The American Civil Liberties Union filed the complaint in federal court in Boston against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The suit claims HHS, which distributes funds to help trafficking victims, has allowed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to limit the services its subcontractors provide. The ACLU claims the bishops’ conference is misusing taxpayer money and attempting to impose its religious beliefs on trafficking victims. …

“The whole goal of this program is to provide the full range of services, and the concern is that because of a main contractor’s religious beliefs, it will be much more difficult for women to get these services,” said Brigitte Amiri, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project.

Here is the whole article from The Boston Herald.

I know there are a lot of people with strong opinions on the ACLU as an organisation.  It doesn’t help their cause that the cases that get the most press are generally the most controversial ones.  In a sense, I can appreciate their dedication to taking on cases that oftentimes aren’t going to win them any fans, and defending clients who are otherwise reprehensible people (but aren’t necessarily legally responsible).  On the other hand, I have a sense that they like to create a ruckus atleast as much as they like to help people.

I have a couple big objections to this, one a bit of a legal squabble, and one culture/morality.

Legally, I think they chose to file suit in Boston because it is the most likely place it’ll be given any weight.  From the limited information, it seems like the ACLU contends that by funding the USCCB services, the HHS is violating equal protection for those who do not subscribe to the same beliefs or prohibitions.  They rest this claim on the assumption that denying certain services because they are in violation of religious doctrines constitutes imposition of religious beliefs.  Now, I don’t have all the answers, and I’m not a lawyer, but since I’m applying to law schools next year, I might as well try to start training my mind.  If any real lawyers stop by, maybe they can help me out here.

First, let’s tackle equal protection.  If the Department of Health and Human Services exclusively grants public funds to help victims of human trafficking to organisations like the USCCB that refuse to fund contraceptives, abortion/abortifacients, etc., they might have a case.  (A sidenote here:  the USCCB subcontracts with these funds, basically to dioceses.)  But I find that extremely unlikely.  I don’t have time to go tracking down HHS spending, but estimates on human trafficking are in the millions.  One organisation, even the USCCB sending the money on down to individual dioceses, can’t possibly be handling every victim of trafficking,  because they don’t have unlimited staff, either.  There is also nothing preventing victims of trafficking from seeking those refused services elsewhere;  there are other trafficking agencies, and entire groups devoted to offering abortion on demand.  The Catholic Church isn’t in the habit of holding people hostage, honestly.

Another thing is the idea of imposition of religious beliefs.  If the Catholic Church were the only organisation that opposed abortion and contraception it would still not prove imposition of religious beliefs.  Aside from making the wrongful assumption that there is no non-religious argument against abortion et al., I don’t think they can claim that anyone was forced to adopt the Catholic religion in whole or part.  They simply were not assisted in those particular ways.  

Now, some may argue that that is an imposition of some sort, so I’d like to create a parallel case.  Let’s say that the HHS was funding the Jainist equivalent of the USCCB.  Jainism as a religion considers vegetarianism part of its overall philosophy.  So, any help that anyone received would not involve animal products.  In clothing them, there would be nothing of leather (such as gloves in wintertime), in sheltering them they would use nothing that involved products taken from dead animals, and stocking up their refrigerator would not include meat, eggs, etc., even though the clients may be meat-eaters.  If the Jainists were to extract some promise of vegetarianism from clients, or to prohibit them from procuring meat on their own (neither of which would likely happen), then I think there would be a case for them imposing their religion on clients.  Well, the USCCB has done in effect the same thing:  they have not included in their aid things which they believe violate life.  The difference is political, not religious or philosophical.  I doubt any reasonable person would expect the ACLU to take on this hypothetical Jainist organisation.

I actually interned at a diocesan office that was responsible for diocesan efforts in helping immigrants and refugees, and probably would be the one to take care of trafficking victims that the USCCB took on.  The staff itself was not all-Catholic, it may not even have been half-comprised of Catholics (and this was a relatively large group).  And as an intern helping clients, I didn’t actually work with any clients who were Catholic.  I worked with Jewish and Muslim refugees from the former Soviet Union.  The faith I saw was that for some staff it was the reason they wanted to help people;  nobody was denied services based on it, nor did anyone proselytise.  So the entire imposition argument simply rests on refusal to provide some (few!) services that are against Catholic moral teaching.  The place I worked, and I imagine most others, tried to get people on their feet as quickly as possible – housing, jobs, money, English lessons and English translation.  In other words, if they want a condom, they can get one from the doctor they will most assuredly visit very easily, and probably can even manage to procure an abortion.  (I know Planned Parenthood takes donations (towards middle of article) to cover the costs of abortions for low-income women in crisis pregnancies.)

And now to the culture/morality issue..

This one really ticks me off.  The ACLU may be able to make a case, and I hope it comes right back to them, but really, it’s the cultural double-standard that bugs me more.  In our society, we have this idea than whatever an individual’s conscience says is okay for them – a moral system of “whatever floats your boat” in which a person decides for himself what right and wrong are, and no one can judge.  But people do judge all the time.  Many people have decided that abortion is wrong;  others have decided that it is right, or allowable, or more wrong to legislate their personal beliefs.  Of these two groups, pro-life and pro-choice (I call people as they prefer to be called), one’s beliefs are an imposition, and one’s aren’t, yet both get taxpayer money, and they don’t both get sued.  

So, is conscience okay or not?  I don’t really like the fact that public funds support abortion, something with a 100% casualty rate (as a bumper sticker put it: “Abortion: 1 dead, 1 wounded”).  And people who support it are apparently miffed that public funds go to groups that don’t support it, and yet they won’t even call it even.  My conscience and many others’ say thay abortion kills human beings, and really hurts the women who have them, and my Church (and other churches and groups are/)is willing to back that belief up with a lot of crisis pregnancy funding and help, with adoption agencies, and also with post-abortive counselling and support groups (which are desperately needed and have many clients, and which, according to pro-choice groups, there is no need for).

I guess I’m just frustrated that in our culture, we can bandy about phrases like conscience and liberty but when push comes to shove, certain groups want to exclude other groups.  I’d never tell Planned Parenthood they can’t have a seat at the table, despite the fact that they think we should be “beyond” my conscientious objections to murdering millions and turning the womb is designed to foster life into a place of death.  Where’s equal protection for our consciences?  I guess that doesn’t really fit the ACLU’s rubric for things worth defending.

For more depressing news, check out the plight of doctors in Wisconsin (hat tip to Matthew at CMR).  These are not isolated incidents;  they are coordinated assualts.

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thanks for reading!

-the Rosy Gardener

Editing to add a link to a post by my friend the Raving Theist posted at Dawn Eden’s site from 2006 about the ACLU “supporting” free speech by opposing “Choose Life” license plates:  “License to Kill” by the Raving Theist.