The University of Notre Dame caved in. It will partly obey the Obama Care mandate requiring employer health-care plans to cover the cost of contraceptives and abortifacient drugs. Rejecting the Trump administration\u2019s religious exemption, Notre Dame announced last month that it will provide \u201csimple contraceptives\u201d to students and employees through its insurance program.<\/p>\n
Notre Dame\u2019s president, the Rev. John Jenkins, deserves praise for discontinuing coverage of abortifacients. Yet he justified the birth-control decision by saying, in part, that Catholic tradition requires respect for \u201cthe conscientious decisions of members of our community.\u201d Of course, Notre Dame community members can exercise their consciences without receiving university-provided contraception. And there is also the serious possibility that Notre Dame abused the legal process when it sued the Obama administration for relief. If the university had standing on religious-freedom grounds, how can it now explain its decision to facilitate coverage of birth control?<\/p>\n
While these issues are concerning, as a graduate of Our Lady\u2019s university, I take the recent news personally. I chose to attend Notre Dame because its essential Catholicism makes\u200bit different from other outstanding American universities. Serious young Catholics may no longer look at Notre Dame the way I did, and with good reason.<\/p>\n