-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
In a recent full-page paid advertisement in the Washington Post, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and dozens of leaders of Catholic organizations voiced their opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule which they describe as forcing private health providers to provide “preventive services.” The HHS plan mandates, without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or a deductible, the provision of FDA-approved contraception methods. The advertisement claims these drugs may cause abortions which, by their definition, includes any single-celled fertilized egg that doesn’t implant.
The ad claims that following the HHS rule would violate their religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
Upon closer examination, their claims are based on dubious assumptions. Consider the claim that the rule would “forc[e] almost all private health plans” to provide a particular coverage. The implication is that the government would force private insurers to provide this coverage, against their will. I am skeptical that the USCCB has surveyed insurance providers to support this claim. It is reasonable that insurance providers would see preventative measures as a cost-effective tool to reduce payouts. Many more insurance providers would provide contraception coverage were it not for pressure brought by these organizations. The HHS rule would give those insurance providers, who want to provide contraception coverage, the freedom to do so without fear of harassment or boycott.
An employer who provides workplace health insurance can, based on religious beliefs, coerce female employees to sign up with an insurance plan that does not cover contraception. An employee, who may not share the employer’s religious beliefs, is denied her right to contraception as found in Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird.
In a news release from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the state provides a compelling rationale for the rule:
Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women and their families, it is documented to significantly reduce health costs, and is the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women.
Health care providers have a professional responsibility to their patients that transcends personal convictions. The duties of a health care professional are based on the best available science and are not there to be molded to fit their personal preferences.
The HHS rule includes a waiver that allows certain nonprofit religious employers to opt-out of the preventative services requirement. Other nonprofit employers who, because of religious convictions, do not provide preventative services in their insurance plans will be given one year to comply with the new rule.
The war on contraception is, in fact, a war on a woman’s right to engage in nonprocreative sexual intercourse. Those who often decry governmental intrusion in our lives are the first to support governmental intrusion into our sexual choices.
H/T: Sarah Posner.
Mike Spindell 1, January 21, 2012 at 11:05 am
I hate to get hyperbolic here but seeing this just after waking up simply arouses anger in me. There are many pious phonies who in the name of God focus on sexual “sins”, to the exclusion of the really heinous “sins” that people do.
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There is a book review in the Guardian that backs you up The First Sexual Revolutione.
“What I do not understand is the tone of the condemnation for people who think otherwise.”
Martin,
I don’t condemn the people that believe that abortion is wrong. I condemn their attempts to enforce their religious beliefs on me. As to your first question as to when does a baby becomes a human being, my own religious belief is at the drawing of its first breath, but I would hardly impose that belief on others. Please don’t try the tired response to me that some believe abortion is murder and thus should be banned. The religion I was brought up in considers
eating pork a terrible abomination to be dealt with by stoning. If I believe that strongly, not having the death penalty for eating bacon, is an affront to my religious freedom.
I would appreciate the arguments above more if the poster addressed the basic underlying legal question forthrightly: at what point is a baby entitled to the protection of law, and also on what basis is that protection granted.
I can understand positions based on pragmatism, since the law must bend to the will of the people. What I do not understand is the tone of the condemnation for people who think otherwise.
nal,
Excellent choice…..messpo salient point to pick…..Which I think is the most apt ….
Obama won the catholic vote 54 – 46. The majority of catholics don’t pay attention to the bishops.
Some catholic churches pass out voter guides that favor republican candidates that support the bishops’ views on contraception and abortion.
Mr. Drumm makes many glaring errors in this post. What he advocates here is tyranny, plain and simple. One thing that must be understood when you read this post is that government alone, not private organizations or businesses, has the ability to force people to do things they don’t want to do.
Notice how Mr. Drumm lauds the government law forcing insurance companies to provide contraceptive coverage they may not want to provide. His reasoning? Why, all reasonable insurance companies want to provide contraceptive coverage. And to the one or two religious misfit insurance companies that don’t: sit down, shut up, provide contraceptive coverage, or be put out of business due to the heavy fines we will levy against you!
Then Mr. Drumm says that some insurance companies want to provide contraceptive coverage, but don’t do so because they fear they may lose the business of certain clients. Mr. Drumm laments the fact that insurance companies, like all other companies in the world, have to tailor their goods, services and business strategies in a way that gives their clients what they desire, while also maximizing profits. His solution to this “problem?” Pass a law requiring all insurance companies to provide contraceptive coverage so that their clients have absolutely nobody that offers them the coverage profile that they desire. So when the religious organization calls up their insurance company and objects to their recently implemented coverage of contraceptives, the insurance company simply tells them, “Sorry Friend, but there is no where else for you to turn, we have all been forced by the government to provide this coverage you object to, so you’d might as well stay with us.” To Mr. Drumm, that’s not tyranny, but freedom for the insurance companies to provide the contraceptive coverage without fear of losing business.
Mr. Drumm says that organizations offering insurance plans which don’t have contraceptive coverage may coerce female employees to sign up with that plan, thereby denying her the right to contraception. Remember, only the government can force you to do something you don’t want to. This woman is not forced by her employer to join their health insurance plan. She can purchase her own private insurance plan if she wants to. She can still freely purchase contraceptives even if she chooses to join the organization’s plan or even if she has no insurance plan at all. I hear condoms work great, by the way. Mr. Drumm doesn’t want you to think about that though. He wants you to think this woman has lost all of her contraceptive rights unless the government forces, by rule of law, insurance companies to make business decisions which may violate their conscience or the conscience of their clients.
To some people, freedom is tyranny and tyranny is freedom. Which road is America headed down?
I hate to get hyperbolic here but seeing this just after waking up simply arouses anger in me. There are many pious phonies who in the name of God focus on sexual “sins”, to the exclusion of the really heinous “sins” that people do. They postulate a God, that having created us with sexual urges and the attendant pleasure they bring, then wants to punish us unless we perform in a rigidly controlled manner. It in effect makes God into a sadistic voyeur.
The Roman Catholic Church is an institution built not on God, but on power. It was established by Constantine to solidify his position as Emperor and as was the Roman way in general with religion, he incorporated the myth’s of many other religions into the teachings of Paul about Jesus. However, if you include the Gospels into your religious canon, you are faced with the fact that Jesus was a social reformer concentrating on religious hypocrisy, peacefulness and the degradation of the poor.
Rome, however, was a brutal warrior empire and those parts of Jesus teachings were inconvenient. The best way to deal with that from the Church/State perspective was to focus on sexuality. Being a patriarchal society the woman as temptress scenario was an easy sell. From these origins came 1,700 years (Dating from the Council of Nicaea) of refinement of sexual hypocrisy bringing us to our own time. That this sexual obsession is hypocrisy is illustrated by the ongoing pedophilia scandal. That it is misogynistic is too obvious to require explanation.
This is not an anti RCC screed, however, because the coming of Luther’s reforms still retained much of the misogyny, as the Protestant Movement split up into its various factions. Judaism should also not escape opprobrium because the Torah was written for a tribe of Mid-East nomads, which like its’
surrounding tribes was strictly patriarchal. Almost all of the Christian teachings on sex used the Torah as their basis. This patriarchal norm thus also infected Islam.
Government has no business making women into the subservient sex and causing them to bear the burden of the very normal exercise of sexual pleasure. I have always found the notion of a woman’s “virginity” and “purity”
to be nonsensical ideas of male’s fear of their own sexuality and their need to
control women, who in my opinion are the smarter, stronger sex. When these purveyors of heavenly dreams start contemplating just how a Creator of everything might want his creation to behave, possibly they may create some
real spiritual insight. Until then it’s the same old story, men screwing women figuratively as well as literally. Rant ended.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/us/more-protestants-oppose-birth-control.html
Keep em dumb, barefoot and pregnant. Cardinal George.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/gop-presidential-primary/205033-gop-hopefuls-tout-abortion-stances-at-personhood-forum Republicans have ramped up the abortion discussion to the personhood discussion.
“by their definition”
There it is.
It is said that “you can’t make anyone love you.”
The definition of “love” and “make” would render that true or false, in context.
We tried that in Iraq.
Making them do democracy would make them love us was the thesis.
That is why, in some parts of Bush Texas, the words for both “war” and “sex” is the one phrase “Big Whoopee” …
Just wondering, if a woman gets contraceptives even thought her employer disapproves, will the employer know? How private is a womans’ perscription records from her employer?
At the Notre Dame commencement in 2009, when Obama said:
What did he mean?
Puzzling, They did the right thing yesterday, and you are right that they caved on the 17 and under group on the Plan B emergency contraceptive. They are a considerable improvement over the prior administration in this area, and I assume Obama will again receive the endorsements of both Planned Parenthood and NARAL. The current crop of republicans want to send women back to pre – Margaret Sanger days.
The ONLY thing the USCCB cares about is increasing the cash donating ”Flock of SHEEP”
To say that this administration is on the side of contraceptive choice is absurd.
Six weeks ago Obama’s HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took the unprecedented step of overruling the FDA and banned over the counter access for the Plan B emergency contraceptive, further requiring women under 17 actually seek a prescription before having access to the drug.
“Those who often decry governmental intrusion in our lives are the first to support governmental intrusion into our sexual choices.”
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Good work there, Nal. And insightful, too. Puritan ethic?