Birth control has been the topic du jour for the past week. I let that topic whizz by without comment, because I thought it was such a stupid debate that we couldn't possibly be talking about it a week later. In this day and age, not even the most conservative types have a problem with birth control, I thought. Wrong-o.
We're still talking about it. And I still don't know what to say, because it is such a no brainer for me. Part of me thinks that the best way to deal with stupidity is to just ignore it. To engage in this debate just gives the opposition more steam. I think I'll just link to others, but feel free to add comments to this post.
I liked Maureen Dowd's response.
Apt. 11d 
As a conservative I don’t have a problem with birth control BUT I have a problem with religious organizations being forced to provide it. That seems to be the proper debate.
(P.S. Most blogs have an option to get emails when other people comment. It saves you from checking back constantly. I would leave more comments here if that were a feature.)
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It saves you from checking back constantly.
If you aren’t checking back constantly, you’ve got nothing to do but work.
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It isn’t at all a no-brainer. There has been ample discussion of this elsewhere, but to recap:
1. Small, routine expenses do not belong in insurance policies and serve only to explode insurance costs. Toothpaste, fluoride rinse, mouthwash, toothbrushes, floss, Neosporin, bandaids, hydrocortisone cream, cough syrup, TUMS, Zantac, hemorrhoid cream, Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, cough drops, sunblock, bug spray, after bite and a host of other over-the-counter items are vital for health and comfort, but it would be madness to demand that they be run through the insurance system. I thought we were trying to get a lid on health insurance.
2. Sandra Fluke’s numbers for the cost of contraception were ridiculous. She treated a maximum expense as a minimum and claimed that it cost Georgetown students $1,000 a year to pay for birth control. Many people did the research and found that a nearby Target offers birth control pills for $9 a month and that Walmart offers BC for $4 a month. Now, there are more expensive formulations, but if I’m discussing the price of bread, I should at least mention the $3 store brands rather than talking as if the only bread available were artisanal loaves.
3. Insured stuff should come with co-pays to limit frivolous use. The HHS policy wants birth control and sterilization to come without co-pays. Why the special exception? Why not no co-pays for asthma medication or other life-saving drugs?
4. And speaking of co-pays, I was on birth control pills for about a month this fall while fighting off a case of anemia. Anyway, I can’t recall the cost, but my husband tells me that it was so cheap that it didn’t qualify for our insurance, because the cost was under the co-pay amount. It might have even been just $8 for two month’s worth. This is a 50-year-old technology. It’s dirt cheap.
5. There are many different ways that the Obama administration could have done this without treading on Catholic toes. For instance, BC expenses could easily be run through an HSA.
6. The Obama administration compromise position is a nonsensical shell game.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/returntorome/2012/02/hhs-compromise-is-unacceptable-says-former-vatican-ambassador-catholic-university-of-america-president-and-others/
Also, because many Catholic institutions self-insure, it makes little sense to say that the insurance company, not the Catholic institution, will be paying, since there is only one entity, not two.
7. There was a recent 9-0 church/state Supreme Court case decided against the administration. Going to the Supreme Court, you never know what is going to happen, but there’s an excellent chance of the Obama administration getting slapped down again.
http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/hosanna-tabor-evangelical-lutheran-church-and-school-v-eeoc/
The Hosanna-Tabor case related to a church school employee, so the Supremes will probably not be friendly to the administration argument that Catholic schools do not qualify for religious exemptions.
7. Lastly, and most importantly, the HHS regulations are a violation of our basic 1st Amendment constitutional rights. There is no constitutional right to free contraception. There is a constitutional right to the free practice of religion.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
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Leaving aside the issues with the Catholic church, I think much of the discussion this last week showed how quickly many people (not all, though) claiming to focus on freedom of religion moved to slut-shaming. Believing in a particular interpretation of the first amendment doesn’t require one to label women who use birth control or would like it to be economically affordable “sluts.”
I think it was also telling to see how many people (again, not all but a significant number) arguing about freedom of religion were older men who already espoused extremely conservative ideas about women and their lives–i.e. participation in the workforce, women are the gatekeepers of sex (aspirin between your knees, etc.).
Arguing that women should bear the whole responsibility (moral and economic) for sex and its consequences never gets old–it’s been going on for thousands of years.
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I personally think women and the new moving picture shows should share responsibility.
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As a Canadian I don’t quite get the whole debate exactly (although our drug plans are employer insurance based.)
But it seems to me that as a Calvinist Protestant by heritage (not by practice), unemployment is the sign of the devil’s work, plus everything is pre-ordained, so if I were to start a company, I would expect to be able to opt out of unemployment insurance benefits.
Or maybe gluttony being a sin in the Catholic Church they should opt out of paying for anything where obesity raises your risk factors, like diabetes and heart disease. Forget covering expensive heart attacks.
Except oh wait, male priests get those.
This is just another attack on women’s right to determine their own reproductive destiny. I have *no issue* with Catholic churches preaching against birth control or Catholics not using birth control. Knock yourself out (or up).
But let’s not pretend that out of the many, many many things that government law mandates employers to do this is the only one that somehow touches on religious views. No. It’s just that this one touches on women having sex.
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Regarding the cost of BC: it seemed a little high to me, too, but I’ve always paid co-pays or got it from Planned Parenthood. I don’t have any idea what the cost would be for someone non-insured. I also wouldn’t count on it being available dirt-cheap if insurance companies don’t pay for it, also. Supply, demand, morally corrupt pharmaceutical companies…. do the math.
Asthma meds should be paid for/cheaper. Why? It’s preventative. Just like birth control. Tylenol is pain management, not a preventative. Taking Tylenol doesn’t prevent further costs down the line, though you could argue the ibuprofen for my cramps does prevent violence on my part.
Birth control and asthma meds and hell, even my lisinopril are preventative and work to cut costs in the long term. It’s more expensive (from an insurance company’s standpoint) to 1. manage a pregnancy, 2. treat pneumonia, which is what my son gets whenever we fail as parents during asthma season, or 3. treat a stroke, which is what I’ll have if I don’t keep my BP under control.
Regarding Mike’s comments about not wanting to pay for birth control, well, sorry. We live in a democracy, and we all pay for things we don’t like. I don’t want my tax dollars to pay for any injuries you get in a car accident because you were just driving somewhere unnecessarily polluting the atmosphere instead of using your car only to get to work or church. And you should get off your fat butt and walk or bike to the grocery store if you need food. You can use a backpack and a cart to transport your groceries, and you probably eat too much anyway because most people in the US are obese. What? You don’t like me telling you what to do for your own good and because it benefits me financially and accommodates my moral opposition to driving cars unnecessarily? Well, boo frickin’ hoo.
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And you should get off your fat butt and walk or bike to the grocery store if you need food.
I wear out three or four pairs of shoes a year, but those aren’t covered by insurance. (I haven’t gotten thinner, but I have gotten faster.) Drawing the line between what is covered and what isn’t is going to be very contentious in the current climate. It’s going to get much worse once the backloaded cost-control provisions of HCR are supposed to be enacted.
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In her testimony, Fluke mainly discussed women who need the pill because of medical disorders. When you need it for a medical disorder, you may have to take a more expensive version of the pill.
Some commenters have said that the Church covers the pill in those circumstances. But she discussed that, too. One of the women had tried to get the pill covered for medical reasons, was asked to prove it, and even when her doctor explained, still denied. I’ve taken the pill for such reasons (instead of surgery) and so that could have been me, if I worked at a Catholic university!I shouldn’t have to prove to my employers that I’m not a slut in order to get treatment.
I’ve also seen commenters saying–as if they know all about women’s reproductive health–that there are always other medical treatments than the pill. But if I and my doctor think it’s the best treatment, then other people’s uninformed medical opinions–including those of my employers–should not come into it.
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What they (the employers) take to be a slut, that is.
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Btw, you know what I also support spending taxpayer dollars on? Vasectomies. Please. More of these.
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I can’t imagine anybody running for office wants men to walk into the voting booth associating their name with groin-stabbing, regardless of how the men feel about that particular reason for groin-stabbing.
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Sometimes I wonder if Amy isn’t secretly a computer program in with right wing viewpoints are spouted out irrespective of their relevance.
1. Small, routine expenses do not belong in insurance policies and serve only to explode insurance costs.
That is ludicrous. The expense is not comparable to toothpaste. Also, preventive medicines should all be encouraged.
Check out “The Price of Birth Control.”
http://priceofbc.clearhealthcosts.com/
Many types of birth control can be $60/month or more. $720 per year is not “Neosporin.”
2. Sandra Fluke’s numbers for the cost of contraception were ridiculous.
This is a red herring. It is not ridiculous if you are a woman who requires one of the expensive types of birth control. And, despite your incorrect claims to the contrary, no one is getting birth control for $4 per month. (see link, above) If there are a few exceptions who are, then they are exceptions and should not be the basis for health care policy.
Any reasonable range of health care costs would make clear that this is not a minimal expense.
3. Insured stuff should come with co-pays to limit frivolous use.
This is so batshit insane, I don’t even know how to respond to it. Unless I’m missing the rash of post-menopausal nuns lining up for the free birth control pills due to lack of co-pay, or there was a “very special episode” of that TV show about 6 year olds in beauty pageants, no one is using birth control “frivolously.”
4. This is a 50-year-old technology. It’s dirt cheap.
No. In most cases it is not. (See above.)
5. There are many different ways that the Obama administration could have done this without treading on Catholic toes.
Like a single payer government plan that doesn’t base health care eligibility on where you happen to be employed? If only we had listened to the Catholics when they proposed this idea . . .
6. The Obama administration compromise position is a nonsensical shell game.
Luckily, most women don’t believe that trying to protect their health is nonsensical.
7. There was a recent 9-0 church/state Supreme Court case decided against the administration.
A challenge to the mandate would go 9-0 for the government. No one is really claiming that the requirement violates the First Amendment — they are just using that language to try to score points. (See below)
7. Lastly, and most importantly, the HHS regulations are a violation of our basic 1st Amendment constitutional rights. There is no constitutional right to free contraception. There is a constitutional right to the free practice of religion.
Assumedly, this is one of those First Amendment doctrines that only apply to Christians. Or does it also protect North African Muslim men with multiple wives who want to move here and practice polygamy? (“There is no constitutional right to monogamy. There is a constitutional right to the free practice of religion.”) Or Rastafarians who want to grow, distribute, and use illegal drugs?
Far from being “most important,” this is a position that no actual person holds.
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Or Rastafarians who want to grow, distribute, and use illegal drugs?
I think the Rastafarians only want to grow, distribute and use one illegal drug. The Native American Church has had some legal success with another.
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That was under the RFRA — a statute — not the First Amendment.
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They don’t share with white people anyway.
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There’s a nice summary of the law on religious exemptions from government rules and regulations at Justia:
http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/17-free-exercise-exemption.html
It boils down to technical legal language, but two keys points are that 1) the government is not allowed to inquire into the reason for the religious belief in determining whether the law is valid — i.e. the government doesn’t get to decide whether it’s a core value of the religion 2) the government has to provide a compelling interesting in applying the law to everyone.
In a case concerning the Amish, providing 2 more years of education to children was not considered a compelling interst, while requiring everyone to participate in social security was:
“The Court’s formulation was whether the limitation on religious exercise was “essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest.” 455 U.S. at 257-58. Accord, Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U.S. 680, 699-700 (1989) (any burden on free exercise imposed by disallowance of a tax deduction was “justified by the ‘broad public interest in maintaining a sound tax system’ free of ‘myriad exceptions flowing from a wide variety of religious beliefs”’).”
So Shandra, you’re “unemployment insurance” exemption has probably already been litigated. I honestly don’t know how the supreme court would rule on whether the government has a compelling interest in requiring the provision of particular medications and I suspect we’re going to end up having a chance to get the answer.
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Just to get a cost out there, I pay a $20 copay for the generic version of my BC. And to throw another thing out there, Viagra is covered by health insurance as are many other things that are in the grey area of quality of life/preventative/treament for a condition. I’m not going to deny a man his Viagra just because I might think having an erection isn’t that important. It’s none of my business. And it’s none of my business whether someone is taking BC because she simply wants to not get pregnant vs. taking it for medical reasons.
Also, no one in this conversation has mentioned couples and their BC choices. It’s as if every woman who takes BC is a) single and b) a slut. Is a woman in a committed relationship, even a marriage, a slut for taking BC? I think Santorum would say yes.
The whole thing is maddening, imho.
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And it’s none of my business whether someone is taking BC because she simply wants to not get pregnant vs. taking it for medical reasons.
In my book, not wanting to get pregnant qualifies as a “medical reason.”
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I heard an interesting argument the other day. It was this — the vast majority of people using birth control are not doing so because they have a medical condition. Rather, it’s so they can engage in the recreation of having sex without procreation. If the government is now in the business of subsidizing recreational activities, then it should also be asked to:
1. buy people beer who would rather go to a bar than have sex
2. buy me a piano since I enjoy music
3. build me a pool since my favorite recreation is swimming.
I think the point of the argument is that asking someone else to fund your condoms is different than asking someone else to fund your chemotherapy.
As a political scientist, I’d like to add that states fund health care so that they can have a strong society so that they can have a military, at least according to some people. Funding people’s recreational sexual pursuits actually has nothing to do with health as a component of national security. There’s no relationship.
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You know what else completely is not a health problem? Pregnant people who want to have babies. I mean, they don’t have a disease or a condition . . . they actually planned to do it and then they did it! And then the pregnant woman can’t get sent into combat and strengthen our military, because I think pregnant women have trouble carrying the really big guns.
But you know what IS a big medical problem? Having a big old fetus in your body when you don’t want one there! And you really want to get it out so that you can join the military and kill some Commies!
So, I’m happy to entertain any “interesting arguments” against covering birth control that also include not covering planned pregnancy but provide full coverage for abortion. Otherwise, it’s just post hoc making up reasons to get to the result you want.
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I thought Rastafarians were usually calm.
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Not if you violate their First Amendment rights by taking away their ganja.
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Nobody will sell me any. I look too much like a cop.
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I do agree that the exempting birth control on religious grounds would allow a religious grounds exemption for avoiding the requirement to cover anything. Then, we’d be arguing about whether there’s a compelling government interest in requiring coverage for birth control v pregnancy v mammograms v ritalin v whatever. My guess is that a court wouldn’t really allow that argument because it would be too fact based for a court decision (and, instead, the legislature would be given broad power to decide what a compelling government interest in providing access to a particular health care service is).
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Imagine wanting to have sex for the simple pleasure of the undertaking. What a shameful and unAmerican attitude!
The more I follow American politics and mores, the more relieved I am that I got a job in Canada and didn’t have to move back to my home country. There may be some wacky ideologies here, but they’re not nearly so influential as they are south of the border.
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What about Christian Scientists? Would’t the morality argument in the bill permit Christian Scientist business owners to opt out of permitting insurance for blood transfusions (among other things)?
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Okay, I’ve only read comments by MH, because the comment size fits my attention span tonight.
Why does no one talk about other medical decisions that other religions prohibit? So let’s say Christian Scientists own my place of work and they don’t want their insurance to cover vaccinations and blood transfusions? Is everyone on the right still saying this is acceptable under religious freedom?
Anyone can claim anything is “against their religion” (my kids do frequently when I ask them to eat salmon or clean their rooms) and ask to have it exempted from their insurance policies.
Aargh. I now see Julie G made the same point. Well, my comment took too long to type, so I’m leaving it.
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Ok, some talking points:
1) ALL the things Amy mentioned are OTC. Hormonal BC isn’t. It’s a prescription medication. Insurance usually doesn’t pay for OTC things. It usually does pay for regularly taken prescription medication.
2) BC pills are not interchangeable. They’re different formulations of hormones and not all women can use all of them. In fact, a very large proportion of women can only use a tiny minority of them (one or two brands). There are very negative adverse reactions to taking a type that doesn’t agree with you. (Suicidal ideation, blood clots and heart attacks being some of the most extreme, more normal is mild-severe depression, loss of libido, constant spotting, chronic yeast infections, sometimes weird hair growth etc.) It doesn’t matter if there’s some hypothetical BC pill that’s $10/month if the one you need is $150/month. It’s like anti-depressants. You need one that works with your body chemistry, not the one Republicans mandate you take because you’re poor.
3) A vast majority of BC pills are very expensive (well over $50/month out of pocket.) Health care clinics at schools and PP used to be able to distribute it more cheaply, but Republicans passed a law around 2007-ish banning BC subsidies to these organizations. Around that time I used a generic which cost me, on a sliding scale (I was well below the poverty line) from PP, $70/month. On my mother’s insurance when I had been in college, it was $35/month co-pay. This brings me to my next point:
4) I took hormonal BC long before I had sex, to treat an ovarian cyst and dysmenorrhea. At that age (20), a majority of my friends were 1) on BC pills and 2) had gone on for medical reasons. It’s pretty much the ONLY treatment (besides surgery) for a long list of reproductive-organ related lady ailments and hormonal imbalances (like PCOS) in reproductive-age ladies, and it’s one of the few that doesn’t necessarily impact long term fertility. Instead of hormonal BC, I could have had surgery to have my cyst, or worst case senario, my ovary removed, like Ms. Fluke’s friend. However, I want children, and I didn’t want to have my fertility permanently impaired at age 20 for a highly treatable condition. To make it even more confusing, women can take it for 2 reasons, both medical and contraceptive!
5) Women are not the only ones who benefit from BC. Men, and on a bigger level, society also benefits. People are making it out like it’s some luxury for women, like facials, or a spa treatment. However, I’d imagine most men don’t want to support 14 children any more than women want to give birth to them. The idea that married people should have as many children as God gives them is, AFAIK, as unappealing to non-fundamentalist men as it is to non-fundamentalist women. Moreover, the idea that people should be churning out as many babies as possible regardless of whether they can afford them as a policy kind of boggles the mind, and is in direct conflict with the idea of small government and decreasing the welfare state (unless your idea of an ideal society is India, with huge impoverished families begging in the street.) Private companies subsidizing fertile women to NOT pop out a baby every year seems like a pretty good return on the money, much better than treating an elderly stroke or cancer patient, but if we started squalling about our insurance premiums indirectly ‘subsidizing’ your grandma’s chemo treatments, we’d be called callous and heartless.
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“I also wouldn’t count on it being available dirt-cheap if insurance companies don’t pay for it, also. Supply, demand, morally corrupt pharmaceutical companies…. do the math.”
Walmart sells BC for $4 a month–cash, no insurance involved. The reason it’s so cheap is that it’s a 50-year-old medical technology and has gone into generics years ago. There are newer, more expensive formulations, but those are the ones that haven’t gone to generic yet.
This guy makes an interesting point about the effect of the new guidelines on generics vs. the newer formulations:
“The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requires health-insurance companies provide contraceptive coverage for all “FDA approved contraceptive methods.” It does not insist on generics. And it does not offer any cost containment.
“What’s more, the mandate prevents health-insurance companies from having copays or deductibles for the benefit. This is the perfect set up for Big Pharma. Since the drugs will be paid for by a third party (insurance companies, who will pass the cost on to employers and the rest of us), the consumer won’t worry about the price.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/02/peter-schweizer-big-pharma-s-role-in-the-contraception-debate.html
We need more, not less consumer sensitivity to medical prices, so whatever your opinion on the other issues involved, this is a move in the wrong direction for health care as a whole.
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Ragtime says:
“That is ludicrous. The expense is not comparable to toothpaste. Also, preventive medicines should all be encouraged.”
If you sum up all of the over-the-counter stuff you buy regularly, I think you would be surprised how high it adds up. Individually, any particular item is inexpensive, but it adds up.
When I was on BC for anemia last fall, the funny thing was that the over-the-counter iron pills (Slow-FE) that I was taking at the same time were actually considerably more expensive than the prescription BC. The iron pills were $20 for 60 pills, and I was taking two a day, so that was $20 for the month.
Interestingly, the Feds are now making over-the-counter medications ineligible for payment via HSA. That’s a mistake, I think, and very nasty to poor people who can’t be popping into doctors’ offices all the time.
“HSA funds may currently be used to pay for qualified medical expenses at any time without federal tax liability or penalty. However, beginning in early 2011 OTC (over the counter) medications cannot be paid with HSA dollars without a doctor’s prescription.[3]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_savings_account
‘There are many different ways that the Obama administration could have done this without treading on Catholic toes.’
“Like a single payer government plan that doesn’t base health care eligibility on where you happen to be employed? If only we had listened to the Catholics when they proposed this idea . . .”
The funny thing is that you don’t realize that the US bishops have been pushing for national health care for literally decades now. The US bishops, if you’d just leave them alone, would love to be good Democrats just like mom and dad and grandma and grandpa in the old days. That’s part of the pathos of the situation–they didn’t expect Obama to betray them.
“Assumedly, this is one of those First Amendment doctrines that only apply to Christians. Or does it also protect North African Muslim men with multiple wives who want to move here and practice polygamy? (“There is no constitutional right to monogamy. There is a constitutional right to the free practice of religion.”) Or Rastafarians who want to grow, distribute, and use illegal drugs?”
Up until 15 minutes ago, there was no religious liberty issue with regard to Catholic schools and hospitals and birth control and sterilization. The Obama administration created this out of whole cloth. They could have left Catholics alone. This is pure aggression on the part of the administration.
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bj said:
“In a case concerning the Amish, providing 2 more years of education to children was not considered a compelling interst, while requiring everyone to participate in social security was”
There is a clergy exemption to Social Security. See the subheading here: “Employed by a U.S. Church.”
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p54/ch03.html
Julie G.,
Jehovah’s Witnesses are the no-blood transfusion people.
Lisa V says:
“So let’s say Christian Scientists own my place of work and they don’t want their insurance to cover vaccinations and blood transfusions? Is everyone on the right still saying this is acceptable under religious freedom?”
I would. To begin with, I don’t think any employer should be obligated to offer health insurance. A fortiori, I think they should be able to offer any plan they like (my personal preference being plans that encourage prudent medical decision-making by patients and their families, such as a combination HSA/catastrophic plan).
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TO the Canadian poster:
If a business doesn’t want to cover BC, that doesn’t mean that they HATE sex, or that they’re forbidding you to have it. THey’re just saying that they’re not willing to subsidize your decision to have it. That’s an important distinction. No one’s talking about taking away anyone’s freedom here. It’s just a conversation about how society spends its money. How anyone feels about sex should be largely irrelevant to this conversation. What’s important is what an employer is being mandated to cover.
(If you want another particularly ludicrous example, there’s a legal suit somewhere in the Midwest where a high school student was told that her elaborate tattoos and piercings violated the dress code. She responded by suing and claimed that she belonged to a relatively obscure new religion that saw the body as a temple, and required that it be adorned — I kid you not. I think the problem becomes that when one uses religion as a reason for why one doesn’t have to follow the rest of society’s rules, the results could get very interesting. Can I publicly slaughter meat in the courtyard of my apartment building? What if my religion requires it? Some religions require female circumcision. should our tax dollars cover that?)
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Here’s another one for the Canadian.
It’s my understanding that Canada does not provide no co-pay birth control. Is that correct? (I suspect that no co-pay birth control is more the exception than the rule internationally.) Anybody got a list of countries that require this already?
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Up until 15 minutes ago, there was no religious liberty issue with regard to Catholic schools and hospitals and birth control and sterilization.
Amy — Sure there was. Massachusetts has the same requirements in the Romneycare law. But nobody complained about it because it was a Republican idea then. This has always been about politics, not religion.
I kid you not. I think the problem becomes that when one uses religion as a reason for why one doesn’t have to follow the rest of society’s rules, the results could get very interesting.
Louisa — I agree. But I think you forgot whose side you were on.
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But I think you forgot whose side you were on.
Being able to see both sides of a debate well enough to elaborate points on their behalf is generally a good thing.
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Virtually all of these points, on both sides, offer compelling arguments for why we should separate health care access from employment.
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Ragtime said:
“Massachusetts has the same requirements in the Romneycare law. But nobody complained about it because it was a Republican idea then.”
Once something goes federal, it is suddenly a much bigger deal than it used to be. That is very natural. Also, constitutionally speaking, the states have traditionally had much more latitude than the federal government.
I don’t know how things work in Mass, but I’ve heard that in many states that have similar requirements, Catholic entities have work-arounds, such as self-insurance. That’s why Obama’s compromise suggestion that insurance companies (not Catholic institutions) pay for birth control and sterilizations was such a bad joke.
And, as I mentioned earlier, the Catholic hierarchy is traditionally very friendly toward the Democratic party. How you can look at this situation and see politics beats me. There was very strong opposition to the HHS regulation even within the White House itself by such heavy hitters as Joe Biden, Panetta and former chief of staff Bill Daley. Jack Tapper reported on this last month.
““What are we doing here?” asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stepping outside his wheelhouse to ask about a rising storm involving the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. “What’s the point?””
“The debate within the White House on this issue was, sources say, heated, and President Obama was legitimately torn. Panetta wasn’t alone in his concerns. For months, Vice President Joe Biden and then-White House chief of staff Bill Daley argued internally against the rule, sources tell ABC News. Biden and Daley didn’t think the rule was right on either the policy or the politics, sources said. Joshua Dubois, head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, also expressed concern.”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/policy-and-politics-of-contraception-rule-fiercely-debated-within-white-house/
Suze said:
“Virtually all of these points, on both sides, offer compelling arguments for why we should separate health care access from employment.”
Very true.
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The Left’s tone-deafness on this issue stuns me — from the Obama Administration’s wording to Laura’s response here. What different worlds we live in! There’s little sense of just how offensive this mandate is to wide swaths of Americans. Conservatives of any religion are disgusted by this level of government intrusion and by the idea that free birth control is a basic human right that our tax dollars should pay for.
Watching the historical Christian position on bc be attacked so broadly, with special insult to Catholics, offends many who take bcps themselves.
Many pro-life Evangelicals who have no objection to contraception per se won’t use the Pill, because it works partly by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting (a risk which is right in the info packet). And nearly all pro-lifers object to chemical abortions and Plan B, which are also covered by Obama’s mandate. Catholics who take their church teaching on bc seriously are of course, deeply insulted, but there’s a growing percentage of Evangelicals, Mormons, and Orthodox who don’t use contraception — especially not abortifactant methods. This may be hard for liberals to grasp, but when you are pro-life, and really love babies and big families, it’s difficult not to see all of the lefty enthusiasm for birth control as anti-child.
P.S. — I’m not Catholic, but like many of my Protestant friends, I see a local practice of Catholic OB/GYN physicians that doesn’t prescribe birth control pills for medical reasons. There are alternative treatments for painful/heavy periods, for acne, and even for ovarian problems.
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Ugh. I’m not feeling well right now and really should just drink my tea and shut up, but can’t stop myself.
Look. I’m Catholic. And I’m not super conservative Catholic like my parents, but I’m a church goer. Surveys show that most Catholics are in favor of BC.
But that’s neither here nor there. People can be against the pill if they like. I don’t care. People can refuse blood transfusions. People can walk around in funny underwear. People can have sister wives. I honestly don’t care.
Catholic hospitals have to prescribe the pill for the same reason that Catholic colleges are not allowed to discriminate and must follow other federal laws. Because they receive government money in one form or another. If Catholic hospitals really want to do their own thing, FINE. Just stop accepting one cent of Medicare or Medicaid and any other tax dollars. The problem isn’t a church-state line, because there is no line right now.
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“To begin with, I don’t think any employer should be obligated to offer health insurance.”
I agree. I think it’s government’s job to provide single payer coverage for everyone.
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Because they receive government money in one form or another.
That’s is, I think, very likely the reason that so many people who are net recipients of tax dollars are also small government conservatives.
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Laura,
Exactly! No one is asking anyone to do or not do anything they don’t want to. The federal government is merely saying that *if you accept their money, you have to follow their rules.* Apparently on this issue some conservatives are like whiney children who feel that they should be able to take parents’ college tuition money, spend it all on blow, and throw a conniption fit if their parents threaten to cut them off. The easy, obvious, and conservative-friendly answer is for Catholic institutions to refuse government handouts. What this is revealing about this situation is that, rather than being a principled stance towards liberty, it’s that some conservatives love hating women and hypocritically accepting government money more than they love their own principles.
But yes, single payer, government provided health care is another obvious solution to this problem, and one that the Catholic church ought to be able to get behind in terms of values (i.e. helping the poor and sick and needy).
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I don’t know if I’m the Canadian that’s being addressed ’cause Janice is up here too.
BC pills are often free for the under-25 crowd via the local health care centre
After that they are (like most drugs) covered by employers for about 65% of Canadians, so the co-payment varies by the employer’s plan.
However as far as I’m aware employers don’t choose what’s covered specifically like that. Usually Health Canada approves the drug and then the provinces list the drug under the provincial plans (medicare, basically) and the insurance companies fund them the same.
Less cherry-picking, basically.
I don’t have an issue with birth control having co-payment costs. I have an issue with a _company_ deciding not to offer parts of basic health insurance based on religious grounds. Basic insurance means “we cover 80% of the cost of all drugs your doctor decides you need” in this case.
You can frame it as a lifestyle decision all you like but people make lifestyle decisions that impact their health all the time, and yet treatment – preventative and other – is covered. If I have exercise-induced asthma am I supposed to stop? What if I visit my friend who has a cat; am I supposed to not have my inhaler covered?
My husband is Catholic by the way, and we love babies – 12 pregnancies, 9 miscarriages, one infant death and 2 surviving kids later, if I need to toss up my creds as a non-baby-hater.
Maybe infertility gives you a better sense of just how big a deal it is, health-wise, to not be able to make decisions about your reproductive destiny. One unwanted pregnancy is a huge deal, biologically, emotionally and financially.
It also can be a career killer, and I would argue disadvantages women tremendously in the workplace. It’s a biased way of dealing with health insurance, against women.
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Can somebody explain to me where the government money comes into this? Because if it is just the tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, that seems really reaching.
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“No one is asking anyone to do or not do anything they don’t want to. The federal government is merely saying that *if you accept their money, you have to follow their rules.*”
— You and Laura are incorrect here. The HHS mandate applies to *all* employers regardless of whether they accept federal funds.
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But all hospitals do accept federal funds. They accept a lot of them in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, and so on. In 2002, they received $45 b from the government in 2002.
For me, there’s no question that the government absolutely has the legal right to make any sort of restrictions it wants on hospitals that accept public money. The question for me is whether or not we really want to do that.
You can push Catholic hospitals to accept BC and they’ll go along with it, but they won’t go along with abortion. They’ll just shut down the hospitals, which are big money losers anyway. The problem is that no organization will jump in to fill that gap. A hospital in this area went bankrupt and has sat empty for years and years.
There are ways to work around this one. In areas, where a Catholic hospital is the only game in town, then subside a Planned Parenthood to fill the gap. There are ways to work around this one, rather in getting into an all out war.
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Kate Marie,
The BC insurance mandate applies to institutions like Catholic-run universities and hospitals, which receive significant amounts of federal aid, not the Catholic Church itself (which receives significant federal aid through its tax exempt status, but that’s a different matter.) A university or a hospital which doesn’t want to abide by federal laws is totally free not too, however they are not eligible for, say, federal financial aid for students, or medicaid payments, or the tax exempt status of non-profits. This is why the KKK or Bob Jones U did/does not have to comply with, say, federal non-discrimination hiring or application practices.
Any hospital or university which wants to not get money and special treatment from the government is free to do so and not have cover birth control, just like any hospital can stop admitting black patients, they just can’t do it with government (i.e. public) money.
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But all hospitals do accept federal funds.
This isn’t limited to hospitals. It’s any employer.
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MH
Many churches are exempt.
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Churches are exempt because HHS chose to provide a narrow exemption for churches. The mandate itself applies to all employers regardless of federal funding.
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It’s not all about church and state. I saw this on Dan savages site
Consider my email inbox. Consider the letters that pour in daily. Consider how difficult it must be for someone—anyone—to write something—anything—that makes my jaw drop open. So congrats to Pastor Joshua Genig of Atlanta’s Lutheran Church of the Ascension, who nearly caused me to shatter my jaw on my laptop just now. Pastor Genig had wrote this in a post at First Things:
Who is speaking up for the mothers who, under HHS mandate, have been falsely coerced into feeling that to be a woman means to have “control” of their own bodies?
One little HHS mandate was all it took to “falsely” coerce women into believing that they’re not really women if they don’t have control over their own bodies. Such impressionable creatures! So easily lead astray! Someone needs to explain to these confused women that the bodies of real women are controlled by Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum, Bayer Aspirin, Roy Blunt, Pastor Genig, any resident zygotes, and those child-rape-enabling paragons of virtue over at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. (Via Sullivan.)
Hey, look! It’s Pastor Genig’s email address: prgenig@ascension-lcms.com. And, hey! Atlanta’s Lutheran Church of the Ascension is on a Facebook! So modern!
Men making decisions about women’s bodies–never goes out of style.
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Rush Limbaugh has issues, but at least he can still be out-crazied by someone from Pittsburgh.
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Right–basically any employer that is not an actual church itself (i.e. pews, altar, and stained glass) falls under the HHS free birth control requirement. Church non-profit and charitable entities are regarded as not exempt.
Since Catholics have been running schools, universities, hospitals and other charitable enterprises for many hundreds of years (hundreds of years before there was a United States) and since charity and education are central to our religious identity and mission, it is very natural to think that this is interference in our religious life. We do not regard hospitals, social services, schools and universities as being extraneous to our Christian mission.
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Any national health care plan will limit costs. See Britain for an example of cost control, which is never popular.
This issue has been raised by the White House. The “Republicans want to control your body” seems to have done a dandy job of energizing the base.
However, the cost may well have been driving devout Catholics from the Democratic party. That may explain Santorum’s rise in popularity. More voters voted in the 2012 Republican presidential primary than in the 2008 primary, about 9% more. Where did they come from? Were they all Democrats making mischief, or were they Catholics who have changed their party affiliation?
Long term, I don’t think the Democratic Party wants to lose those voters. I could be wrong. After all, it’s not as if there’s a recent history of razor-thin presidential elections or anything.
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That may explain Santorum’s rise in popularity.
It looks like Santorum’s not getting the Catholics so much as the conservative Protestants. That is, I’m guessing, still mostly people who don’t want to vote for a LDS candidate. I’m not sure what figures you have on the turnout for the primary, but in open primaries it is likely to be Democrats making mischief*. In the closed primaries, there hasn’t been enough time for people to switch registration. In either type of primary, I’d expect more turnout than 2008 for Republicans.
This kind of thing might have an impact in the general election, but that is ages away.
*Or Democrats who honestly believe Ron Paul is the answer to some problem, which apparently happens for real.
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Considering that, according to the NYTimes, Catholics are voting in droves for Romney (only in TN did Santorum win the Catholic vote), I doubt that Santorum’s rise in popularity can be explained by Catholics. (According to a Kaiser poll, a majority of Catholics support Obama’s BC mandate, and 98% of Catholic women use BC at some point in their lives, so this doesn’t seem like a winner issue outside of Opus Dei or the anti-Vatican 2 movement).
On healthcare more generally, I think this issue illustrates why we need government/secular healthcare. While I think Catholic charity institutions are great, I don’t want to live in a country where my social safety net is dependent on the largess of a religious group whose beliefs are not mine and in some cases antithetical to mine. I’m not Catholic, I don’t live in a Catholic country, and I don’t see why the Pope’s opinion on BC should have any bearing on my life (my people fought against the Catholic church twice (1500s and 1648) for this very reason). It’s not freedom of religion, it’s the imposition of someone else’s religious beliefs on my life. As a matter of fact, I belong to a church (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) which explicitly supports BC and is pro-choice. Restricting abortion and BC impinges on *my* religious liberty and violates the tenets of my church. If Catholic hospitals are the only options, then the choice for non-Catholics is to 1) be forced to be a de facto practicing Catholic (and get subpar healthcare in some cases)*, or 2) not get healthcare.
The easy answer, one which leaves Catholics alone AND provides for women of all (or no) faiths, is for government provided healthcare. Until then, with an ad hoc quasi-religious social safety net, we’re going to run into problems like this.
*If I’d gone to a strict Catholic hospital for my ectopic pregnancy, I’d have lost a fallopian tube rather than had the less invasive, methotrexate treatment which preserved my tube and hopefully maximizes my future fertility possibilities. As a young woman who wants kids, I’d be mighty annoyed if my chance at having them was cut in half because the Pope thinks that an ectopic pregnancy can’t be removed, even though it’s nonviable and will kill the woman.)
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(Looks like MH said the 1st part of my comment already)
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I know many deep things.
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B.I., I would encourage the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to get out there and start opening up some hospitals.
Catholic hospitals care for people of all (or no) religious beliefs, because — as Amy P. has already pointed out — caring for the sick (charity and mercy) is central to the Catholic identity and mission. It seems to me a gross violation of religious freedom and conscience to suggest that Catholic institutions must be coerced to violate one part of their doctrine in order to fulfill another.
But in some respects, your comment is sort of a red herring, isn’t it? The HHS mandate AFAIK has no bearing on what services a Catholic hospital may offer; Catholic hospitals will continue their pro-life and anti-BC policies/services. The HHS mandate involves the kind of insurance coverage a Catholic institution must offer to its employees. It seems to me that if you don’t want the Pope’s opinion on BC to have any bearing on your life, you should perhaps decide not to work at a Catholic hospital, charity, school, or other institution.
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“There are alternative treatments for painful/heavy periods, for acne, and even for ovarian problems”
Endometriosis above the diaphragm is rare and it would be unheard of for it to leave one body to attack another. But I think it’s possible that mine might do just that and place it’s painful fingers right around your throat.
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I have to laugh at the suggestion that this is a political loser for democrats. Guess what, most women use birth control, even most Catholic women. Probably not the 98% recently cited, but lots and lots. It’s a settled issue: people in civil(ish) societies want women to be able to control their fertility.
While a lot of individual Catholics are liberal the bishops ceased to be long ago, if they ever were. When they start foaming at the mouth over child poverty the way they do over birth control and abortion I may entertain taking them seriously. But probably not.
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Kate Marie,
There actually are Lutheran hospitals, charities, schools and other institutions, but there are only about 4.5 million ELCA members total in the US, so impact is limited mostly to the Northern Midwest. I was actually extrapolating from this particular case to the larger issue in general: that wide, gaping, holes (inc. health insurance) in the US safety net are by and large filled by religious organizations, which is problematic if we’re a country that believes in separation of church and state and of which there is no state religion. A way to solve this would be to provide, like the rest of the industrialized world, universal, government provided/sponsored health care. Then 1) people don’t have to rely on the religious whims of their employers for what their health insurance will cover, and 2) people don’t have to go to religious institutions for basic services (healthcare, food, shelter, etc.)
In terms of employee benefits like employer-provided health insurance, this is even more egregious, because basically it’s saying that one’s salary comes with strings attached, but only for specific people and in specific ways. Effectively, by not covering BC but covering all other medically necessary treatments, the church is mandating that their non-Catholic employees take an economic penalty for basically not acting like (a certain kind of) Catholic. In a sense, that’s an imposition of Catholic beliefs on non-Catholics.
If the answer is, “well, if you don’t like it go elsewhere,” then we need to redesign our society so that non-Catholics won’t have to work for or patronize Catholic institutions which force them to adopt certain religious beliefs.
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Scantee,
It actually is 98%:
http://www.freep.com/article/20120208/NEWS07/120208008/Survey-Majority-of-Catholics-support-including-birth-control-in-health-care-plans
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It seems to me that if you don’t want the Pope’s opinion on BC to have any bearing on your life, you should perhaps decide not to work at a Catholic hospital, charity, school, or other institution.
I find this sort of logic infuriating and pernicious. Of COURSE I would never work at a Catholic hospital. Unless I just happened to be a health care worker lived in an area where a Catholic hospital was the only choice. Or an area where there was both a Catholic Hospital and a Godless Heathen Hospital, and I applied for jobs at both and GHH did not offer me a job, but St. Noncontraceptus did. Or I’m a normal person who doesn’t think about politics all of the time and I picked St. Noncontraceptus because they offered me a better position and I never even considered what would or would not be in the dark details of their benefits packages until suddenly a doctor says I need some expensive thing that my plan doesn’t cover.
99% of women use birth control, so would prefer to have it covered by their health insurance. Over 12% of hospitals are Catholic hospitals. Assumedly, they will employ the 1% who believe birth control is a sin, and then another 11% who don’t. And the Conservative response is “Don’t be part of that 11%!” Gee, thanks.
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My point is that even if you don’t restrict the population you’re drawing from- as they did in that survey by limiting it to only women of child bearing age, I believe- you still have a majority of Catholic women using birth control.
I mentioned it because I’ve heard cries that the cited survey doesn’t count because of their sampling method. Oh, you mean, only 80, 70, or even 60% of Catholic women use birth control? Yeah, that’s still a majority and a whole, whole lot of Catholic women defying Catholic doctrine.
So the majority of Catholics don’t follow Catholic doctrine? If the majority of Catholics are not following doctrine maybe it’s because, gasp, it’s totally outdated and inappropriate for our time. I’ll start valuing the opinions of these bozo bishops only after the majority of Catholics do first.
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“It seems to me that if you don’t want the Pope’s opinion on BC to have any bearing on your life, you should perhaps decide not to work at a Catholic hospital, charity, school, or other institution.”
Maybe Catholic institutions should have it as a screening question to weed out the heathens before they’re employed. “Do you now or have your ever used birth control?” I wonder why they don’t do this. Maybe because they are totally reliant on people who do use birth control to function because there aren’t enough abstainers to form a right and true Catholic workforce.
The whole argument is hilarious. Healthcare is an employment benefit just like salary is. Catholic institutions where the employees are using their wages to buy birth control are just as complicit as those that pay for it through prescription benefits.
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I wrote “devout” Catholics. If you’re using birth control, you’re not a devout Catholic.
If someone chooses not to use birth control on religious grounds, she may choose to vote in accordance with her beliefs. 23.9% of the population is Catholic. 2% of Catholics is not insignificant.
The distribution of Catholics may make a difference in a tight election: http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue5098.html.
“The decline of Catholicism in the Northeast is nothing short of stunning,” said Barry Kosmin, a principal investigator for the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), in a news release from Trinity College. “Thanks to immigration and natural increase among Latinos, California now has a higher proportion of Catholics than New England.”
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The whole argument is hilarious. Healthcare is an employment benefit just like salary is. Catholic institutions where the employees are using their wages to buy birth control are just as complicit as those that pay for it through prescription benefits.
Yes. Common sense says that there is no difference between providing the product and providing the money knowing that it will be used to buy the product, but Catholic “ethics” or “morality” says that your mindset when you do something is more important than the outcome of what you do, so willful ignorance can be used to improve your moral situation. (It is called “Directing The Intention.”)
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“2% of Catholics is not insignificant.”
It is when all of them are already voting Republican. How many Catholics, devout or not, who sometimes or usually vote Democratic are going to start voting Republican because of this issue alone? Few to none, I’d say.
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…but Catholic “ethics” or “morality” says that your mindset when you do something is more important than the outcome of what you do, so willful ignorance can be used to improve your moral situation.
You would like an ethical system in which employers not only were allowed, but were required to, look at what the wages they pay are being spent on?
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“You would like an ethical system in which employers not only were allowed, but were required to, look at what the wages they pay are being spent on?”
Of course not and they don’t need to. Given the ubiquity of birth control use, any large employer knows that their employees are using it even if they can’t single out who is using it and when.
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You would like an ethical system in which employers not only were allowed, but were required to, look at what the wages they pay are being spent on?
No, the other way. An insurance company (or a self insured company) should be like a bank.
Can you imagine if the First National Bank of Jesus H. Christ said, “We provide free checking to our members, but won’t honor any checks that are written to Planned Parenthood, since we are morally opposed to giving Planned Parenthood money”? Nobody would think that’s OK. The bank isn’t paying its own money — it is simply directly the money that the depositors placed in it the bank to the locations they want to money to go to. No one thinks that if the Bank honors a check made out to Planned Parenthood, it is actively supporting Planned Parenthood.
Insurance premiums are the same way. The premiums are paid by the employees to the insurance company (either directly by the employees, or indirectly by the employer making the payment on the employee’s behalf), and then paid out to whatever health care provider/ drug company the employee uses. The insurer isn’t “paying for birth control pill” any more or less when it acts as the intermediary as when it doesn’t.
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Amy actually makes this point yesterday in the one part of her post that I didn’t make fun of. Although, honestly, it’s the most ridiculous part.
There are many different ways that the Obama administration could have done this without treading on Catholic toes. For instance, BC expenses could easily be run through an HSA.
And there it is. Birth control pills are sinful. But . . . The Catholic School is OK with women buying birth control pills. The Catholic School is OK with giving money to women, knowing that that money will be used to buy birth control pills. The Catholic School simply does not want to be the one writing the check for the birth control pill.
So, they suggest setting up a middleman (the HSA) for the sole purpose of receiving the money and writing the checks. And that solves the problem! I have improved my moral situation by creating an artificial system solely so that someone else is performing act that I thought was too immoral to do myself.
It is funny here because I don’t actually oppose paying for birth control pills. Substitute something that you are actually opposed to, and you can see why “the morality of the Catholic Church” is an oxymoron.
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That would maybe hold if the employees had a say in what was covered.
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No. It holds because the insurance company/ employer does not (should not) have a say in what is covered.
Also, because birth control is “preventive” it does not actually increase overall health care costs, so there is no extra cost, overall, to covering them. And therefore no need to make a tradeoff.
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By that reasoning, is there any thing the government can’t mandate for employer coverage?
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“So, they suggest setting up a middleman (the HSA) for the sole purpose of receiving the money and writing the checks. And that solves the problem! I have improved my moral situation by creating an artificial system solely so that someone else is performing act that I thought was too immoral to do myself.”
Of course. The HSA functions just the same as having people buy birth control themselves with their own money, except with pre-tax income. If I disapprove of the lottery, there is a considerable difference between 1) the state requiring me to give employees free lottery tickets if they ask for them or 2) the state allowing the employee to purchase lottery tickets with pre-tax income. In the first case, I am part of the machinery of the situation I disapprove of, while the second case takes me out of it.
It beats me why the Obama administration didn’t come up with the HSA solution. I suspect:
1. There is anti-Catholic animus behind the HHS policy and this is a welcome opportunity to make the US Catholic Church eat dirt. I don’t think that will play well at the Supreme Court.
2. Obama’s administration is ideologically opposed to the HSA system. As evidence, note 1) their previous decision to make over-the-counter drugs ineligible for HSA without a prescription and 2) their moves against the HSA/catastrophic policy option.
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If it medically prescribed or required, I don’t see why there should be a limit. I mean, you can make it sound silly and shout “Free Medicinal Bananas For Everyone!” But if you want it and your doctor thinks you should have it, I don’t see why the insurance company should be providing their non-medical two cents.
Now, I am off to watch the Raggirls in their annual Hebrew School Purim Shpiel. I believe the plot is that Haman urges the King to stop covering screening for Tay-Sachs disease out of a combination of anti-Semitism and Persian opposition to pre-natal testing. Queen Esther must then go before the King and inform him that she’s a career of the Tay-Sachs mutation, and that if he doesn’t change back the royal insurance coverage, there could be serious repercussions for the royal heir.
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If I disapprove of the lottery, there is a considerable difference between 1) the state requiring me to give employees free lottery tickets if they ask for them or 2) the state allowing the employee to purchase lottery tickets with pre-tax income.
No, there’s not. You only think there is because you have internalized a false moral distinction.
Amy — I have just opened an account at First Pro-Choice Bank! (0.1% of all savings deposits go to the pro-choice charity of my choice. I picked Planned Parenthood!) Should my Catholic employer be permitted to deny my request for direct deposit, which is otherwise permitted as a matter of course to other employees? Under your logic, it’s okay if they give me the check and then I deposit it myself, but if they let me sign up for direct deposit, they have become “part of the machinery.” But all direct deposit does is facilitate the transfer.
Same with the lottery tickets or the birth control pills.
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I wasn’t trying to thing of a silly medical coverage. I was, I thought with remarkable delicacy, trying to see if there was any way to separate this from abortion.
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“No, there’s not. You only think there is because you have internalized a false moral distinction.”
Even if it is a “false moral distinction”, why insist on doing things 100% your way when you can make both of us happy by compromising? What materially do you gain by not going along with the HSA idea?
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“Even if it is a “false moral distinction”, why insist on doing things 100% your way when you can make both of us happy by compromising? What materially do you gain by not going along with the HSA idea?”
Because the second the HSA compromise is introduced it suddenly won’t be good enough.
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“Because the second the HSA compromise is introduced it suddenly won’t be good enough.”
Give it a try. I think you would be pleasantly surprised. It will certainly work a lot better than the Obama administration telling Catholic representatives of the US bishops that the US bishops need to listen to “enlightened” Catholic voices.
The Obama administration is the inflexible party here.
http://usccb.org/news/2012/12-039.cfm
And, as I’ve mentioned before, it is the natural inclination of the Catholic hierarchy to be friendly to Democrats. The sort of hostility they are getting from the Obama administration is a completely new experience and may have far-reaching effects on the traditionally cozy relationship between the Democratic party and the Catholic Church.
As to numbers of Catholics who are faithful to orthodox teaching on contraception, I don’t think it matters at all. As somebody pointed out previously, there are a huge number of Catholics in the US. Even a small fraction of a big number like that will amount to a sizable minority. For comparison, bear in mind that there are only about 2 million US Episcopalians.
Likewise, it is also true that only a minority of US Jews are Orthodox. Wikipedia says that under 2% of Americans identify as Jews. If only a fraction of that number identify as Orthodox Jewish, does that really mean that it’s open season on Orthodox Jewish sensibilities?
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Amy P,
The Jewish analogy is a good one. If Obama mandated that, say, women have to sit in a separate section of the bus (I believe there was a furor over this happening in Brooklyn), and that no one could work on Saturdays, or McDonald’s couldn’t sell cheeseburgers, I’d imagine that secular Jews would fall somewhere along the ‘pretty annoyed — furious’ scale.
Also…while the Democrats might be friendly with Catholics, it seems like it’s been awhile since they’ve been friendly with the Catholic church. I remember John Kerry being refused communion by a priest because he was pro-choice.
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“There is anti-Catholic animus behind the HHS policy and this is a welcome opportunity to make the US Catholic Church eat dirt. I don’t think that will play well at the Supreme Court.”
This is simply not true. There is not an anti-Catholic animus. Rather, there is a desire to provide a particular medical option to women who want it, including the many, many Catholic women who use BC. And, it needs to be pointed out, the many, many Catholic men who are also using BC, if by “using” we understand that men who have sex with women using BC are also using BC (so… are 98% of Catholic men using BC?….)
The Obama administration is not hostile toward Catholics. At the very least you need to provide some evidence to back up your claim – and this contraceptive issue does not really get that job done because there is a very plausible counter-interpretation (i.e. provide medical option v. hates Catholics…)
The problem, rather, is not the Obama administration, but Catholic doctrine, which many, many Catholics reject in practice. Instead of fulminating against the supposed religious bigotry of Obama, the bishops might wonder how they, themselves, have failed to convince their flock to abstain from BC. It seems to me that being tangentially involved in the provision of BC in their hospitals pales in comparison to the many, many Catholics – men and women – who daily defy the Magisterium and engage in non-procreative (fun!) un-rythymed sex…
That is the central failing here…
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Wow…everyone. What a great discussion.
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Even if it is a “false moral distinction”, why insist on doing things 100% your way when you can make both of us happy by compromising? What materially do you gain by not going along with the HSA idea?
Okay. Let’s walk through it. Let me know when I hit the point that the Church will object to . . .
So HHS waves its magic regulation wand, and now an employer has a choice of either covering birth control through its insurance, or else choosing to set up an HSA for their employees.
The HSA would have to be funded 100% by employer contributions alone, or else it would just be a backdoor way to charge more for health care for women.
Also, it would have to be large enough to ensure that it would cover all of the birth control costs of a full range of female employees — say, $1,000 per employee per year?
It would have to go to men, too, and could be used for things other than birth control (like co-pays and stuff).
Is the Church really going to go for that? Or is it going to complain that it’s too oppressively expensive?
Also . . .
We do not regard hospitals, social services, schools and universities as being extraneous to our Christian mission.
But you know what IS extraneous to the mission? Being an insurance company. If an employer doesn’t want to obey the health insurance rules, then the answer is simple — stop being a health insurance company! The problem only comes about because the groups are self-insuring. But if they find the rules too onerous, then just stop doing it and offer Blue Cross! (They might like that — it’s got a cross in it.)
Even better — stop being an employer! There are entire companies whose business is to take on all of your employees, handle payroll, benefits, etc., and leave you to your “Christian mission” of whatever it is the employer was doing. Day One you are employed by St. Whomever, covering Viagra for the guy, but no birth control for his partner; Day Two you are employed by ABC Services, which has a contract with St. Whomever to provide employees. Then, ABC Services can handle the insurance issues.
I was, I thought with remarkable delicacy, trying to see if there was any way to separate this from abortion.
MH — Nothing except that fact that you see the freak out when there is an obligation to cover something that 1% of Americans objects to. The way to separate abortion — which at least 1/3 of Americans object to — is to watch a President try to do it and then watch them lose the next election.
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Here’s a good overview of the problems with the mandate and its phantom “accommodation”:http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/292930/accommodation-isn-t-james-c-capretta
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i strongly oppose any mean by government to free birth control. That would indirectly contribute to teenage pregnancy cases.
a research study said that even a simple change by healthcare provider can reduce unwanted pregnancy check it out http://drugsinfocom.blogspot.com/2012/03/simple-way-to-prevent-unintended.html http://www.genericwebpharmacy.com
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