August 1 marked the beginning of the implementation of the HHS mandate for non-religious employers, and for non-profit religious employers who do not qualify for the temporary year-long extension. In light of the mandate’s blatant disregard for freedom of conscience, it would be helpful to study some key documents on religious freedom to better educate ourselves, and therefore be better able to articulate in the public square, our reasons for continuing to oppose it. This article is the first in a series that explores more deeply the Second Vatican Council’s landmark document, Dignitatis humanae (On Human Dignity).

Almost from the very beginning of the document, the Council Fathers make it quite clear that religious freedom is not absolute, but has its due limits:

This Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits. (emphasis added) (2)

Later in the same paragraph, the authors clarify that religious freedom is ”not to be impeded, provided that just public order be observed.” This would appear to be confirmed by another excerpt a little further along in the document:

There is a further consideration. The religious acts whereby men, in private and in public and out of a sense of personal conviction, direct their lives to God transcend by their very nature the order of terrestrial and temporal affairs. Government therefore ought indeed to take account of the religious life of the citizenry and show it favor, since the function of government is to make provision for the common welfare. However, it would clearly transgress the limits set to its power, were it to presume to command or inhibit acts that are religious. (emphasis added) (3)

Further, worship of the true God aides the common welfare, because the true God is love, and His Divine Law orders all of creation to its intended perfection: “[T]he highest norm of human life is the divine law—eternal, objective and universal—whereby God orders, directs and governs the entire universe and all the ways of the human community by a plan conceived in wisdom and love” (3). So the question for Catholics becomes: How do we convincingly demonstrate that the appeal we are making to religious freedom with regards to the HHS mandate is an appeal that truly serves the common welfare?

One approach is to demonstrate that contraception is actually not the boon for women’s health that it is made out to be. If we can offer substantive data to explain the very grave impact of contraception on both personal and social health, then we demonstrate that this appeal to religious freedom, to not be coerced into providing contraception, is indeed within the bounds of public order, and more, to the greater advantage of public order. This, of course, does not address the question of religious liberty, even if for reasonable people it strengthens the Church’s position on contraception.

In his article, “The Costs of Contraception,” Carson Holloway makes the argument that “hormonal contraception carries certain physical costs in addition to the benefits touted by its proponents,” since it is “impossible to interject technological control into any natural system without incurring some undesirable consequences” and “a woman’s body is a natural system like any other.” He outlines two categories of such consequences: health risks (most notably the risk of breast cancer) and costs to physical well-being (depression, mood swings, weight gain, impeded weight loss, headache, upper respiratory infection, sinusitis, nausea, menstrual cramps, acne, breast tenderness, vaginal candidiasis (commonly known as “yeast infection”), bacterial vaginitis, and urinary tract infection … and this is not a comprehensive list). He goes on to observe that if a woman is suffering these latter effects, the very purpose of contraception – to enjoy sex freely without the worry of conceiving – is countermanded. Further, “one commonly found side-effect of hormonal birth control is a decrease in libido or sexual desire.”

If we pan out from contraception’s negative personal effects and consider its social consequences, the snapshot doesn’t look any more promising. Robert Smith in his piece, “When Governments Pay People to Have Babies,” noted that the governments of Australia, Germany and Japan encourage their citizens to have more children by offering generous monetary incentives. What would be the reason for this?

A baby is … an economic investment.

Businesses get a new worker and a new consumer for products. Parents get someone who will support them in their old age. Governments get a taxpayer — and a guarantee that the country lives on.

Sure, there are 7 billion people on the planet, give or take. But for a lot of countries, the problem isn’t too many people; it’s too few babies. In parts of Europe and Asia, couples aren’t having enough babies to keep the population steady.

Is it an understatement to conclude that contraception isn’t really all that healthy for the common welfare?

From a purely rational standpoint, therefore, the claim that contraception qualifies as a “health benefit” is dubious at best, given its documented negative effects both personally and socially. It follows that the government cannot reasonably enforce it as a certain good for society, and even less dismiss an appeal to religious freedom from those citizens who, in good conscience, cannot cooperate with such a mandate. In other words, in this case, an appeal to religious freedom cannot be reasonably shown to undermine the common good; if anything, it is the last rational recourse to preserving it.