If you have been paying attention to the news in the last week or two,
you know about the national controversy concerning mandatory insurance
coverage of contraceptives. The recently-passed national health care
law includes a requirement that employers or insurance companies offer
free coverage for contraceptives with no co-pay. It’s hailed by some as
a great advancement for women’s health in the United States. It has
also met with strong objections from many, including the Roman Catholic
Church, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the Wisconsin
Evangelical Lutheran Synod, and the Evangelical Lutheran
Synod. You can view congressional testimony from LCMS President
Matthew Harrison on YouTube concerning that objection.
This controversy is another great example of two irreconcilable views on
the basic principles that define American society and government. More
on that later.
It has been claimed by some, including Senator Merkley of Oregon, that
allowing employers or insurers to refuse coverage for free
contraceptives without co-pay would be tantamount to denying essential
health care to women, and it would lead to the denial of any number of
procedures or products based upon the whim or prejudice of an employer
or insurer. This claim is demagoguery, an appeal to the emotions of the
public instead of reasoned discussion. It’s also based on at least two
fallacies.
In the first place, an employer or insurer who refuses to pay for a
product (especially an inexpensive one like the most common
contraceptives) does not thereby prevent the employee from obtaining it.
In a free society, that employee is still able to prioritize his or her
own spending and buy the product. If I don’t buy you a beer, I’m not
coercing you to refrain from drinking. In this case, there are some
who claim that free contraception is a basic human right, and therefore
it can’t be denied. I wish that I could say the same for beef jerky,
but I fear it would be hard to prove.
Secondly, if an employee is unhappy with the limits of his health care
plan, that employee is also free to find a different one, or even to
find a different employer. This may not be welcome news, but it does
raise the question of priorities. What’s more valuable: free
contraceptives or a particular job with its own health insurance? It’s
the employee’s choice, because there will be another employer or insurer
who doesn’t have the same objection.
Finally, the objection to contraceptives, especially those that can end
a newly-conceived human life instead of merely preventing the
conception, is a deeply-held moral objection based upon natural law and
religion. This is no convenient whim or prejudice. It’s based upon
both good science and well-founded, long-accepted moral principles.
There are even multiple things at issue here, including the moral
principle of protecting fragile human life, but also the future
well-being of our society and nation. That future requires
naturally-married men and women to beget and raise virtuous children in
stable families. Therefore, government should promote this, instead of
hindering it by undermining the purpose and benefit of natural marriage.
But there is a view of society that places little value on such things,
which leads us to our main point.
The Progressive Movement was popular through the first quarter of the
20th Century. Its champions included Presidents Teddy Roosevelt,
Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. Lyndon Johnson later followed
the same path. Progressivism carried a lot of momentum during the
administration of FDR, even as its echoes carried through the ranks of
the avant-garde in 1930’s Germany, Great Britain, and probably other
places too. Its influence is widely felt today across party lines,
though it’s really the Democratic Party that has officially embraced it.
The present controversy is only one example where we can clearly see the
difference between the Progressive concepts of liberty and justice on
one hand, and the same concepts as proposed in the founding of the
United States on the other hand. These are the two worlds colliding
over free contraceptives.
The founding principles of the United States are listed in the
Declaration of Independence. It asserts that these principles are
self-evident, so that they stand without proof. Each leads into the
next, though, so that they build upon one another. Here are the five
propositions upon which the nation is founded:
- That all men are created equal.
- That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.
- That among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Notice that the last proposition describes the intent of the Framers,
“laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in
such form….” The principles upon which the Constitution was framed,
and the reason for its built-in limitations upon the powers of federal
government, are the very principles listed above.
First, all men (a classic term for all humans, used also in the Nicene
Creed) are created equal. This is an equality of kind, requiring
that every human creature be accorded the same respect and dignity.
Some will argue here that many of the Founders were slave-owners, so
that this proposition is nullified by their hypocrisy. That argument is
unsustainable. First, hypocrisy in a speaker or writer does not
determine the truthfulness or value of what he says. Second, a number
of the Founders worked to end slavery, on the same principles listed in
the Declaration. The fact that their work did not come to fruition
until four score and seven years later does not negate the principles
under which they labored. In fact, it shows great foresight and
humanitarian idealism on their part. Some of them considered it to be a
greater cruelty to release slaves unprepared to live on their own at
that time, than to care for them as fellow human beings until
conditions were right for them to enjoy their liberty. It’s hard to
judge that decision when we are over 200 years distant from its
circumstances.
Others will point to the awful treatment of the Indians (the native
inhabitants of America at the time of Columbus) by Americans in later
years. Laying aside the fact that this treatment was often based upon
particular wars waged between the Indians and the Americans, and that
the butchery of war was two-sided, we should recognize again that the
Founders attempted to establish relations with the Indians based upon
their status as equal human beings. To some degree, it was successful.
To the degree that other Americans helped to destroy that cordial
relationship by contradicting or ignoring the principle of equality, it
must be pointed out that the abuse of a good thing does not destroy its
value and use. (Abusus non tollit usum.) The principle of equality
stands, despite the sins of those associated with it.
Proceeding from the universal equality of human beings, the Declaration
says that every human individual is endowed with unalienable rights.
Remember that these rights are connected to each individual human
creature, by virtue of its humanity. The rights are called
unalienable, which means that they can never be separated from the human
individual, since they are attached to his or her very nature. The
three rights listed are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
The right to life is trampled when someone else kills the individual.
The right to liberty says that an individual ought to be free from
coercion by anyone else. The only exception to this is the case of
children, who are under the guardianship of others until they are
capable of exercising the liberty inherent in their own nature.
Finally, each human being has the innate right to pursue happiness: to
take advantage of his or her own labor and receive the benefits that
come with it. The chief tangible benefit is material possessions. The
right to pursue happiness, then, is the right to convert your own work
into property, and to enjoy the ownership of that property with its
advantages.
It bears repeating that these rights exist because every human being is
created equal. There is no difference based upon intelligence, race,
gender, or any other distinction that may be in vogue. Simply by being
human, an individual possesses these rights alongside every other human
being. By the same token, justice between human beings must be blind to
all of those distinctions, and laws must apply equally to every citizen.
The Declaration builds upon these basic rights by saying they are the
reason government is necessary. Government’s purpose is to secure and
protect these individual rights as much as possible. In that respect,
the Declaration provides the reasoning behind the design of the United
States Constitution. Since government can only accomplish its work
through coercion, but its purpose is to protect the liberty of each
individual, it operates under a compromise. The Declaration calls it
“the consent of the governed.” Government must be limited
in size to minimize the coercion it imposes upon its citizens, and to
maximize the protection it affords against such coercion by others.
That explains the Constitution’s separation of powers and other limits
upon the growth and operation of the federal government.
The Bill of Rights expands upon the three rights listed in the
Declaration. The first nine Amendments to the Constitution are all
about protecting the liberty of the individual against abuse by the
government. (The Tenth Amendment does the same for the autonomy of
states within the union.)
Because individual rights in the Constitution limit the sway of government, Progressives disparagingly
call them “negative rights.” By
contrast, they would like to see the addition of “positive rights.”
Examples proposed by Franklin Roosevelt include the right to a job, the
right to a house, and others. Another example would be the right to
free contraception, which supports a right to engage in sexual activity
without the risk of becoming a parent. Though this “right” undermines
natural marriage and our free society, Progressives are happy to include
it into their family of new, “positive rights.” This new type of right
may also be distinguished from the classical liberties of the nation’s
founding in that the Progressive rights are not for individuals to enjoy
because of their identity as human beings. Instead, they are
“collective rights,” which an individual possesses inasmuch as it
belongs to a certain group of people identified by government as in need
of protection.
The reason for advancing these collective or positive rights, is not to
safeguard the liberty of individuals, but to provide security and
opportunity for groups of people judged to be at a disadvantage. A
common word for such groups is “minorities.” The Progressive position
on free contraception is to characterize the debate in just those terms.
To the Progressive, the debate is all about the rights of women as a
minority group (though they actually outnumber men slightly; go figure).
They can even make their argument sound like it’s about individual
liberty, saying that government should not coerce women in their health
care decisions. But the lie becomes evident when they do not afford
liberty of conscience to those who must pay for the collective “right”
of women to receive free contraception.
For the Progressive, the positive right for women to engage in sexual
activity without risk of parenthood is far more important than the
individual liberty of anyone to live according to his conscience. The
Progressive sees the role of government being to coerce individuals into
providing all that is necessary for the securities and opportunities
identified in the collective rights that Progressivism promotes. This
ends up being enormously expensive, requiring a massive bureaucratic
government, but more importantly, it runs roughshod over the principles
upon which the nation was originally founded. It disregards and
destroys the individual liberties of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness in exchange for the promise of equal security and opportunity.
It exchanges the classical notion of blind justice for justice that
favors various groups that are considered to be minorities or
disadvantaged.
From the perspective of the Declaration of Independence, Progressivism
turns liberty into the tyranny of every individual who would like to
stand on his own merits and work. It’s no wonder that Progressives
would like to do away with the Constitution’s limits upon the powers of
federal government. Those limits still safeguard the liberty of
individual Americans, to some degree, and restrain the Progressive
agenda.
It’s also noteworthy that the Progressive ideal is utopian in nature.
Harrison Bergeron is one critique that demonstrates some of the
problems. Progressivism shares many features of communism and
socialism. This should not be surprising, since it was born and matured
in the same world-wide echo chamber as Germany’s national socialism and
the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. It’s not far off the mark when
conservatives today accuse Progressives of being socialists. In a
sense they are socialists, even if the label is not an exact fit.
This controversy about mandatory free contraceptives is only the tip of
the iceberg. It’s a skirmish in a much larger war for the soul of the
United States. If the classic liberal principles of individual liberty
that were incorporated into the foundation of America will endure, then
American citizens need to learn the true nature of this debate, and
what’s really at stake. Progressives may really want to provide a
chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway, and the idea may appeal
to many citizens, but the cost of such a vision for America is the
individual liberty that has been America’s greatest heritage and
blessing for almost 236 years. May God continue to bless the United
States by awakening her citizens to the dangerous and precipitous loss
of liberty that could result from the next few election cycles.
