Old Men in Skirts & Women’s Health

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is objecting to a recent HHS rulemaking which grants American women equal access to healthcare and directs health insurance companies to provide them with contraceptive services. Of course, America’s Roman Catholic bishops have their own sort of family planning; they are (presumably) celibate. Not so the females in their flock, two-thirds of whom use some form of contraception. The HHS regulation does not apply to employees of churches but to workers in the separate nonprofit corporations spun off by religious institutions. It has little to do with health reform, and everything to do with the rights of employees under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.