Debra Ness, President, National Partnership
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Birth control is basic health care for women. So the recent firestorm of criticism about the administration’s decision that insurers must cover all FDA-approved contraceptives without co-pay is, at best, overwrought.
The religious community, led by the Catholic Church, has overreacted in ways that have distorted the administration’s actions. Contrary to their claims, no individual health care provider will be forced to prescribe contraception, nor will any woman be forced to buy or use contraception.
Perhaps more importantly, to set the record straight, no church or other house of worship will be required to offer employees coverage for contraceptive health services. That’s the carve-out for religious institutions. It’s a big one. (Religiously affiliated institutions, including large hospitals and universities, that employ people of different faiths, will have to provide coverage.)
So why the furor? At its core, it’s because many opponents of a woman’s right to choose also oppose contraception. They don’t want women to exercise their consciences or get the contraceptive coverage they need.
These are extreme views far outside the mainstream.
So let’s be clear. Ensuring women’s access to contraception means fewer unintended pregnancies, healthier women and stronger families.
That’s why there’s an overwhelming consensus in this country that women should have coverage for contraception. Twenty-eight states already require insurers to cover contraception. Ensuring that coverage for women in every state, without expensive co-pays, is one of the most important advances for women in the health reform law.
That advance is long overdue. Nearly all women of reproductive age use contraception – including 98 percent of Catholic women. Reproductive health care is women’s health care.
Refusing to allow employers to substitute their views for those of women was the right thing to do.
So it’s time for all of us to take a stand. It’s time to urge every member of Congress to say ‘no’ to Senator Marco Rubio’s irresponsible legislation, which would dramatically expand the birth-control refusal clause and potentially allow any employer to use personal religious beliefs to deny contraceptive coverage to employees.
At times these days, it feels like we’ve stepped through the looking glass. Those who oppose abortion want to deny women the contraceptive coverage that reduces unintended pregnancies. The Susan G. Komen organization withdraws funds to Planned Parenthood, which screens millions of women for breast cancer.
These are bad decisions, bad policy, bad for women’s health.
If you care about women’s health, you put your ideology aside and you help make contraception and breast cancer screening available.
The Administration’s rule exempting churches and other religious institutions from the refusal clause is a compromise that should not be weakened.
I have to disagree with you. This healthcare plan is a direct assault on our basic freedoms and a government that is far over reaching. This administration is attacking our religious beliefs and flat out lied to the Catholics in order to get their votes and support for this healthcare bill. If this is not a stab in the back then I do not know what is. Given as whole, I was wrong to think so highly of president Obama. If this is done to the catholic churc it can be done to you and to your church. Obama will stop at nothing,it seems, to expand his socialist views.
Well, Jeanne, I’m Catholic and I don’t feel I was lied to on this issue. Obama has pretty much catered to all faiths and the money flows BIG TIME to these faith-based agencies in the U.S. He certainly is trying to do more for this country than any “conservative”, especially when it comes to taking care of the “general welfare of the people” AS STATED IN THE CONSTITUTION. Republicans lie to people and make them think they’re a religious organization and get all the “single-issue” voters who fall for their buzz words like “abortion, contraception, gays, entitlements, etc.”. Meanwhile they’ve got their money in your pockets on a daily basis to support their rich cronies.
Soon you, as a woman, will NOT have any rights … possibly not to work outside the home or to vote. Your choices on how many children to have will be taken away. You will NOT receive help to raise all the babies that Republicans will force you to have. Additionally, they are working on not even helping you if you’re a victim of domestic violence or rape. They want to make it so a cop doesn’t have to arrest an abusive husband, even if they see your eyes swollen shut, your limbs broken, cuts, bruises and stab wounds. They want to require the cop to actually SEE THE ABUSE TAKING PLACE. So they would leave you there with the abuser, so he could finish off the job if he wished.
“Socialism” is another of the Republican “buzz words” being used to attack this president. All these organizations have been in place, AND our rights, for decades. He has compromised and given in to the other side REPEATEDLY to the point where he lost much of his base. It is the REPUBLICANS who stab us in the back and who won’t cooperate and have publicly declared they will obstruct and do whatever they have to, even if the country fails, just so Obama is a 1-term president. They are pouring BILLIONS of dollars into the campaign to try to BUY the Presidency via lies and distortions via THEIR CORPORATE-OWNED MEDIA. I think, Jeanne, you need to wise up instead of sitting there safely behind your little computer and calling the president “socialist” because you want to protect un-born fetuses … YET your side believe pro-life ENDS at birth.
Debra Ness, President, National Partnership
Dear Miss Ness:
Earlier I wrote to you, informing you that contraceptives, both when encouraged in schools and sold readily in stores, are a one-way street to the excesses that are personified in programs like “Sex and the City,” already a big hit among those with a faulty moral compass.
Now you; state that hospitals and universities that operate in the name of the Catholic faith are not covered by the religious exception that the president belatedly exempted from his mandate. Actually, let me help you understand: Any Catholic institution operates in the name of the Catholic faith. Since this is so, it matters not who comes to an administrator for assistance, the administrator, operating under the aegis and in the name of the Catholic Church, must in conscience respect the norms that flow from the authority of his religion. Since this is true, it follows that the Catholic institution cannot and must not and will not furnish contraceptive or abortive materials to anyone.
This is the outflow of human conscience and is not to be trifled with by any external authority in our country. The human conscience is the ultimate and most demanding faculty of reason that we have in our minds. It sets us off from the inhuman world, where instinct demands attention and adherence. No person can violate his own conscience, Debra, and no institution operating under Catholic aegis dare ask its employees to do so. Please review this explanation so that you will understand why the Catholic Church, the leading authority on morals, is fearless in articulating the truth of any program, attitude, rule or regulation that threatens the very essence of a human being.
No one is requiring Catholics to use contraception. All that is being done is allowing non-catholics to have coverage if their beliefs allow them to use contraception. Catholic hospitals employ and treat non-catholics. Why should they not be allowed to exercise their own beliefs?
Oh please – California requires drivers to buy insurance, or have proof of enough money to cover claims. If catholics oppose birth control, they shouldn’t use it, but refusing to provide coverage for the non-catholics that they employ, is forcing catholic religious beliefs on non-catholics. And birth control meds are used for ailments, not just preventing pregnancies. You don’t like socialism? Don’t call the socialist fire department when your house goes up in flames. Don’t drive on socialist roads.
This is in response to those who disagree with contraceptive care being available to women. As a Catholic I never agreed with a group of celibate men having control over women’s choices. The church has been dictating women through the centuries from the women’s holocaust when millions of women were tortured and murdered to keep them ignorant and uneducated to today’s current denial of women as clergy. Men have always attempted to control women’s rights and it looks like they will keep trying.
The law states that churches and other religious houses of worship are exempt from the requirement. Other businesses and institutions should provide this option. These same institutions provide Viagra and other male enhancement drugs to men in the same breath that denies women to make choices about when to have children.
Many working women today have never been denied work or fired for getting pregnant or having a sick child and having to miss a day’s work. Neither have they been subjected to interviews where their being hired depended on whether they planned to become mothers at some point. I have!
Wake up women. We have choices – don’t lose them!!
In response to Jeanne. My basic religious right of conscience has already been taken away from me . . . by the Pro-Life groups. I support their right to make their own personal decisions with regard to abortion. I do not support their right to interfere in mine. My church does not teach that abortion is murder. It allows me and my husband freedom to make what we consider to be the most responsible decision in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. We love these babies in the womb, but when we get them here, we cut their Medicaid if they are born to poor parents, do not support them if their children are profoundly disabled and they are not able to care for them. In my state of Texas, 25% of children have no healthcare insurance, and our public school system is 46th in the nation. This is an attempt of the Roman Catholic Church and the religious right to legislate their moral on the rest of us. Roman Catholic bishops oppose the death penalty. Wonder WHY we aren’t hearing the same concern from them on that?
When The Pope opposed the Iraq War, Marco Rubio did not propose that Catholics be exempt from paying for it, so why so for contraception?
I agree with this article and not Jeanne. President Obama changed something in favor of religion by allowing the religious organizations the freedom from having to pay for contraceptives but has given the burden to the insurance companies because women deserve to have that coverage as a choice. The optimal word is “choice.” No religious organization will ever rule my choices as a women. They are organizations made up of men with an agenda against women. Wake up and see it for what it is.
I forgot one thing. When the church wants to pay taxes and voice their opinion, then I might listen. They are removed from this discussion because of that very fact. They should leave this discussion alone or pay up the billions and billions of dollars that they should pay our government in taxes with all the politicizing they have been involved in lately.
I am having difficulty understanding just whose religious liberty is at stake here—since 98% of Roman Catholic women of childbearing age admit to using contraception. And I have read a lot about the Plan B medications–to call them abortifacients is really stretching the scientific information beyond recognition. As Nicholas Kristof wrote in his column last week, access to contraception is an important tool in fighting poverty (not to mention reducing the number of abortions) and shocking numbers of women don’t utilize contraceptives fully due to the expense. I am a Roman Catholic woman and it is heartbreaking to watch all of this unfold. It has shaken my faith even more than the sex abuse crisis did.
Jeanne, what planet are you living on? This has nothing to do with religion or birth control, this has everything to do with Womens health and their right to make their own decisions regarding their bodies. Is this truly your thoughts or are you being swayed by the MAN at the pulpit? Think about it before you answer yourself. Don’t you want the freedom to control your health, family size, and your future? I do! Are those who are against womens health going to pay the bills when you have to see a doctor or go the the hospital because they think that it is immoral to take birth control for an unrelated cause to reproduction? Are these same men going to raise and support your child when you don’t have the means to support yourself much less an infant? I think practicality should step in somewhere and idealology be put back in its place. This is not an ideal world, nor will it ever be in our lifetime. Give it a rest and lets do what we can do to help people survive in the real world. Why do people have to make life so difficult on others that have nothing to do with them? CONTROLING women is what is at issue, heaven forbid women are given equal rights of men, they just might prove to be better leaders of this country and be more humane about it. We’ve given men plenty of time to make this world a better place and look at what they’ve done with their opportunity? There are always exceptions to every rule, not all men or women are created equal, but we are all of equal worth and deserve equal footing. Lets put pride and idealism aside and take a look at whats really going on. Why do you think it is a known fact that women should be educated before men, because they will educate the children. Shouldn’t that tell you something?
Jeanne: Seriously? How is allowing women to follow the dictates of their conscience, instead of following the edicts of the Catholic Church, an attack on religious liberty? Are the religious beliefs of the Bishops all that matter? Especially when it’s WOMEN’S bodies at stake, and not the bishops?
My religious beliefs allow for the use of contraception. I don’t want to be limited by another church’s beliefs.
Dear Jeanne,
The Catholic Church has no business in personal decisions of women. Their attempt to rule the lives of women is based on no first hand or even close experience, no understanding, no actual facts and no science. The Catholic Church is run entirely by men who have first and foremost forsaken any relationship with women and who protect those among them (many of them) who have sexually assaulted children for their demented criminal proclivities. The congregation who funds them are their actual enablers and thus also criminals. The entire Catholic Church leadership should be in jail for covering up crimes against children. And to accept their pronouncements as if they are legitimate is absurd. They are worse than the Taliban.
They have taken over hospitals throughout the country. Many communities have no alternative health care. Women who work there are just as needful of real medical care at a reasonable price as any other women.
If you let the Catholic Church punish you for sex by forcing you into unwanted pregnancy or to carry an unwanted pregnancy, that is about as sick as anything could possibly be. Punish sex by forcing the creation of a child? How could such a child possibly become a confidant, loving, competent person having been the product of duress and unwantedness? The Catholic criminals are doing everything in their power to degrade the human race.
Until you sign up to receive already frozen blastocysts and carry them to term, one after another, I do not believe a word you have to say on this subject, as you really do not care about continuing ‘life,’ just about making others do it.
(Btw the above not affiliated with the Roman Rite Catholic Christian Church whatever).
Jeanne: I can see how you’d feel that way, but Obama wasn’t at undermining Roman Catholic teachings–he was saying that R. Catholic *hospitals*–which often treat *non*-Roman Catholics as well as those of their faith–would be required for to *cover* (pay for) the contraceptives that are approved by FDA–the actual prescribing of them is optional and based on the individual patient’s dialoguing with their primary care physician and/or gynecologist about what the best approach is for them.
It’s basically saying–in response to your thing re religious freedoms–that Roman Catholic Church run *hospitals* cannot force *their* religious beliefs regarding contraception on patients who might not *share* their Roman Rite Catholic Christian beliefs–because R. Catholic hospitals do indeed treat anyone and everyone under their insurance regardless of faith.
@Jeanne: utter nonsense. Sorry to have to be so blunt. President Obama is a socialist as much as I’m a Martian. Healthcare for women which has included contraception for AGES has nothing remotely whatsoever to do with ‘socialism’ or ‘a stab in the back’ to Catholics. Perhaps you paid no attention to the actual statistics cited by Debra (which are entirely true, btw). NINETY-EIGHT PERCENT of Catholic Women already use Contraception! What part of that fact are you choosing to ignore? Just because the Catholic MALES who run the Church as a business are up in arms, the women are quietly going about their own personal business using contraception because they don’t buy into the Church’s view of them as brood mares/property of their husbands with no rights of their own.
No one has infringed on ANY Church’s right to practice their religion. In fact those self-same religious institutions are infringing on MY rights to not live in a secular society without hearing their non-stop religious preaching or having their rules imposed upon me. Freedom of AND from religion is what this Country was founded upon, argue it six ways from Sunday if you like, I have the Constitution on my side. IF they insist on getting perks from the government, then they abide by the rules. Period. They want tax-exempt status AS a Church, obey the rules to provide proper healthcare IN their businesses to everyone. Or give up your tax exempt status. It’s very straight forward. Why should I pay for YOUR church’s exemptions? You’re infringing on MY rights, then. Perhaps you might stop listening to the likes of Rick Santorum and your Catholic Bishops and please do some actual critical thinking of your own. This nonsense of labeling the President with a ‘socialist’ label because you read it somewhere or heard it in Church IS just that – nonsense. If caring about women’s health makes him a socialist, then you can label every woman who’s used contraception a socialist and every woman who cares about their own and their childrens’ health a socialist; every American who gives to those less fortunate than themselves a socialist. What about Food kitchens run by those self-same Churches..aren’t they ‘socialist’ in nature? In fact – go ahead: Label us all ‘socialists’. I’ll wear the label proudly if it means I’m not a narrow-minded religious bigot who can’t see further than my own nose.
I paid real money for my dad’s treatment at a Catholic run hospital. I also make up the property tax they don’t pay. Perhaps if the Church were my not so overly obsessed with sex,theirs and everyone else’s,we could all just go about our distaste lives and not bother each other.
Thanks so much for an educational blog. I’ve been searching for this type of data for some time now.