HEALTH CARE/ Fr. Jenkins: agreements should be kept

The President of the University of Notre Dame, Fr. John I. Jenkins, wrote to Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, on the new health care law’s preventive services mandate, under which the university would be required to provide contraception with its health care program. The letter, from the University of Notre Dame’s website, is reproduced here.

The Honorable Kathleen Sebelius
Secretary of Health and Human Services

Dear Madam Secretary,
In May of 2009, President Obama accepted an honorary degree and served as the principal speaker at the University of Notre Dame’s commencement ceremony. As the University’s president, I had the honor of introducing him and presenting him with a doctor of laws degree in recognition of his service to our nation and place in our history.

Our graduates received the President warmly, but there were many people of good faith who opposed my decision to recognize him. I stand by that decision, however, because it was important for us to hear his views, and for us to express ours—all in a spirit of civility that is increasingly lacking in our society. In my introduction, I made it clear how much we respect him, but that we also disagree on matters related to the sanctity of life. He, in turn, expressed his own views and promised to work together on matters with which we agree.

One of those areas of agreement is, as the president put it in his commencement address, “a sensible conscience clause,” and that is the subject of this letter.

As Notre Dame’s president, I am writing to urge you to broaden the proposed definition of “religious employer” to ensure conscience protections that will allow this university to continue its work as “a Catholic academic community of higher learning”—word taken directly from our mission statement.
Of course, Madam Secretary, as the daughter of a distinguished Notre Dame alumnus and faculty member, you are no stranger to our mission.

Surely you know that we welcome the Administration’s decision to require health plans to cover women’s preventive services, such as critical screenings that will make preventive care more widely available and affordable. However, I’m sure you also understand that the inclusion in that mandate of contraceptive services that the Catholic Church finds morally objectionable makes it imperative that the Final Rule include broader conscience protections. In their current form, these regulations would require us to offer our students sterilization procedures and prescription contraceptives, including pills that act after fertilization to induce abortions, and to offer such services in our employee health plans. This would compel Notre Dame to either pay for contraception and sterilization in violation of the Church’s moral teaching, or to discontinue our employee and student health plans in violation of the Church’s social teaching. It is an impossible position.