By Tom Precious
ALBANY - The Republicans who control the State Senate, acting over the vehement objection of Catholic Church leaders, Monday dropped years of opposition to a provision in a women's health bill that requires insurers to offer coverage for contraceptives. The change of heart comes as the GOP is in a fierce fight to maintain control of a seat in a liberal Manhattan Senate district, which is being contested in a special election next week.
Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, a Rensselaer County Republican who single-handedly killed the bill in past years over threats of political retribution by women's groups, Monday dismissed concerns raised by Catholic bishops. "It still protects the integrity of the Catholic Church," Bruno said of the new proposal.
The compromise language, part of a measure that also includes mandatory insurance coverage for breast and cervical cancer screenings, requires employers to provide insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives. For the past couple of years, the Senate had advanced a measure pushed by the Catholic Church that would include a "conscience clause" permitting religious-based employers to opt out of the law.
Women's groups argued the clause was overly broad and would exclude hospitals, nursing homes, schools, social services agencies and others run by religious groups that have large numbers of workers not affiliated with the religion of their employers.
"It appears the Senate negotiated in very good faith on this and that they have, in fact, on the issue of contraceptive coverage, tried very hard to leave no woman behind," said JoAnn Smith, executive director of Family Planning Advocates, a lobbying group for Planned Parenthood organizations in the state.
"It's time to stop the inequity. Women deserve to have their health insurance cover the prescriptions that they need the most," said Smith, whose group has been the leading advocate for the measure since it was first proposed five years ago.
But the Catholic Church, whose bishops already began calling senators Monday morning to kill the measure, said they are prepared to go to court to overturn it if it passes. "What the bill does is make the government the arbiter of what constitutes religion," said Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, which represents the state's bishops. "It's not the place of government to tell religious faiths what is and isn't part of their religion."
Buffalo Bishop Henry Mansell did not return calls to comment.
The compromise legislation, which could be voted on as early as today in the State Senate, adopts an approach taken on the sticky issue in California, where the Catholic Church already is in the courts challenging its insurance contraceptive law.
The new GOP plan requires insurance coverage for contraceptives unless several exemptions are met, including that the people being served by the employer are of the same faith. Also, an entity owned by a religious group could get an exemption if most of its employees are of the same faith. In reality, Catholic leaders say that essentially would exempt only parishes, but not Catholic-run schools, universities, hospitals and other health care agencies that employ large numbers of non-Catholics.
"How dare the government try to tell us that our ministries don't represent religion," said Richard E. Barnes, executive director of the Catholic Conference.
Opponents of the measure say it would force church-run entities to pay for something that the Catholic Church teaches is immoral to use. But Bruno said employees at many church-run agencies already have access to contraceptive coverage through "a roundabout way" involving unions that provide extra health care insurance for employees. The Buffalo News last year found that employees at a number of Catholic-run health and education facilities have access to contraceptive coverage.
Word of the compromise comes a week before next Tuesday's special election for several state legislative seats, including a hotly contested race in Manhattan in which the GOP candidate, John Ravitz, has come under attack by his Democratic contender, Liz Krueger, on the contraceptive issue. "This is all about Ravitz," one person involved in the issue said of the Senate's new plan.
Asked if the Senate's plan helped Ravitz, Bruno acknowledged, "Hopefully, it helps him. Certainly, it doesn't hurt him."