Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
It appears that the Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Republicans are not happy with the change that President Obama made to the health care contraceptive coverage requirement for religious employers. The President’s announcement about the change yesterday initially met with a “reserved response” from the bishops who said it was a 
“first step in the right direction.” Hours later, however, the bishops issued a statement “blasting the plan.” Along with others, the bishops are calling for Congressional legislation that would reverse the contraceptive policy.
In a blog post earlier today, Judy Waxman, who is Vice President for Health and Reproductive Right at the National Women’s Law Center, expressed her concern about some of the proposed legislation. Waxman wrote that “opponents of birth control in Congress are still focused on taking away access to contraception introducing extreme legislation that threatens health across the board. The pieces of legislation range from allowing any employer, regardless of whether it is a religious entity, to deny coverage of contraception to giving employers the right to refuse coverage of any health care service they find religiously or morally objectionable.”
Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress echoed Waxman’s concern. He reported that Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, is expected to introduce an amendment next week “that would permit any employer or insurance plan to exclude any health service, no matter how essential, from coverage if they morally object to it.
Excerpt from Blunt’s proposed amendment:
(6) RESPECTING RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE WITH REGARD TO SPECIFIC ITEMS OR SERVICES —
“(A) FOR HEALTH PLANS. — A health plan shall not be considered to have failed to provide the essential health benefits package described in subsection (a) (or preventive health services described in section 2713 of the Public Health Services Act), to fail to be a qualified health plan, or to fail to fulfill any other requirement under this title on the basis that it declines to provide coverage of specific items or services because —
“(i) providing coverage (or, in the case of a sponsor of a group health plan, paying for coverage) of such specific items or services is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan; or
“(ii) such coverage (in the case of individual coverage) is contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the purchaser or beneficiary of the coverage.
Waxman also wrote the following in her post:
They are playing politics with women’s health – and it would hurt everyone. Tell your Senators to reject all extreme legislation that would take away women’s access to birth control without a co-pay, and other needed health care.
What would happen if some of these bills became law?
- Any employer could offer a plan that does not cover maternity care for unmarried women in its plan, claiming that such coverage violates its belief that sex and procreation are permissible only within the marital relationship. (Amendment No. 1520 sponsored by Senator Blunt, R-MO, also known as the “Blunt Amendment”/H.R. 1179)
- Any corporation whose CEO opposes contraception based on his “moral convictions” could deny all coverage of contraception or any other service to the company’s employees. Even more disturbing, a CEO’s view of “morality” could potentially include concern for the cost of a particular benefit. (S. 2092, also known as “The Manchin-Rubio Bill” and the “Blunt Amendment”/H.R. 1179)
- Any employer who objects to coverage of vaccines for children could deny this coverage to all employees. (The “Blunt Amendment”/H.R. 1179)
Do you agree with Waxman that some people are playing politics with women’s health? Do you think our Senators should be called upon to reject–what Waxman calls–“extreme” legislation?
**********
I’d like to note that birth control pills can be used to treat some medical conditions—including endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, adenomyosis, dysmenorrhea, and acne. Birth control pills can also lower a woman’s risk of getting ovarian cancer—as well as some other kinds of cancers—if she takes the pills for more than five years.
FYI: Last December, Alice Park penned an article for Time’s Healthland titled Should Nuns Take the Pill to Prevent Cancer?
Park wrote:
Kara Britt at Monash University and Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, writing in the journal Lancet, argue that the scientific evidence is strong enough to consider whether nuns, who do not bear children — a lifestyle that puts them at higher risk of certain reproductive cancers — could be protected by taking the birth control pill.
The article in the Lancet claimed that Roman Catholic nuns pay a “terrible price for their chastity” because not having children puts them at a higher risk of growing breast, ovarian and, uterine tumors.
SOURCES
GOP Ups The Ante, Introduces Legislation To Allow Any Employer To Deny Any Preventive Health Service (ThinkProgress)
Roy Blunt Amendment (ThinkProgress)
Protect Women’s Health: Tell Your Senators to Reject Extreme Legislation (National Women’s Law Center)
Blunt expected to intro bill on contraception coverage (St. Louis Business Journal)
Senator Blunt’s Response To President Obama’s Remarks On HHS Mandate
GOP Sen. Roy Blunt to introduce bill allowing employers to deny coverage for any health service (Daily Kos)
Groups rail against contraceptive coverage ‘mandate’ despite rule change (My Fox Philly)
Bishops Renew Call to Legislative Action on Religious Liberty (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
Should Nuns Take the Pill to Prevent Cancer? (Time/Heathland)
Nuns On Birth Control? Experts Say The Pill May Reduce Health Risks Posed By Chaste Lifestyle (Huffington Post)
Nuns should go on the Pill, says Lancet study: Nuns should go on the Pill to reduce their chances of developing cancer, researchers say (The Telegraph)
Combined oral contraceptive pill (Wkipedia)
Diana DeGette: Bishops’ Efforts Causing Confusion On Birth Control Rule
By Laura Bassett
2/8/12
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/08/diana-degette-catholic-bishops-birth-control-rule_n_1263960.html
Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — Rep. Diana DeGette, co-chair of the Congressional Pro Choice Caucus, said that at least three of her progressive colleagues, whom she declined to name, have expressed “confusion” over whether to support the Obama administration’s new birth control coverage rule after receiving personal phone calls from their Catholic bishops.
DeGette, a Democrat from Colorado, told HuffPost that the caucus had a briefing Wednesday with a panel of ethicists, doctors and hospital administrators to clarify what the contraception requirement does in order to end some of that confusion.
“The bishops are a very powerful group, as we learned during the health care debate,” she said. “We had very good attendance at our briefing today because there’s a lot of misinformation from the bishops and a lot of confusion among members about what this rule means. Everybody felt like it sort of hit them this week.”
The rule, announced in January by the Department of Health and Human Services, requires most employers to offer health insurance plans that cover birth control with no co-pay. Religious entities who employ mostly people of one faith and have the inculcation of religious values as their main purpose, such as churches and other houses of worship, are exempt from the rule. All other employers who morally object to birth control and don’t currently cover it for their employees have an extra year to adjust to the new rule.
But the Catholic bishops consider the rule an assault on religious freedom because it doesn’t also exempt religiously affiliated employers, such as Catholic schools and hospitals, and they have intensified their lobbying campaign. Bishops all over the country read letters to their congregations this past Sunday urging them to call Congress and the White House and demand that the decision be reversed.
“The federal government, which claims to be ‘of, by and for the people,’ has just dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful,” Bishop Timothy A. McDonnell of Springfield, Mass., told his congregation on Sunday. “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops did not respond to a request for comment.
Prominent political leaders, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, have also sharply criticized the rule in recent days. Boehner said on the House floor Wednesday that if President Barack Obama does not repeal the rule, Congress will legislatively override it; Senate Republicans echoed that sentiment in a press conference the same day.
But DeGette pointed out Wednesday that she hasn’t seen Congress repudiate a rule like this in the 15 years she’s been in office, and she’s not sure it’s even possible to use legislation to reverse a rule before it has been promulgated. While the birth control requirement was announced in January, it hasn’t yet gone into effect.
“I’m not sure they’ve thought this through,” she said. “They’re trying to make a political point, but the fact is that a lot of what they’re saying about the issue is not true.”
One point of contention is whether the rule forces employers to cover abortifacients.
“This rule would require faith-based employers — including Catholic charities, schools, universities, and hospitals — to provide services they consider immoral,” Boehner argued in his floor speech. “Those services include sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and devices, and contraception.”
In fact, the rule covers emergency contraception, which the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology states is different from medication abortion because it actually prevents an unwanted pregnancy from occurring.
Supporters of the birth control rule also take issue with it being characterized as “an assault on religious freedom.” They argue that the alternative, which is allowing employers to cherry-pick health benefits for the women they employ based on the employers’ religious beliefs, encroaches on individual liberty.
“My question is: Who has the conscience? The employer who might have some generalized religious charter, but who’s employing vast numbers of people who aren’t of that religion, or the individual who’s exercising his own religious conscience?” DeGette asked.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) predicted to reporters that if Republican lawmakers try to repeal the new rule through legislation, there will be a massive backlash equal to the one that hit Susan G. Komen for the Cure last week when it tried to defund Planned Parenthood.
Milwaukee Archbishop unfazed by about 550 sex abuse claims
Catholics Call on Pope Benedict to Reconsider Vatican’s Ban on Contraceptive Pill
By Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice
5/ 5/10
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-obrien/the-catholic-contraceptiv_b_564065.html
Fifty years ago this week, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the contraceptive pill. The man most prominently associated with the development and introduction of the pill, John Rock, was an Irish Catholic doctor from Boston. Dr. Rock didn’t set out to make waves with the Vatican; in fact, he was sure that his invention would gain approval from the Vatican and finally allow Catholics to practice safe and effective family planning. He was successful on both counts. Three different layers of a Vatican commission approved the pill back in 1965. But Pope Paul VI decided to ignore the findings of those panels and condemned Catholic women to a variety of unreliable methods if they were to follow the Vatican’s dictates. To this day, most Catholic women ignore the Vatican’s decree, and many millions of them have safer and more reliable family planning thanks to Dr. Rock’s pill.
The story of the pill’s genesis is a fascinating one. John Rock was an infertility expert who was a pioneer behind many modern methods of assisting couples to conceive. In the course of his work, he also met many fertile Catholic women who wanted to space the births of their children, and sometimes to avoid having children. The Vatican’s ban on artificial methods of contraception meant that they had to rely on so-called natural methods, when a couple can only have sexual intercourse during the time each month when a woman is infertile if they want to avoid pregnancy. This was unacceptable to many, unworkable for those who have unreliable cycles and impossible for women who could not negotiate their sexual relationship with their partners.
Rock, who worked with biologist Gregory Pincus to develop the pill, was convinced “that every couple should be able to choose freely the number of children they could afford — materially and emotionally — to bring into the world.”
Rock figured that he could invent a hormonal pill that suppressed ovulation and therefore extend the safe period for sex as long as a woman stayed on the pill. He reasoned that the Vatican would accept this, and Catholic women who did not want to go against the Vatican would be able to have a healthy sex life.
Contraception was an issue the Vatican had addressed before, and the advent of the pill raised new questions about Catholics and family planning. The Vatican had imposed a ban on “artificial” methods of contraception, such as condoms and diaphragms, in the1930 encyclical Casti Connubii. There was growing debate in the church about whether this ban should be continued, and if so, whether it should be broadened to include the new pill.
This was a huge issue for the Catholic church, and not long after the introduction of the pill, in 1963, Pope John XXIII convened a panel to study the matter. The papal commission on birth control was composed of bishops, priests and lay people, including married Catholic women. They considered Catholic theology, modern science and the lives that married Catholics lead. The commission voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the church rescind its ban on contraception. The pope, concerned that overturning the ban would call all of the hierarchy’s teachings into question, appointed a second commission, made up of 15 bishops, which also voted overwhelmingly to recommend that the church rescind its ban on contraception.
The results of these votes were leaked, and there was widespread rejoicing among Catholics. It was therefore a significant shock to Catholics — and indeed most of the world — when the encyclical Humanae Vitae was finally released by Pope Paul VI on July 29, 1968, proclaiming the teaching on contraception unchanged and unchangeable.
The pope had completely ignored the work and recommendations of his own commission, despite five meetings over three years and a vote by 30 of the 35 commission’s lay members, 15 of the 19 theologians and 9 of 12 bishops that the teaching be changed (three bishops abstained).
There is little need to reconvene a commission to study this issue. Not much has changed to negate the findings of the majority votes in the commission. Indeed, we have learned so much more about safe reproductive health that supports the real world application of the commission’s findings. It makes no sense to continue the Vatican’s wrong-headed approach to family planning. Even without the twin scourges of maternal mortality and HIV/AIDS, there are billions of good reasons to allow women to plan their families and to allow them to decide when and whether to have children: namely the 3.5 billion women in the world, of whom about 600 million are Catholic.
It would be a lasting and wholly positive legacy if the current pope got behind the majority report of the 1963-68 commission and lifted the ban on the use of contraceptives to allow Catholics to plan their families. Given the fact that today, in the United States, 97 percent of sexually active Catholic women above the age of 18 have used some form of contraception banned by the Vatican, it makes little sense to continue the ban. In fact, the ban does more harm to the Vatican and its teaching authority than would changing it.
Dr. Rock was a Catholic champion of women’s health. If the Vatican wants to regain some relevance and respect on this issue, it’s time to join him in his support for contraception.
lotta,
Thanks for the link. I hadn’t heard that story. It would seem the Catholic Church should clean house first–before it does anything else.
Twelve years ago The Boston Globe Spotlight Team broke the story about clergy sexual abuse of children in Massachusetts. Cardinal Law–who helped cover-up the crimes–eventually resigned. He was rewarded with a great position in Rome.
http://www.boston.com/globe/spotlight/abuse/
Elaine, good link: “Bishops Are Behind the ‘Let Women Die’ Act and the Push Against Birth Control — Even As They’re Under Fire for Sex Abuse Scandals”
I read about the new numbers in the Milwaukee sex abuse scandal last night. They got lucky with the timing of this insurance change and no matter what the Administration does now they will continue to raise a stink about it. It’s the only hope as a diversion from the new numbers – oops, found another 8000 kids abused in Milwaukee, who would have imagined?
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/10/8000-new-instances-of-child-sexual-abuse-alleged-in-milwaukee-archdiocese/
Dr. McHugh,
When have the Bishops ever listened to the faithful?
Bishops Are Behind the ‘Let Women Die’ Act and the Push Against Birth Control — Even As They’re Under Fire for Sex Abuse Scandals
Sarah Seltzer
Catholics for Choice
17 October 2011
http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/news/inthenews/2011/BishopsAreBehindtheLetWomenDieAct.asp
Excerpt:
Last week, the House’s passage of the now-notorious H.R. 358 — also known as the “Let Women Die” bill — caused deserved outrage. But the bill’s connection to the high-ranking Catholic group that fought for its passage, even while the American church is fighting a horrific new sex abuse scandal, hasn’t been given the attention it deserves.
The new bill (which the president has vowed to veto) would essentially obliterate abortion coverage by both public and private insurers, and most egregiously get hospitals off the hook for refusing to perform abortions for women whose lives are in immediate danger. It would literally allow hospitals to let women die with impunity.
H.R. 358’s easy passage by a majority in Congress (with some defecting Democrats in the ranks) delivered another shock of sexism in a political landscape that has been assaulted by one anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-women’s health measure after another, all firing in a succession of rapid shots from statehouses across the nation as well as from DC. Helping to man the artillery is a largely disgraced Catholic hierarchy.
This momentum for misogyny has been painted as having mostly arisen from the Tea Party and the extremist evangelical megachurch Pat Robertson types. But these anti-choice forces are not alone, and they are not solely responsible: rather the (all-male, it should go without saying) Council of Catholic Bishops has aggressively, relentlessly, and successfully lobbied for many of the worst of the measures in the “War on Women.”
During the health care debates of 2009, this group was instrumental in pushing for anti-abortion language. At the time, NPR reported that Democrats found them to be “a lobbying force of unexpected influence” that had decided after budget cuts to focus their “strongest efforts” almost entirely on abortion issues rather than waste time on say, helping the poor.
Specifically, their aims have included the one-two punch of pushing for the “let women die” clauses and anti-abortion measures of H.R. 358, as well as the alarming new fight against coverage for contraception, which would deprive the overwhelming majority of the Catholic public that uses birth control with coverage for birth control.
The council has done this without being questioned by the mainstream media even in the long shadow of scandal, even though much of the American Catholic hierarchy’s capacity to treat issues of sex appropriately has been thrown into serious question by the seemingly never-ending child sex-abuse travesty.
Gene,
Elaine,
Wasn’t Pope Maxwell Smart who said, “Missed it by that much?”
How the Vatican Almost Embraced Birth Control
A secret history of the papal commission that endorsed the pill
—By Frances Kissling | May/June 2010 Issue
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/02/11/the-national-womens-law-center-takes-a-position-on-contraceptive-coverage-extreme-legislation/
Excerpt:
SINCE 1870, WHEN the Roman Catholic Church formally pronounced popes infallible, a lot of Vatican energy has gone into claiming that doctrine never changes—that the church has been maintaining the same positions since the time of Jesus. Of course, historians know better: Dozens of church conferences, synods, and councils have regularly revised the teachings, all the while claiming utter consistency. Thus, when the advent of the birth control pill in the early ’60s coincided with a major push for church modernization, there was widespread hope among Catholics that the reform-minded Pope John XXIII would lift the church’s ban on contraception. After all, the Second Vatican Council had explicitly called for greater integration of scientific knowledge into church teaching.
John did establish a small commission for the Study of Problems of Population, Family, and Birth, which his successor, Paul VI, expanded to 58 members. Its job was to study whether the pill and issues such as population growth should lead to a change in the church’s prohibition on all forms of contraception (other than abstinence during periods of fertility—the “rhythm method”). The commission was led by bishops and cardinals, including a Polish bishop named Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II. (The Polish government did not allow Wojtyla to attend meetings.) They were assisted by scientists, theologians—including Protestants, whose church had ended its own opposition to contraception three decades earlier—and even several lay couples. One of them, Patty and Patrick Crowley from Chicago, carried letters and stories from Catholic women worn out by multiple pregnancies, medical problems, and the financial burdens of raising large families. The commission deliberated for two years, amid much anticipation from the faithful.
The Vatican’s position on birth control has long held something of a paradox: Catholics are encouraged to plan their families, to bear only the number of children they can afford, and to consider the impact of family size on a community and the planet. In recent years, under Pope Benedict XVI, the church has also made a major push to embrace environmental stewardship. Yet Catholicism has also been the most intransigent of the world’s religions on the subject of contraception, alone in denying its use even to married couples.
This may have made some theological sense in the first century of Christianity, when Jesus’ followers believed he would return in their lifetime: Their mission was to prepare for the Second Coming by devoting themselves to the worship of God. Sex, they believed, was a distraction. The good life was best lived in celibacy—even in marriage. When the wait for the Second Coming evaporated, the belief that sex for its own sake was sinful did not, and abstinence remained the ideal.
Yet by the first half of the 20th century, change seemed to be in the air. In 1930, Pius XII issued the encyclical (papal letter) Casti Connubii (“on chaste wedlock”), which acknowledged that couples could seek pleasure in their sexual relations, so long as the act was still linked to procreation. Then, in 1966, Paul VI’s birth control commission presented its preliminary report to the pope. It held big news: The body had overwhelmingly voted to recommend lifting the prohibition on contraceptives. (The former Archbishop of Brussels, Cardinal Leo Suenens, went so far as to say the church needed to confront reality and avoid another “Galileo case.”)
Catholics rejoiced, and many began using the pill at once. But their hopes were dashed when, in July 1968, Paul VI released an encyclical titled Humanae Vitae (“on human life”), reaffirming the contraceptive ban. It turned out that three dissenting bishops on the commission had privately gone to plead with the pope: If the position on contraceptives was changed, they said, the teaching authority of the church would be questioned—the faithful could no longer trust the hierarchy.
Ironically, it was the prohibition on contraception that would help erode the church’s power with European and American Catholics. Laypeople overwhelmingly disregarded it, and bishops throughout Europe undermined it with statements reassuring couples to “follow their consciences.” American bishops were more circumspect, but a survey of Catholic priests in the early ’70s showed that about 60 percent of them believed the prohibition was wrong. Father Andrew Greeley, a noted sociologist, traces the decline in church membership and even vocations to the priesthood in the mid-1970s to Catholics’ disillusionment with the church’s integrity on birth control.
The church then turned its attention to Africa and Latin America—where bishops were more dependent on the Vatican for support, and Catholics, it was thought, were more traditional in their views of marriage and sexuality. The Vatican was able to keep the flock wary of modern birth control in part by linking it to colonialism: The West, the argument went, wanted to control poor people and reduce their numbers, instead of addressing the causes of their poverty.
A Congressional Research Service report on the 1994 United Nations population conference in Cairo recounts the church’s decades-long fight against population and family planning aid: “The Vatican…has sought support for its views from the developing world by accusing the West of ‘biological colonialism’ in promoting family planning programs and has sought allies in the fundamentalist Islamic nations of Libya and Iran.” (In this endeavor, it had the support of the Reagan and Bush administrations, which battled global family planning efforts seen as Trojan horses for abortion rights.)
The birth control-equals-colonialism argument was undercut, however, at the 1994 conference, when the UN for the first time framed the right to reproductive health as a human right. The shift was unwelcome news inside the Vatican—where the conservative Pope John Paul II had begun to dismantle some of the reforms of the ’60s—and it hardened the church’s resolve. Suddenly, opposition to contraception became almost as high a priority as battling abortion. At the UN, the Holy See announced that if family planning were designated as a part of primary health care—a designation that would define the terms of international aid for churches and NGOs.
Off Topic but it resonates, at least in my mind:
“Dallas School Girls Excluded From ‘Red Tails’ Movie Screening, Bussed Thousands Of Boys To Event”
“DALLAS — When 5,700 fifth-grade boys in Dallas’ public schools recently went to see a movie about black fighter pilots in World War II, the girls stayed in school and saw a different movie instead.
One of the pilots is among those asking why.
A spokesman for the Dallas Independent School District said officials took only boys to see “Red Tails” Thursday because space at the movie theater was limited. Jon Dahlander told The Dallas Morning News that leaders of the district also thought boys would enjoy the movie more than girls.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/schoolgirls-excluded-from_0_n_1269742.html
————-
One has to wonder if the “would enjoy” is really “should enjoy” in their minds: boys should enjoy airplane movies and girls should enjoy more genteel forms of competition. It’s all part of the same skewed mindset IMO,
Dr. McHugh, you said a mouthful. Getting rid of employer based insurance system is important. But what’s makes us think these culture war reactionaries, really power crazed cultists, wont stop until they try to seize control of the system in all it’s aspects, including elective government.
Obama, as usual, is the easy political target, and he plays his clueless role really well most of the time.
Be that as it may, it is hard not to see the arrogance of this Catholic bishops/Republican political alliance (with the useful idiot liberal dems chiming in) as also serving to distract, really overpower, the outrage within the mass of Catholics who are disgusted at the moral bankruptcy of the hierarchy.
As a Catholic physician, I think the best way for women’s rights to be protected is to get rid of employer-based health care. That way the beliefs of the all male leaders of the Roman Catholic Church would have no influence on the type of medical coverage that a woman would want or need.
In my view, the Pope and other members of the hierarchy are deliberately not respecting the “sense of the faithful”.
The majority of Catholics have not accepted the decision of the Popes on contraception, ever since it was forced on the faithful, after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. A decision not accepted by the faithful need not be followed, according to Roman Catholic policy.
Sadly, the Popes, cardinals, and bishops are laws unto themselves.
Many of the American bishops are catering to the Republicans, since the Republicans are the people with the most money and therefore, the most power.
I believe that the bishops are doing all they can to get rid of President Obama. The American bishops do not want to be made accountable for the worldwide sexual abuse of innocent children by predator clergy, that they have been guilty of protecting, by the abuse of their power.
We Catholics have been blind to the ruthlessness and duplicity of the Pope and many other members of the hierarchy.
It is time for them to be made accountable for the harm that they have done to innocent children, by their arrogance and abuse of power.
I know that there are good priests and bishops in the Roman Catholic Church, but they do not have the courage to speak up, since they want to keep their jobs.
Sincerely, Dr Rosemary Eileen McHugh, Chicago
@ FDL:
” . . . the Conference of Catholic Bishops has figured out how the Obama Administration has either cleverly or by fumbling finessed the contraception insurance coverage issue while exposing the Bishops to the charge their demands are more about using government to restrict women’s rights than violating the moral conscience of a bunch of old men.”
http://my.firedoglake.com/scarecrow/2012/02/11/bishops-still-want-to-take-away-eves-apple/
And Digby also digs in; here’s a bit, but the whole post sears:
” . . . I would go even further and question why I should care about the delicate sensibilities of these allegedly liberal Catholic elites who hypocritically use birth control themselves and yet insist their Church be able to use it as a political cudgel on behalf of the most retrograde reactionaries in our political system.”
[snip]
“This is the fundamental nature of the battle between enlightened liberalism and reactionary conservatism, always has been. In this case it’s a very explicit battle for women. But it’s not confined to women. Everyone should be concerned that this understanding of “liberty” is going to expand to allow any elite property owner whether religious or simply wealthy to opt out of community responsibility whenever it threatens their hegemony in their “private” sphere.”
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/02/immoral-actors-matt-stoller-breaks.html
It sounds like some just need a little more loving than others. Give them your respect and know that they know not any better.
Why the Contraception Mandate Matters
http://www.aclu.org/blog/reproductive-freedom/why-contraception-mandate-matters
Excerpt;
Lately the water cooler conversations at my religiously affiliated nonprofit social service agency have been focused on trying to understand the new HHS contraceptive mandate. My younger, female coworkers and enlightened male coworkers are giddy with anticipation. For as long as any of us have been working here, we haven’t been able to get coverage for our birth control and have even had to struggle to get our employer to cover contraception prescribed for conditions like polycystic fibrosis, and dysmenorrhea.
When a coworker with a cancer-causing condition needed contraception, she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t afford the medication out-of-pocket with her meager nonprofit salary. I called our HR Director on her behalf. It took weeks to get an answer. Meanwhile my coworker couldn’t fill her prescription and her condition got worse. Recently I found out that another coworker has been paying $90 a month out-of-pocket for the contraception she needs to treat her polycystic fibrosis.
HR then told us that we would have to ask permission of the agency’s CEO on a case-by-case basis. It reminded me of when I first got my period at age 12. My cramps were so bad that my pediatrician recommended low-dose contraception. My non-Catholic mother said that my very Catholic father might not allow it and that I would need to ask him for permission. The only difference here is that we are not young girls and the CEO is not our father.
I pursued my coworker’s issue with our agency’s lawyer. She acknowledged that the agency had to cover the contraception in this situation, and she finally intervened and informed HR that they needed to cover it. A year later, I too needed to get contraception for dysmenorrhea, so when I asked for coverage I ended up in battle with a male HR employee that knew nothing about the earlier situation. It was embarrassing to have to reveal my medical condition to him. The ground I thought I covered last year had been lost it seemed, making it a continuously frustrating battle.
When I finally got a clear answer, I requested that the agency develop a protocol and send it out to our thousands of staff throughout the city. They refused.
When Bishops Become Bullies
by Charlotte Taft
February 8, 2012
http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/08/when-bishops-become-bullies
The arrogance of the 350 Bishops of the US Catholic Church is mind-boggling. Though they are facing bankruptcy in many states because of the shameful tradition of priests molesting children, they still have the nerve to claim a right to make moral decisions for women. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) argued that birth control should not even be included as a part of necessary preventive health care, even though available birth control is essential for healthy women and healthy families. Since the Bishops lost that ridiculous argument, they now demand the right to impose their archaic, anti-woman and anti-family views on people who happen to work at Catholic hospitals and Universities.
What is at stake is the availability of preventive contraceptive services that will be available to employees under the Affordable Health Care Act. There are already approximately 335,000 churches and houses of worship that are not required to provide birth control services for their employees because of religious exemption. Now the Bishops claim that their religion also exempts them from providing preventive health care services to the millions of employees at Catholic hospitals and Universities, many of whom are not even Catholic! These employees and their families have the same right to preventive health care as all other Americans.
The fact is that the Catholic Bishops can’t even convince their own parishioners to follow their unrealistic rules—98 percent of Catholics use birth control and many have chosen abortion. Catholic schools and hospitals get Federal funds—-your tax dollars and mine—but they don’t want to play by the same rules as everyone else. In this economy it is ridiculous to argue that only devout Catholics work at Catholic institutions. The one million people who work at Catholic hospitals and the 2 million who work at Catholic Universities and their dependent families have the right to make their own moral decisions about their private lives. When the Catholic Church hires non-Catholics it has to recognize that these people have a right to their own religious freedom. The Catholic Church is not only the Bishops. It is made up of millions of Americans, the majority of whom agree that women should be able to get affordable birth control through their workplace.
It is time for the women of America to say no to the bullying of a tiny group of men who will never know what it means to make tough choices about pregnancy; or have a baby; or raise a child; or scramble to care for a family. Catholic women may love their Church, but even they know when it has lost touch with real life. The rest of us demand the freedom to follow our own consciences.
U.S. Catholic Bishops Major Force Behind War on Women
Statement of NOW President Terry O’Neill
2/23/11
http://www.now.org/press/02-11/02-23.html
The collusion of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has led to an open declaration of war on the women of this country. The bishops have long sought to enshrine into law those policies of the Catholic Church that subordinate women. And they don’t care how badly women get hurt in the process.
In the last election, the bishops helped to elect legislators that would do their bidding, which includes enacting dangerous and discriminatory bills denying women safe, accessible and affordable abortion care and family planning, even encouraging hospitals to let women die in the name of ‘life.’
A recent poll shows abortion ‘barely registers’ among voter priorities, and yet Speaker Boehner has declared barring federal funding for abortion care a ‘highest priority’ — responding not to the call of his constituents but to the demands of the bishops. And it turns out abortion isn’t the only target, as evidenced by their stunningly dangerous efforts that, if enacted, can and will result in the preventable deaths of women:
The proposed continuing resolution passed by the House to temporarily keep the government functioning would zero out Title X family planning, which has never covered abortion care. Should this gain traction in the Senate, millions of women, the vast majority of whom have incomes of less than $11,000 per year, will lose access to pap smears, testing for sexually transmitted infections, and contraception. It is a public health nightmare — but a dream-come-true for the Catholic bishops.
HR 358, which many are calling the ‘Let the Women Die Act’ not only brings back Rep. Joe Pitts’ (R-Pa.) rejected Stupak-Pitts proposition from health care reform, but also encourages providers to refuse training, performance and even referral of abortion care. This bill gives our government’s ‘blessing’ to any emergency room that would let a pregnant woman die rather than perform an abortion procedure that could save her life.
HR 3, also known as ‘Stupak on Steroids,’ would enshrine the Hyde Amendment into law and expand it to impose tax penalties on millions of families and businesses whose private insurance covers abortion care, thereby expanding the scope of Internal Revenue Service audits to the area between women’s legs. In testifying in favor of this bill in committee, a representative from the Catholic bishops proudly supported revoking abortion rights even in cases of rape. You read that right — and isn’t that rich, coming from the very men who have consistently protected sexually abusive priests?
And HR 217, which NOW has dubbed the ‘Public Health Nightmare Act,’ would permanently eliminate Title X family planning services, leaving millions of women and men stranded without essential services like birth control, cancer screenings and screenings for HIV/AIDS and STDs.
Pro-life? Hardly.
Not only are these assaults on women’s rights at odds with generally accepted medical practice and flatly unethical, there is little doubt that they will kill women.
The National Organization for Women is fighting back against these efforts in coalition with our allies and women’s health advocates across the country. We also renew our demand that the federal government require the all-male and violently anti-woman U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops follow the same lobbying and disclosure requirements that currently apply to everyone else.
The Rubio Bill Would Allow Any Employer to Take Away Women’s Insurance Coverage of Contraception, Harming the Health of Women and Their Families
National Women’s law Center
2/9/12
http://www.nwlc.org/resource/rubio-bill-would-allow-any-employer-take-away-women%E2%80%99s-insurance-coverage-contraception-harm
Excerpt:
The Rubio Bill Removes the Affordable Care Act’s Guarantee that Insurance Plans Will Cover Key Preventive Health Care By Exempting Any Type of Company and Entity From the Obligation to Provide Contraception
Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Department of Health and Human Services has required that all new health plans must cover certain “preventive services” for women without cost-sharing, including contraceptives, except for specific religious entities (estimated to be over 330,000 houses of worship). The Rubio Bill removes the guarantee by allowing “any individual or entity opposed by reason of religious belief” to refuse to provide any coverage of a contraceptive or sterilization service. Any employer could deny its employee insurance coverage of contraception based on its religious belief. Any group plan could refuse to include these services. The result of the bill is that millions of women would lose their right to any coverage for these vital preventive health services, even a woman who faces a life-threatening circumstance were she to become pregnant. This right to refuse applies whether the company or other entity or individual has any connection to a religious organization or whether its employees share the same religious beliefs. This could mean, for example, that any for-profit corporation whose CEO opposes contraception based on his own religious beliefs could deny all coverage of contraception services to the company’s employees.
The Rubio Bill Discriminates Against Women, Endangering Their Health
The Rubio Bill singles out a basic health care service – contraception – that women need to protect the health of themselves and their family. As recognized by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the exclusion of prescription contraception from health insurance unfairly disadvantages women by singling out for unfavorable treatment a health insurance need that only women have. And 28 states require coverage of contraception in health insurance.
Failure to cover contraception forces women to bear higher health care costs to avoid pregnancy, and exposes women to unique physical, economic and emotional consequences that can result from unintended pregnancy. The ability to plan a pregnancy can prevent a range of pregnancy complications that can endanger a woman’s health, including gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, and placental problems, among others. Contraception is also critical to helping women achieve healthy pregnancies. Women who wait for some time after delivery before conceiving their next child lower their risk of adverse perinatal outcomes, including low birth weight, preterm birth, and small-for-size gestational age. These important health outcomes are among the reasons the independent, nonprofit Institute of Medicine recommended including contraception as a required preventive service under the ACA. Moreover, some women use contraception for reasons other than birth control, such as regulation of cycles and endometriosis. Similarly, sterilization can be medically appropriate for women who would face a life-threatening condition were they to become pregnant. By allowing any individual or entity to take away women’s right to this critical health care, the Rubio Bill threatens the health of women and their families.