From: Elizabeth Durack

To: E-OHPSCA2713.EBSA

Subject: Please let me practice my religion freely

Date: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 8:46:32 PM

Thank you for taking into account my comments in regards to "Interim Final

Rules for Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Issuers Relating to

Coverage of Preventive Services under the Patient Protection and

Affordable Care Act".

I am a 33 year old Catholic lay woman, member of the Society of St Vincent de Paul

and supporter of Catholic Charities, Catholic Relief Services, am a part of the Catholic

Diocese of Madison, WI and other organizations which may be affected by this HHS

rule to require employee insurance coverage for contraceptives, elective sterilization,

and related counseling. I am an ordinary churchgoing Catholic, and not a leader or

official representative of any organization. Contraceptives and sterilization are

entirely against my religious and moral beliefs, and I intensely oppose any

organizations or even businesses being forced against their conscience to pay for

them.

Any direction I look, at those I am close to, at our society, and at my own personal

life, the evidence shows me that contraception has been a powerful force for the

breakdown of marriage, family life, and moral order, a radical social experiment my

parents' and grandparents' generation embarked on, that seemed to promise so

much and solve so many problems, but that actually has had devastating human

consequences. Catholic morality obviously fosters the integrity of married family life

which is so good for children and for society. I believe that men and women are

made in the image of God and have innate dignity, and that human sexuality has a

dignity, purpose and meaning that is from God and through which people can

become co-creators of new life with Him. Fertility is no disease, but healthy

and good! I say as a woman, providing insurance coverage for contraception or

sterilization is not necessary to women's health, but seems to be a matter of lifestyle

choice or social engineering.

Adherence to the universal and perennial Catholic moral teaching

against contraception and sterilization is profoundly integral to the practice of the

Catholic religion, and not only is it wrong for us to use them but also wrong to pay

for others to do so, because we consider that the objective immorality of these

things is knowable through the natural moral law. This proposed rule is absolutely

against the free practice of our Catholic Faith.

Please provide conscience protections so that no organization, especially no religious

organization, must pay for insurance for contraceptives, sterilization, or counseling to

use them, against its beliefs. The conscience clause must not be limited to

organizations that employ and serve only or primarily members of their own religion.

Requiring Catholic organizations to employ only Catholics could run us afoul of

federal and state antidiscrimination laws. And as others have stated, we serve others

because we are Catholic, not because they are. I know that in the Society of St

Vincent de Paul, the members of the Society (who are a huge volunteer corps and

organizational leadership) are overwhelmingly Catholic but the employees are more

diverse in religious affiliation. And the people we serve are an entirely diverse group

of the poor of our city, whom we serve for love, and not because they share our

religion. The practice of our Catholic religion calls for that.
It would be extremely painful if Catholic organizations that do so much good,

through which we care for people in need, are forced to close. As a young adult

woman, it's so frustrating and even insulting to me to think that some government

agency thinks I want or need birth control or sterilization more than I want and need

the free practice of my Catholic faith, personally and through the organizations I am

a part of. Dear HHS, please give us conscience protections!

Peace and thanks to you for reading my comments.