NEW YORK, May 27 (UPI) — The Archdiocese of New York acknowledged it has quietly paid the costs of birth control in some of its employee healthcare plans for years.
Although its leader, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, leads the fight against provision of the new healthcare law requiring for-profit employers, including those with religious affiliations, to cover birth control, his archdiocese has been paying for the coverage for its unionized employees for over a decade, the New York Times reported Monday.
The archdiocese has acknowledged some Catholic institutions within the New York diocese offer health plans that include contraceptive drugs to comply with state law. It now says its own money is used to pay for a union health plan that covers contraception and abortion at its affiliated nursing homes and clinics, the newspaper said.
Insisting it has no choice, 3,000 full-time employees of ArchCare, the Catholic Health Care System in New York, receive coverage for contraception and abortion through membership in Local 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers, union spokesman Dave Bates said.
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