New opt-out proposal a ‘live and let live solution’ for contraception mandate

The Obama administration has proposed letting religiously affiliated non-profit businesses and institutions opt-out of the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act.

“The Obama administration has bent over backward to accommodate the concerns of some religiously affiliated businesses,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and professor of law at Washington University In St. Louis.

Sepper

“Religiously affiliated employers claim that they can’t pay for contraception themselves, but don’t want to interfere with their employees’ private moral choices. If so, they should embrace the Obama administration’s contraceptive rule as a live and let live solution.”

Sepper says that it is only right that secular, for-profit businesses should have to play by the same rules as everyone else.

“In our legal system and our society, secular, for-profit businesses–like Hobby Lobby–don’t exercise religion and must be regulated to protect their employees and the public. Any other rule would just mean corporations could force religious views on their employees, no matter what the employees’ beliefs are.”