In the second hour of today’s show we continued our discussion about the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s reversal of their decision to stop providing funding to Planned Parenthood, plus the Obama administration’s mandate that under the Affordable Care Act most health insurance plans, including those used by religious organizations, must cover contraception.
Joining Chris were Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman, host of MSNBC’s newest show "Melissa Harris-Perry" which premieres February 18th at 10AM EST Melissa Harris-Perry, former director of policy planning for the U.S. Department of State and Princeton University professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, senior contributing writer for Newsweek / The Daily Beast Michelle Goldberg, and politics editor for Business Insider Michael Brendan Dougherty.
-Brett Brownell (@brettbrownell) is video and web producer for Up w/ Chris Hayes which airs Saturday and Sunday mornings on MSNBC.
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Another great job.
At some point someone should really look into the longer term effects of kookery in political movements. Was the Komen mishap an example of what happens when elites come to believe the nonsense in their own echo chamber? What is the result on an individuals ability to persuade others when they indulge in 'bike lanes are the new world order' protests? In other words, is there a downside in surrounding yourself with people who believe what you want to believe, or can people continue to be effective in politics / shaping opinion despite losing touch with reality.
Great show Chris. What an addition the brilliant, fact based Amy Goodman. Whoa Chris you even went so far to mention the fact that Iran has the right to enrich uranium and there is no hard evidence to validate they are enriching beyond what they are legally able. Although not one of your guest brought up that Iran signed the NPT and Israel continues to refuse to sign. Anne Marie Slaughter did her best to repeat the neo cons mantra that US national security and Israel's national security are one in the same. Eli Lake (will have to look at my notes) lied so many times I lost count. He actually said that nations in that neighborhood have not and are not concerned about Israel having nuclear biological and chemical weapons that to un inspected. That is a total lie. All you have to do is go to the IAEA's website and read letters from leaders in that neighborhood who have written to the IAEA for decades about how Israels weapons have and continue to be a threat to peace in the middle east..and are a persistent threat.
Amy Goodman as is almost always the case spoke about the I/P issue in a fact based way.
Hope you go further and have middle east experts, former Bush administration officials Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett on your program to discuss Iran in a fact based and reasonable way. Love your show
I don't understand the argument made concerning when a Catholic corporation would be morally complicit if one of their worker's decision to acquire contraceptives.
Case 1: the worker chooses to use the contraceptive, and it is paid for from the worker's bank account which received funds from the Catholic affiliated corporation.
Case 2: the worker chooses to use the contraceptive, and it is paid for from a different intermediate institution which received funds from the Catholic affiliated corporation.
In both cases, the institution- the bank or the insurance company is required by law to pay out the funds. Both are part of the compensation the worker is entitled by law to receive from the corporation.
The Bishops claim that they are subsidizing people who choose to use contraceptives. But that is no different than what they are doing when they pay wages into a bank account, and the worker chooses to use some of those wages to buy the Pill.
Can someone fill me in on the logical distinction between the two? The main apparent difference is that insurance companies perform surveillance on charges coming in, and have a finely developed apparatus to disapprove of some charges. The Catholic church apparently feels that since there is a mechanism for control that they have a moral duty to participate in that control mechanism. But the fact is that the Banks perform surveillance too- they are required not to honor checks without the proper signature for example. Technically, the banks could perform more surveillance. Should the church have the right to only work with banks that reject payment for items they disapprove of? Do religious corporations have First amendment privileges to work only with banks that comply with such a demand?
There appears to be a moral argument that the Catholic corporation would be complicit morally in supporting contraception if the intermediate paying institution is an insurance company. But all I see are arguments that one would be far more easier to insist on, whereas the changes required for banking firms would be far more difficult. Convenience? Is that the argument?
Looks more like an opportunistic low hanging fruit argument to me. Certainly I can see that the bishops should take whatever shot they can to advance their point of view, but I don't see that they are any more or less complicit in the worker's choice to use contraceptives simply because the intermediate institution is different.
Can someone help me out with an explanation of the moral argument the Bishops are making?
Wonderful panel of wonderfully Wise Women. Thank you.
John M, you raise good points. I think their past insurance policies must have excluded contraceptives. Now the policy will include them automatically without co-pay burdens on the insured. Of course the insured doesn't have to request or use them. Although, since men are often grievously ignorant of women's health in general, contraceptive pills are also prescribed for medical purposes other than birth control. I don't know how catholic women receive any alternative treatments. Maybe they don't, or the catholic-restricted medicine just does hysterectomies when contraceptives would do the job. Wouldn't that be pathetic?
If my organization had been complicit in officially covering up the rapes and molestations of countless children over the centuries through the present, I don't think I'd be publicly posturing about the mandate to now follow secular law for the purpose of extending health care to the society. The State has an interest in non-discriminatory public health. If the AHCA has a conflict with the Constitution, it is in not including all health services necessary to female citizens when all male citizens' medical needs are met, in my opinion.
I hope the President and Democrats stand strong in support of the medical, economic, and individual liberty of female citizens. Full and equal rights under the law is the contract. I hope parishioners will rethink their positions against the President. After all, they pay for and volunteer to fight in wars without marching in the streets in protest. Surely there's a prohibition against killing people already born. We'll see in November.
Thank you for reading my note, it had so many editing errors I am surprised you were able to decipher it.
I think that the radical reduction that Melissa spoke of (economics of subjugation of half our citizens) is the core dynamic at play here. I am not trying to kiss her ass- I do think this is at the root of it and the entire subject would not have reared its head iff we had done health care right with single payer. But I want to step back and not work at this from preaching to the choir but speaking to values voters. The Obama administration appears to be forfeiting the left wing values arguments as if we have none to offer.
So I want to come at this from the point of view of a church going Christian evaluating the questions at a moral level. I think it is ill informed for White House communications to enumerate technocratic reasons for their decision as if the language of secularism is going to be at all convincing to this audience. There must be vigorous values based moral arguments.
Like many religions, the Catholic church believes that they must not cooperate in any way in the commission of a sin. Remember when panelist Michael Dougherty pointed out that “The Catholic church does not say that ‘Well if you reieve a salary you can’t take a part of your paycheck and go find a way to pay for contraception out of pocket. I mean, these Catholic hospitals aren’t like following these women home to do something… to check in on them. “
Melissa- “Right but I suppose part of that point is that therefore then the Catholic church is paying for things that the Catholic church understands to be sin, all the time.
Michael- “No but the Catholic Church’s position is that those are your just wages that you earned- You’ve been give them. And so now it is for you to…[cut off] “ Most likely he would be saying something like: “use the funds morally. “
Just as the wages are earned, according to current health reform law, you also shall have your medical expenses paid for. How these health care resources are theirs, just as their wages are theirs, and may be utilized by the worker as they see fit. It is the worker’s responsibility to use the health care resources morally, but just as with the wages, the individual has dominion over those resources, and the church no longer does.
This is not attempting to give the Church a pass we hope they will take. It is quite simple. If you have an employee that takes wages you give them to buy a gun that they use to kill 6 co-workers, then is the employer responsible for the shootings? No.
THIS – is a values based argument, and my bet it is pretty close to the one that Obama holds. It is almost criminal of the White House technocrats to refuse to utter any such values based arguments that are at least responsive to and acknowledging of the moral responsibilities the Catholic leaders feel they must execute.
E.J. Dionne wrote, “ I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings.” (source) What Dionne is tantamount to saying is that the Church is morally complicit in what the worker does with their wages, and that they should be allowed to essentially follow workers home to verify they are using their wages morally. The center of it is not even whether they have a right- it is whether they are morally complicit.
Because unless someone points out where I have erred, the worker shoulder’s the moral culpability for what they do with their resources, and no one else.
I would think that sort of individualistic libertarian message would find resonance in the right wing, but alas.
John -- I think your argument makes a lot of sense.
In watching this segment of Up I was a bit disappointed that Michael Dougherty was allowed to maintain the moral high ground, at least in the sense that no one else on the show effectively refuted his, and the Bishops', central argument: that the Obama administration is attempting to force Catholics to act against their conscience.
You give one very good reason why this is a bogus claim. But I also think the issue should be examined in terms of the history of Catholic relations with the wider American polity. For at least half a century, the Church worked very successfully to integrate itself into American society by finding ways to compromise its principles when they conflicted with secular or Protestant principles. It accomplished this at the theoretical level by slicing the logic of its moral demands into thinner and thinner slices -- so that, in effect, we have long since reached the point where Catholic individuals and institutions can participate fully in virtually every part of American society without violating Church teaching. Practically the only exceptions are related to abortion and contraception.
In the past few years the Church has been attempting to redefine its cultural position -- the mantra now is "Catholic identity." The moderate conservatism of the past thirty years is now the mainstream and is accepted as normative by most bishops; the former liberal accommodationist perspective seems to be fully in retreat.
At the same time we have Obama's mild health care reforms and the far right blowing its top. In this context the Catholic bishops have decided to take their stand on maintaining Catholic identity in a secular context -- and, quite bizarrely, they've decided to do it by labeling the contraception issue a fundamental matter of religious freedom.
But I think it's self-evident that if they wanted to, the bishops could find a way to rationalize some form of acceptance of this new insurance regulation -- your argument, John, could provide one easy way for them to do so. This isn't really an issue of substance for the bishops, but one of political symbolism.
Compare: in the past, Catholic institutions have always found ways to justify accommodating the needs of non-Catholics in their hospitals, colleges, and so on, even going so far as to provide worship space for non-Catholics on Catholic property. The church also permits its members to use their own conscience with regard to many issues: fasting; working on Sundays; working in establishments that sell/buy/provide "sinful" items (e.g., condoms, porn, and so on); participation in unjust wars; working for Wall St. banks; etc. They obviously could do the same here.
I think it's also significant that for Catholics, contraception is not a formally "religious" matter -- the teaching is based on reason, not revelation; therefore it supposedly stands or falls on its own merits. The issue of religion comes in only because the Magisterium (the Church's teaching authority) has made it part of Catholic doctrine. That means that as a religious matter, this is quite strictly a matter of the authority of the bishops to compel acceptance of their teaching by the lay faithful. But of course most of the lay faithful reject that authority without hesitation. If follows, therefore, that when the bishops frame this issue as a matter of "religious freedom," they are in effect demanding that the Obama administration recognize their authority to compel obedience (formally if not actually) from the lay faithful. That is to say, they want the administration to intervene on their behalf against the beliefs and practices of the vast majority of American Catholics.
I too hope the President remains resolved on this contraception issue towards Catholics. Making any exceptions to the law to serve the doctrines of any religion would mean legislating religious doctrine. That would be the real trampling on Constituional rights and freedoms, allowing all citizens to make their own decision on whether or not to use contraceptions. Catholics are demanding the President enforce their dogma upon their members. If the government has the right to enforce Catholic doctrine, then it will also have the right to force the abuse of women under extreme Islamic traditions. Any Catholics who stand with their church on this issue haven't thought through the ramifications of such a decision by our government. To them I say this: Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
"They supported him on Health Care"...
Um, you raise that during a point about partisan v bipartisan activity? The Affordable Health Care Act is a Republican plan that got passed by a Democrat which was the only reason the "sorta" demonized it.
Thanks for having Amy Goodman from DemocracyNow! on. Bill Moyers says that her show's daily headlines are MUST LISTEN for nayone wanting to keep informed. It is refreshing to have a real news reporter in the footsteps of IF Stone who has always told truth to power, a function our corporate media is supposed to fill but has been completely unwilling to perform for the last 20+ years. This lack of honesty is only exacerbated when it comes to calling out the Israel-firsters (dems & repubs) both in our government and in our media.
Please be careful, too much truth about Israel can get you fired.
Re: Catholics: are these the same Bishops that that cover for and hide pedophile priests and refused to give John Kerry mass but expect the rest of us to keep paying their way with their tax exempt status is spite of their political advocacy?
Wow, does anyone notice that this guy does not make eye contact with the women in the show even when he has been asked a question by one of them?
Thanks for having Amy Goodman from DemocracyNow! on. Bill Moyers says that her show's daily headlines are MUST LISTEN for nayone wanting to keep informed. It is refreshing to have a real news reporter in the footsteps of IF Stone who has always told truth to power, a function our corporate media is supposed to fill but has been completely unwilling to perform for the last 20+ years. This lack of honesty is only exacerbated when it comes to calling out the Israel-firsters (dems & repubs) both in our government and in our media.
Please be careful, too much truth about Israel can get you fired.
Re: Catholics: are these the same Bishops that that cover for and hide pedophile priests and refused to give John Kerry mass but expect the rest of us to keep paying their way with their tax exempt status is spite of their political advocacy?