Why is Coakley Playing Chicken With the Catholic Church?
Martha Coakley, known to the Republican Party as “The Gift Who Keeps on Giving”, has decided that she really doesn’t need all those Catholics working in emergency rooms. Here’s how she handled the matter on a local radio program yesterday.
Ken Pittman: Right, if you are a Catholic, and believe what the Pope teaches that any form of birth control is a sin. ah you don’t want to do that.
Martha Coakley: No we have a seperation [sic] of church and state Ken, lets be clear.
Ken Pittman: In the emergency room you still have your religious freedom.
Martha Coakley: (……uh, eh…um..) The law says that people are allowed to have that. You can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.
This is, of course, related to abortion on which Coakley’s position could be accurately described as “Who’s paying attention to me now? I’ll back whatever that person wants!”. right now Coakley needs the progressive base, the folks who have built shrines to Saint Ted of the Unfloating Car and his Great Battle for Health Care Justice. Those folks also happen to worship at the side-altar of Margaret Sanger, or at least the parts of her life that didn’t involve genocide against minorities, poor people, and the handicapped. That means that any sort of conscience clause in an abortion bill is, at least today, completely unnaceptable to Coakley.
Let me say, though, that Coakley is half right, in the sense that your employer gets to set the terms of your job and if you can’t fulfill your duties, then you should look elsewhere. On the other hand, the state doesn’t actually own the hospitals. Oh, sure, she wants them to. That’s kind of the ultimate point of government-run health care. But they don’t yet.
Her belief that there is purely a church/state issue at play here means that she has severely overestimated how much power she has over hospitals. The Church provides more than just a pittance of the hospital care in this country and if she really wants to press the matter, then the Church can take the same position in Massachusetts it has taken in Washington, DC. The major difference in Massachusetts would be that abortion is a far more serious issue for the Church than gay marriage, which means that the sort of hardball the Church is not playing in DC it will almost have to play with Coakley. Put simply, the Church can simply shut their hospitals down. Not only will that mean few health care providers for everyone but also thousands of people out of work. Surely she can’t be foolish enough to want that kind of trouble.
Can she?
I suppose she’s raelly the only one who knows the answer to that. So, go right ahead, Governor. Play chicken with the Catholic Church with the health care and the economy of your state at risk to make some sort of silly political point that pleases only your most insane left-wing base. That’ll surely win you an election.
UPDATE: I wonder what would happen if someone asked Coakley if she would support, say, Muslim cab drivers who refuse certain fares because of their religious beliefs. Just curious, is all.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Where in the World is Stacy McCainiego?
- Our Long National Embarassment Has Now Begun
- Pelosi Goes Back to the Progressive Movement’s Roots
Category: Our New Democratic Overlords, The Republican Minority
Coakley's more than half right. The Catholic Church is the second largest provider of health care in the US. All 624 Catholic hospitals, hundreds of long-term, hospice and elder care facilities, and 60 health care networks place doctrinal delivery of health care above patients' rights.
These hospitals receive non profit status from the government, collect 50% of their funding from federal Medicare and Medicaid payments and serve diverse communities – 1/5th of all US patients – but are not required to abide by standard medical procedures when treating women, gays or elders.
Services denied include: tubal ligations, fertility treatment for unmarried and lesbian women, STD or HIV counseling, condom or other birth control counseling, sterilization, abortion, or compliance with a patient's advance directives (living wills). Catholic institutions are required by the Catholic Church to not only deny these services but also to not inform patients of their existence or to refer patients to other facilities for them.
Protecting employees rights is incredibly important, but the Catholic health care behemoth does so according to it's "mission" of Catholic medicine. Providers like doctors or nurses that don't agree with the "institutional conscience" of the Catholic hierarchy must too abide by it's directives, tailoring their delivery of medical advice accordingly.
Standing up for the Catholic Church in this case defies not only logic (they are touting, "no federal dollars for abortion" even as they deny fertilization services to women, with US funding!) but also meaningful religious liberty. Allow one faith to dominate social services and other faiths' liberties are also denied. We're a pluralistic society. Our health care should accord each patient's conscience, not that of one church's hierarchy.
Ann, the alternative is for the Church to close these hospitals entirely, thus depriving people of real, lifesaving medical treatment. If you wan them to close because they, essentially, won't perform abortions (which really is the argument in Massachusetts), then you have to accept that you will b severely limiting the availability of health care to the residents of that state. That's the choice.
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