and stem-cell research. They are part of the “culture wars,” and if you agree with them, then of course you think they are doing God’s work. But if you disagree with them, it’s another story entirely.
Bernard, my point is that writing an RFP that requests the bidder to state how they are going to arrange for health care services, including referrals for contraception and abortion, is not ipso facto an anti-Catholic act on the part of the agency. It’s the prerogative of the agency to define what it is buying, not the bidder to explain why this or that service isn’t really all that important. Likewise, changing the scoring or weighting of various factors isn’t necessarily anti-Catholic — it’s a suboptimal procurement practice, and believe it or not, it happens a fair amount and procedures exist to address it. It’s possible that the review board overweighted past performance, or had overlooked deficiencies in referral for health care services in the past in the absence of competing contractors. None of that is covered in the article, so neither of us really knows. It would not surprise me if the award was overturned, a lot of awards are, and I don’t know if the USCCB has tried, a point that is also (rather surprisingly) not covered in the article.
Jim, if you read the article you will find that the USCCB knows very well about the requirement for referrals for contraceptive and abortion as part of this contract — they have dealt with the issue in prior contracts. Basically, this is an omnibus contract in which the role of the prime contractor is primarily to put together a network of service providers, for instance, housing, counseling, job training, health care, English instruction. Only a small part of services would actually be provided by employees of the contractor.
Ann,
The point of giving government funding is to make ALL of the services deemed medically necessary available to those in need. Limited public monies cannot be given to organizations to use at their discression, because then the public money essentially becomes private money. Government contracts are not charitable donations. They require their recipient to do with the money what is prescribed by the government – no more, no less. It would be a waste of scarce public resources to fund two agencies, one where people could get Catholic services sans contraception and one down the road where they can get contraception. It is simply more efficient to fund a one stop shop – just ask the CEO of Walmart. The government should have no interest in seeing to it that people can get “Catholic” services. Its only obligation is to see to it that people get ALL the services that they require.
As a side point, it seems pretty callous to reiterate the Church’s position on all sex being open to life, when the women in question are seeking the full range of gynecological services because they have often been raped and abused by human traffickers. Is this really where the USCCB wants to play the “life card”?
Inasmuch as it appears that no one here has read the RFP, evaluation criteria, bidder submissions, proposed contract, and evaluation and decision process record, Barbara’s multiple observations (and Alan Mitchell’s question 8:48pm) seem relevant. Conjectures on hypotheses do little to illuminate valid questions about the contracting. Eric Bugyis just said well what I would have added next.
Jim P. – If the USCCB did not understand in careful detail what they were bidding on, they should stay home. Given their abysmal 40-year record of failure in imposing their contraception morality on their faithful Catholic followers, their seeking government support to do it though the law of the land seems a bit ironic.
Wow, I’ve been told that dot.Commonweal is home to many who cling bitterly to an anti-Catholic bias. Although I refuse to believe that, many of the comments on this thread do make me wonder.
For the record, the people who have read the RFP, and who have read the proposals, and who are familiar with the Church’s history of performance in providing the requested services, rated the Church’s application significantly higher than the entities who were selected by administration appointees.
The Hyde Amendment prohibits the government from directly funding abortions. No matter, according to HHS – - We will simply distribute funds to those private groups with few scruples about abortion and at the same time blacklist religious groups unable to pass rigorous ACLU, NARAL and Sebelius screening criteria.
Actually, Patrick, here’s what the Hyde Amendment says:
David N. –’
I know very well what the bishops’s teachings are. I also know very well that there are strong reasons to think that killing late term fetuses == including female fetuses — are in fact the killing of female babies. So the attempts of the bishops to save these babies is an attempt to *help* females which other segments of the American population are willing to kill. (No, I didn’t say that the later segment realizes that they are babies — only that they are willing for whatever reason to kill them.)
As I see the endless arguments BOTH sides have their heads in the sand about some facts.
The only criteria that government funders should be using is outcomes. If the program is resulting in “astoundingly successful” outcomes, other services should be finding ways to replicate that success and not get bogged down in tangential details which can easily be addressed through other means.
That this despicable immoral practice of human trafficking exists in the frequency it does, should be where the outrage is directed. Focussed efforts on the dignity of the human person and what that means in practice needs to be what governments are promoting.
That organizations like this exist and are shown to help should be praised and supported. End of story.
As a side note, I would be willing to wager that these upper class bureaucrats in HHS working in their posh offices, have never even been involved in the ground level with the people involved.
So the attempts of the bishops to save these babies is an attempt to *help* females which other segments of the American population are willing to kill.
Ann,
About 1% of abortions in the United States are performed after 21 weeks, so if we are discussing late-term abortions, we’re talking about a relative few. I have never seen anything to indicate that there are more girl babies aborted in this country than boy babies. Abortion for sex selection is a problem in other countries, but not the United States. The headline refers to a “war against women,” not “war against females.” I simply do not buy the argument that the bishops, in opposing abortion and contraception, are trying to help women. Abortion is a very contentious issue, but if you took a poll of American women and asked them if they thought the USCCB’s opposition to insurance covering contraception was intended to help women, I have no doubt the vast majority would answer no.
The American Bishops are not feminists!
Thanks, Barbara, for your instructive comments.
This issue, when set into the context of the Huffington Post piece that Ann mentions above, is bringing home to me how volatile the matter of contraception is becoming both in national politics and in the life of the Church. There are “enforcers”, e.g., the ACLU, competing against other enforcers, e.g., the relevant offices of the USCCB. What we’ve had over the past decades is a set of skirmishes fought between these two sets of “enforcers” that kept contraception alive as a contested issue without its becoming an all-out war of attrition. Should all-out war take hold, I can see that I and many other Catholics who try to be thoughtful about matters of public morality, are very likely to be caught in no-man’s land and its awful crossfire.
So far as I can see, it is both foolish and morally reprehensible for either camp of “enforcers” to pursue the “unconditional surrender” of its opponent.
“If the USCCB did not understand in careful detail what they were bidding on, they should stay home. ”
Thus far, I haven’t seen any evidence that the USCCB did not understand in careful detail what they were bidding on. The story as it’s presented here is that the USCCB understood the request for proposal so well that the significantly outscored all of the other finalists for the award, that as the incumbent they had performed well in the past for this service, and that unlike at least a couple of the organizations awarded the contract they *are actually able to deliver the services being contracted*.
What they apparently didn’t understand was that the pro-choice lobby would pull strings in the Obama Administration to ensure that only services that perform or refer abortions would be considered.
In the Obama Administration, particularly the department headed by the Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, enabling abortions is more important than assisting victims of human trafficking.
” writing an RFP that requests the bidder to state how they are going to arrange for health care services, including referrals for contraception and abortion, is not ipso facto an anti-Catholic act on the part of the agency.”
Hi, Barbara, I do agree with this. “Anybody But Catholics” strikes me as hyperbole. You’re quire right to point out that the USCCB was awarded another contract several days later, so if there is anti-Catholic bias, it seems pretty selective.
Still, the circumstances – the USCCB’s incumbency, its strong scoring, the ACLU lawsuit, the bland statements by the HHS bureaucrats – are all suggestive. As you can see, I’m buying the narrative that’s been constructed to explain it.
In the Obama Administration, particularly the department headed by the Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, enabling abortions is more important than assisting victims of human trafficking.
Jim,
This is hyperbole as much as “Anybody but Catholics.” I don’t want to get into the particulars of this case, because it seems murky to me, but there are those (in the ACLU for example), who feel very strongly that women who are the victims of trafficking have had all control taken away from them, and when they are freed from trafficking, they should get that control back, including the right to contraceptives and abortion. You seem to feel that people who are pro-choice want to promote contraception and abortion as ends in themselves. Actually, they see it as giving women autonomy to control their own bodies, something pro-lifers don’t want any woman to have, including women who have become pregnant by rape or as victims of human trafficking.
In the Obama Administration, particularly the department headed by the Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, enabling abortions is more important than assisting victims of human trafficking.
I would think they feel that enabling abortion (and contraception) may be a part of assisting victims of human trafficking. In this case, it seems to me it is possible that the organization with the proven track record may have lost out because of their anti-abortion, anti-contraception stand. But the program was not abandoned altogether. It was continued with other organizations.
Perhaps what the USCCB should do is attempt to raise, from private sources, money to carry on the work with victims of human trafficking without government restrictions.
Further to what David Nickol said, although it’s hard to make this real for someone who is theologically opposed to contraception or abortion, stigmatizing contraception or even abortion for women who have been trafficked could aggravate the shame of what is already a traumatizing and humiliating experience. Many of these women actually feel responsible for the unwanted sexual activity that has been imposed on them, always coercively and often forcibly.
“Because I put myself in a situation where I was alone in a room with a man I deserve what happened to me,” as someone put it to me.
I wouldn’t say that contraception or abortion are “central” to what they need, but normalizing reproductive health care services for some of these women is a radical act — to lessen the shame and ignorance they have experienced in their usually male dominated cultures and to try to, often for the first time in their lives, allow themselves to put their needs if not first, at least equal to the needs of the families thy are often supporting back home. You wouldn’t believe how many of them are incapable of articulating their own wants or even needs. Go volunteer for an agency that helps them. It’s absolutely shocking, but the point I am trying to make, is that women are not trafficked in a vacuum — it’s not too much to say that many view themselves as a human sacrifice on behalf of their families.
Barbara and David N, I haven’t heard that the USCCB is stigmatizing anything for victims – in fact, my understanding is that it is helping them. It’s easy enough to say, ‘we don’t provide those services’ in a kind and professional way, without stigmatizing anyone.
How long are these victims in the care of the USCCB itself? I expect that in many cases it’s extremely short-term. Perhaps there are cases that require one of the USCCB’s subcontractors to provide housing assistance for longer periods. But I doubt that the victims are seriously constrained from seeking contraceptive or abortion services, if they desire them. Such things are widely available in the US.
In addition, the Washington Post article suggests that at least some of the subcontractors in the USCCB’s network do provide contraceptive and/or abortion services, or referrals to them. If women believe they need these services, no evidence has been produced so far to suggest that it’s a problem.
I expect that it is against the rules in fulfilling this contract to preach Catholic (or any other religion’s) doctrine to the victims. I’d be surprised to learn that these women are being subjected to Catholic moralizing or guilting. Indications are that the USCCB is running the program in a professional manner.
And I’m certain that it is possible to treat these victims with dignity and respect, as fully human, with love and concern, without giving them birth control technology or referring them to an abortionist.
The USCCB has a lot to say on the subject of human trafficking including a 10-year review.
http://www.usccb.org/about/human-trafficking/
http://www.usccb.org/about/human-trafficking/usccb-response.cfm
“Reflections: HHS Service Mechanism for Foreign National Survivors of Human Trafficking”:
http://www.usccb.org/upload/Reflections-HHS-Service-Mechanism-for-Foreign-National-Survivors-of-Human-Trafficking.pdf
(Quite a few links ignored the favored hermeneutic of continuity when they re-organized the site and don’t work.)
The problem here seems to be that morality in America is changing away from the Church. If the Church can’t change to accommodate it – and it seems highly unlikely that it can – then Catholicism will be increasingly marginalized, even driven into a corner. Well, we had a good century.
Morality, by its nature, does not change.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/282053/trafficking-victims-take-backseat-ideology-steven-wagner
” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has been acknowledged by the government to have been “resoundingly successful” in its management of this program. HHS pitched this proven incumbent overboard in order to hand the program over to three organizations without experience in running the program, two of which submitted applications so poor as to have been deemed “non-competitive.”
The National Review article by Steven Wagner linked by Brett above is must-read. Please note the following passages:
An interesting take on the legal angle: HHS is skirting prevailing law in order to enable abortions and contraceptives:
“The provision of abortions is banned by the Hyde Amendment and the provision of contraceptives is banned by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, so HHS is demanding that service providers do things which HHS cannot pay for.”
… and not all of the victims to whom abortion and contraceptive services are being offered have actually been rescued – an aspect missing from the Washington Post:
“Worst of all, the provision of abortions or contraception to victims of human trafficking who have not yet been rescued is tantamount to aiding and abetting the crime of exploitation. Current victims cannot, by definition, provide informed consent, so the only beneficiary is the trafficker/pimp.”
An addendum to my 11/02 comment above: Today’s online NCR has a column by Michael Sean Winters that says both better and morre fully what I expressed worry about yesterday. I don’t agree with everything he says, but I do think that the overall opinion that he expresses there is well taken.
Bernard, thank you for referring to the Winters column. Many, many good observations in it. The URL is here: http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/religious-liberty-politics
Winters column deserves a read. Thanks for the link.
Yes, an excellent article.
One counter-point: the head of the USCCB does need a capable politician like C. Dolan at its head. Even more it needs a good theologian.