Beyond unconscionable (Erin)

The Catholic Key is a blog written by staff members of the Diocese of Kansas City. A post there from yesterday reports that students at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco must purchase the University's Student Health Insurance Plan unless they can prove that the insurance they already have is equal to or better than the USF/Aetna plan. Otherwise, they'll be automatically billed for the University's insurance plan.

This has become a fairly common practice at colleges and universities. But there's a problem. From the Catholic Key blog post:

The specially developed plan, which is available as a pdf at both USF's and Aetna's website includes the following coverage under the heading of "Maternity Expenses":

"Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy - Covered Medical Expenses are payable as follows:
Preferred Care: 90% of the Negotiated Charge.
Non-Preferred Care: 70% of the Reasonable Charge."

Employers are not required to provide abortion coverage in California. Other Catholic institutions in San Francisco which offer health insurance, including the Archdiocese of San Francisco, do not provide abortion coverage.

So students at a Catholic college are being forced to buy an insurance plan which pays for abortions. And the wording of the policy, that a student must show they have equal or better coverage in order to be permitted not to purchase the plan, makes me wonder whether a student whose insurance does not cover abortions would even be permitted to opt-out of the USF insurance plan.

So many times when social issues and religious rights are discussed, the attitude is that as long as believers still have the right to assemble in their churches and pray (not too loudly, of course) they have a sufficient measure of religious freedom. But I would find it an unconscionable transgression upon the rights of religious students if they were forced to pay for abortion coverage by a non-religious college. The fact that they are apparently being forced to do so at a Catholic University is beyond unconscionable; it is, quite simply, evil.

UPDATE: Jack Smith, the Catholic Key author who wrote the post referenced above, has weighed in in the comments, and has posted further information at the Catholic Key site. Smith's update includes a link to this Our Sunday Visitor blog story; the OSV folks have taken the journalistic step of attempting to contact the University and the San Francisco Diocese, with no success so far.

UPDATE TWO: OSV is reporting that USF is dropping the student abortion coverage from its health care plan. Here's a statement from the University:

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

I'm glad to learn this was an error, and am delighted that the situation has been resolved so quickly!