[Question:]{.underline} Can one participate in a government funded health care system that funds abortions?
[Answer:]{.underline} This is a question of material cooperation in evil. It is not a formal cooperation for a practising Catholic who is firm in his opposition to abortion. Such a person clearly does not want to cooperate in a health care system that funds abortions, but the question is whether or not he may do so, if he has no other way of receiving health treatment. Material cooperation exists when one does not will the evil in itself in any way at all, but when for entirely different reasons one initiates an action that in some way, quite involuntary, indirectly contributes to the evil. Material cooperation is permissible for grave reasons, the gravity of the reason required being in direct proportion to the proximity of the cooperation and to the gravity of the evil that ensues. Abortion being such a great evil, immediate material cooperation is sinful, as would be the case if a nurse involuntarily by knowingly participated in an abortion procedure because she happened to be on duty in the operating theater.
Participation in a health care system that funds abortion is not a proximate cooperation in the evil of abortion, but is truly far removed from the abortion that might eventually be performed. The cooperation is greater if it is a private health care system, freely chosen, into which one makes financial contributions, than in a government funded system that is obligatory. Inasmuch as possible, Catholics ought to avoid such private health insurance with companies that fund abortions. However, this obligation of avoiding them does not hold if a grave inconvenience would follow from doing so. This would be the case, for example, if otherwise it were not possible to find good and affordable health insurance. The reason for this is that the material cooperation in the abortion is not proximate.
The material cooperation is even less and even further removed when the health care system is government funded. In such cases, it is very frequently the only kind of health care that a person can afford. There would be a very grave inconvenience in refusing such material cooperation. Consequently, it is permissible to take advantage of the system, and one is certainly not bound to reject all participation, and risking one’s health care and employment by doing so. This being said, it certainly is the obligation of Catholics to register their objections in conscience and to do whatever they can to be freed from such material cooperation.
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.