{"id":5406,"date":"2006-01-17T11:25:14","date_gmt":"2006-01-17T11:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/and-freedom-of-religion-means-what-exactly.html"},"modified":"2006-01-17T11:25:14","modified_gmt":"2006-01-17T11:25:14","slug":"and-freedom-of-religion-means-what-exactly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/and-freedom-of-religion-means-what-exactly.html","title":{"rendered":"And “Freedom of Religion” means what, exactly?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Church groups must pay for contraceptives, NY court rules:<\/a><\/p>\n

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A New York law passed in 2002 requires employers’ insurance plans to cover prescription contraceptives. "Religious employers" are exempt\u2014but it’s the law’s definition of a religious employer that’s the trouble. The only groups that qualify under the "Women’s Health and Wellness Act" are those where "(1) the inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity; (2) the entity primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity; (3) the entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity."<\/p>\n

In other words, if you’re a church, you’re fine. If you’re a parachurch ministry, you almost certainly don’t qualify. It’s not terribly surprising, then, that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany (qualifies), which runs Catholic Charities (doesn’t qualify), fought the law and sued over it when it was implemented. Perhaps more surprising is that the Catholics were joined by Baptist churches that don’t oppose artificial contraception. They’re concerned that the law lays the groundwork for requiring religious organizations to pay for abortion.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, a New York appeals court ruled<\/a> 3-2 in favor of the law<\/a>, and against the religious organizations<\/a>. The law indeed burdens the churches’ right to the free exercise of religion, the court said<\/a>, but giving them an exemption "may ultimately cause a greater number of women employed by nonexempt religious organizations to be without adequate health coverage."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Church groups must pay for contraceptives, NY court rules: A New York law passed in 2002 requires employers’ insurance plans to cover prescription contraceptives. "Religious employers" are exempt\u2014but it’s the law’s definition of a religious employer that’s the trouble. The only groups that qualify under the "Women’s Health and Wellness Act" are those where "(1)…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAnd "Freedom of Religion" means what, exactly? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/and-freedom-of-religion-means-what-exactly.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"And "Freedom of Religion" means what, exactly? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Church groups must pay for contraceptives, NY court rules: A New York law passed in 2002 requires employers’ insurance plans to cover prescription contraceptives. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}