USF: 'We're working on removing abortion from employee plan'

As a follow-up to Jesuit-run University of San Francisco's announced jettisoning of abortion coverage in its health plan for students, OSV contributing editor Valerie Schmalz pressed the university on several other outstanding issues, including referral of USF students to Planned Parenthood and continuing coverage of abortion and contraception for USF employees.

Tonight, we received these replies from Gary McDonald, assistant vice president of communications and public affairs. Please bear with a little repetitiveness in the questions and answers:

Our Sunday Visitor: In a conversation with an official at St. Mary's Medical Center, the official said the student health clinic refers students for abortion and contraception to Planned Parenthood and to Aetna providers. Can you clarify if that is USF policy?

Gary McDonald: In light of recent inquiries, we are now aware that our protocol needs improvement. We are taking immediate steps to remedy this, and are in the process of developing a protocol to ensure that counseling and pro-life options are always provided at the USF clinic.

OSV: In addition, the hospital-based USF Student Health Clinic refers students to Planned Parenthood or Aetna Insurance providers for abortion and contraception, an official who oversees the student health clinic told Our Sunday Visitor.

McDonald: USF is removing the provision for voluntary termination of pregnancy from our student health plan. Students are not referred to Planned Parenthood, but are referred to Aetna providers for prescriptions. Under California law, prescription plans must pay for all FDA approved medications, including contraception.

OSV: Signing up for health insurance is mandatory for undergraduates at USF unless they have a waiver that proves they have other health insurance, and the Aetna policy detailed on the college website specifically mentions abortion. The students get most of their health care from a special clinic for students at St. Mary's Medical Center, which is across the street from the university. An official at the hospital said that St. Mary's does not do abortions but refers students who request abortion or contraception either to Planned Parenthood or to Aetna providers.

McDonald: Yes, having health care insurance is mandatory for every USF student to ensure their best interests in case of a medical emergency or illness. Students can provide their own insurance, (often they are covered under their parent's insurance), or enroll in the university-sponsored plan. As stated on Dec. 12, it was not the university's intention to offer coverage for the voluntary termination of pregnancy, and we are removing this provision from our student health plan. We regret this mistake, and we take full responsibility for not adequately reviewing the contract. We are grateful to those who brought this issue to our attention. ... Coverage for the voluntary termination of pregnancy in the student health plan was a mistake, and that provision is being removed. However, health insurance is still mandatory for all USF students. Prescriptions for contraception are never provided at the USF Clinic, nor are referrals to Planned Parenthood for abortions. However, under state law, all California prescription plans must cover prescriptions for contraception.

OSV: Ongoing USF employee insurance coverage of abortion and contraception was not addressed in the statement.While the policy adding abortion was new for the 2008-2009 academic year, the college was providing RU-486 chemical abortion coverage as early as 2005, according to documents available on the college website. The university also offers insurance which includes abortion and contraception to its employees; will that insurance continue?

McDonald: USF offers two options for employee health insurance, Blue Cross and Kaiser Permanente. Our Blue Cross claims procedure excludes coverage for surgical abortion. When USF negotiated its contract with Kaiser, we were unable to opt out of the plan's provision for termination of pregnancy. USF decided to offer the Kaiser plan because Kaiser is widely considered to be the highest-quality HMO in Northern California. It is USF's strong desire to offer its employees the best health care possible. USF is in the process of working with Kaiser to see if the contract can be renegotiated and the provision eliminated.

Updated 12/16/08 0700: Removed some words from intro that at least one reader misunderstood.

UPDATE: USF drops student abortion coverage

After being alerted that new student health coverage provides for abortions, the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco has pulled that provision. Here's a statement we just received from Gary McDonald, the associate vice president for communications and public affairs of the University of San Francisco:

A new health plan for students at the University of San Francisco included a provision for the voluntary termination of pregnancy. It was not the University's intention to offer this coverage. USF supports the Catholic Church's views on the sanctity of life, at all stages, and we will remove this provision from our student healthplan. We regret this mistake, and we take full responsibility for not adequately reviewing the contract. We are grateful to those who brought this issue to our attention.

Gary McDonald
AVP, Communications and Public Affairs
University of San Francisco

Jesuit university health plan covers student abortions

OSV contributing editor Valerie Schmalz has followed up on a story first reported yesterday by the Catholic Key blog.

Here’s what she’s found:

The Jesuit University of San Francisco has begun providing abortion coverage to its undergraduates as part of required student health insurance.

The new insurance plan is in sync with the USF employees’ plan which has provided coverage for abortion since at least 2006. [source?]

The plan, available on the USF website, states in the section regarding maternity coverage, in a subhead titled “Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy,” that “Covered Medical Expenses are payable as follows: Preferred Care: 90% of the Negotiated Charge. Non-Preferred Care: 70% of the Reasonable Charge.”

Calls and emails to USF president, Jesuit Father Stephen Privett, and associate vice president for public affairs and communications, Gary McDonald, were not returned. A call Dec. 11 to the Health Promotion Services office at USF was referred to McDonald.

Archdiocese of San Francisco spokesman Maurice Healy said in an e-mail that Archbishop George Niederauer was away and wouldn’t be able to comment until the middle of next week.

The issue of contraception and abortion on Catholic college campuses is not a new one, notes Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, which is dedicated to promoting Catholic identity at Catholic universities and colleges.

“We certainly allow for the possibility that this was not intentional and we’re hoping that the University of San Francisco — now that this has come to light — will immediately alter the policy,” Reilly told Our Sunday Visitor. Reilly said he knows of no other Catholic college which offers abortion insurance coverage to students.

“There were problems several years ago with some colleges, including Georgetown University, considering plans that included abortion and there was much controversy. I am not aware now of a Catholic college that provides abortion coverage in a plan for students,” Reilly said. “The past issues have largely centered around health plans for employees. The fact that the University of San Francisco has a plan providing for student abortions is certainly no less destructive but particularly frightening.”

Signing up for the university’s Aetna health insurance is mandatory for undergraduates at USF unless they have a waiver that proves they have other health insurance. The students get most of their health care from a special clinic for students at St. Mary’s Medical Center, which is across the street from the university, and does not provide gynecology and obstetrics.

An official at the hospital said that St. Mary’s refers students who request abortion or contraception either to Planned Parenthood or to Aetna providers.

St. Mary’s senior director Les McGee, who said he oversees the student health clinic among other areas, told OSV no statistics are kept on how many students request abortion. “We just provide them with resources of where they want to go,” McGee said. “We’re not involved in terminating pregnancies.”

(Photo credit Shutterstock)

UPDATE: USF has announced it will drop the abortion coverage provision from the student plan.

Time's top 10 religion stories of 2008

Time magazine has posted its top 10 religion stories of 2008. Here they are:

1. The Economy Trumps Religion

2. Never Count the Mormons Out

3. The Pope Wows the States

4. The Canterbury non-Tale

5. America's Unfaithful Faith

6. Tibet's Monks Rebel

7. The Birth of the New Evangelicalism

8. The Challenge of Recession

9. When Kosher Wasn't Kosher

10. Extraterrestrials May Already be Saved

What did they leave out?

Restoring demographic balance?

Luxembourg's facing a constitutional rejiggering because the Catholic grand duke, who has veto power over all legislation, continues to oppose attempts by lawmakers to legalize euthanasia. He's being stripped of his veto power.

Efforts around the world to legalize euthanasia are particularly disturbing because of the demographic nightmare many countries are facing; with an increasing number of elderly "burdening" society, there's a strong utilitarian drive to "eliminate" the problem.

National Public Radio had an interesting report a few days back about Japan, which has the highest elderly ratio of any country in the world -- 20 percent of population is over 65 and worse is coming. Buried in the story is the fact that Japanese society is now increasingly resentful at all the health care resources that the seniors are using up.

(Photo credit Shutterstock)

On cards, more Holy family, less your family

Is there a picture of you or your family on the Christmas cards you sent out this year?

If so, prepare to be shamed. (Thankfully, my wife and I narrowly decided not to this year.) Jesuit Father James Martin, in this commentary for National Public Radio, says:

“Doesn't it strike you as weird to set aside the Holy Family in favor of your family?"

"Does a photo of Cabo San Lucas trump the story told by the original San Lucas?"

"Is Christmas really about you?”

Check it out.

Addendum: Is FOCA a real threat?

As a follow-up to Russell Shaw's post below, it's worth highlighting a couple of recent news analysis pieces on the question in light of (modest) gains made by pro-life Democrats in the last election. Those gains would arguably make it harder for the Democratic Party to champion FOCA because it would put pro-life Democrats in the position of either bucking party leadership or risking re-election. But not necessarily.

OSV contributing editor Valerie Schmalz writes in our Dec. 14 issue:

"The strategy the Democratic Party used to carry more conservative congressional districts may soften the abortion-rights agenda of President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress, the leader of Democrats for Life [Kristen Day] contends.

"Others [like Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List] say the new pro-life Democrats may find themselves under such great pressure that it will be hard to hold the line." Read the entire piece.

The Christian Science Monitor makes a similar calculus in yesterday's edition, with a special focus on whether FOCA would wipe out conscience clauses that protect the right of doctors and hospitals to decline to perform abortions.

Meanwhile, Jan. 24-25 has been set as the weekend for the big push in U.S. parishes and dioceses to obtain signatures on postcards to Congress opposing FOCA. The postcard language calls FOCA "the most radical and divisive pro-abortion bill ever introduced in Congress," asks the recipient lawmaker to oppose it, and asks for a written response. It's organized by the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, which also coordinated the anti-FOCA congressional postcard campaign early in the Clinton administration. The response from Catholics in their parishes was said to be massive, and FOCA was stopped.

Why are some Catholics downplaying FOCA threat?

Assorted Catholic voices have been raised lately calling on Catholics to give President-elect Obama a chance and look for common ground between him and the Church. Part of the message is: "Don't worry about the Freedom of Choice Act."

Among those saying these things are the editors of Commonweal, the National Catholic Reporter, Professor Douglas Kmiec, and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See Thomas Melady. In principle, they're partly right. In practice, they could hardly be more wrong, especially where FOCA is concerned.

Ambassador Melady, who says he voted for John McCain, makes the case for "engagement" with Obama in an opinion piece on NCR online. Despite differences between Obama and the Church on abortion and education vouchers, he says, there is a "clear convergence" on things like poverty, health insurance, and ending race-based discrimination.

Who can argue with engagement? But it takes two to engage. Obama may yet get to that in his relationship with the Catholic Church, but there's no sign of it happening now.

Instead, in both his cabinet choices and his White House staff picks, the president-elect has so far been busy loading up his administration with pro-choicers, including Catholics like Tom Daschle (Secretary of Health and Human Services) and Bill Richardson (Secretary of Commerce).

The director of his Domestic Policy Council will be Melody Barnes, a former member of the board of directors of Planned Parenthood. Heading White House communications will be Ellen Moran, formerly executive director of the pro-abortion advocacy group Emily's List.
This, it must be said, is not the path to engagement.

At a news conference during last month's Baltimore meeting of the U.S. bishops somebody asked Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the bishops' president, if he knew Obama. The cardinal said they'd met a number of times but never had a substantive conversation.

Perhaps the archbishop of Chicago should have sought out Obama somewhere along the line. But shouldn't the junior senator from Illinois, a state senator before that, sometime or other have sought out the archbishop of Chicago for a serious talk? However you look at it, this particular lacuna doesn't bode well for the incoming president's engagement with the Church.

Professor Kmiec, who actively supported Obama during the campaign, applauds Melady's approach in a comment appended to his online piece. People who disagree about Obama with him and Melady, he adds, are "plying falsehood to themselves and others." A large part of their "misleading tale" is that the Freedom of Choice Act is a real threat.

FOCA has been kicking around in Congress for two decades. The bill would declare abortion a "fundamental right," thereby providing a statutory basis for overturning federal and state restrictions on abortion, including laws prohibiting abortion by the partial-birth method.
Conscience clauses protecting doctors and nurses who object to abortion would go. The existence of Catholic hospitals, at least their ob-gyn departments, would be at risk. The bishops at their meeting committed themselves to an all-out campaign to oppose the bill.

The don't-worry-about-FOCA line is summed up in a Commonweal editorial calling it "abortion-rights propaganda…a fundraising device and a rallying cry for prochoice groups."

No doubt FOCA is all of that. And it's also a serious threat.

The bill has real support from real members of the United States Congress as well as the abortion lobby. Until recently, the congressional backers included Sen. Barack Obama, a cosponsor. During the campaign, candidate Obama pledged that if elected president, he would be happy to sign FOCA into law.

How do you prevent a dangerous bill from becoming law? The answer is, or should be, a no-brainer. Dangerous bills are blocked by vigorously opposing them. Shrugging one's shoulders and saying they're no threat is a good way to get them passed.

FOCA was stymied early in the Clinton administration by a major campaign mounted by prolife groups, including the Catholic Church. To make sure it's stymied in the Obama administration will require another such effort.

Writing in the Nov. 15 Washington Post, columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., a Catholic and a political liberal, warned that for Obama to push abortion as president would be "politically foolish and a breach of faith with the pro-life progressives who came to [his] defense during the campaign."

Fighting FOCA is essential to making that point. Maybe then — if the president is willing — we can all get to engagement.

Black Catholics divided on Obama election

In this OSV article, Gerry Korson gets an interesting cross-section of opinions from black Catholics.

He talks to the president of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus, whose reaction is marked by his identity as a descendant of a slave; the director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans; and Catholic African American presidential candidate Alan Keyes.

(Photo credit Shuttershock)

Would you kill for a discounted HDTV?

Greg Erlandson asks the question in a column exploring the consumerism, the economy and the season of Advent. Read it here.

Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with high def TVs. The problem, Erlandson writes, is that "whatever the question — massive terrorist strike or collapse of the world's banking system — the answer seems to be that we should all go shopping."

A Catholic's guide to thrift

From our Dec. 14 issue, Scott Alessi explores what thriftiness offers Catholics in these tough economic times.

How has the downturn in the economy affected you? And are you finding that hardship is sending you back to your faith for guidance in practical matters?