Why I'm Feeling So Hard-Nosed Over the Contraception Affair

[xchrom]

http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/02/why-im-so-hardnosed-over-contraception-affair

Over the past week I've written a few posts expressing support for the Obama administration's decision to require health care plans to cover contraception, as well as for its decision to permit only a very narrow exemption for religious organizations. I haven't really laid out the whole case, though, and today I want to do that in telegraphic form. Then I want to tell you the real reason that my reaction to this has been stronger than you might have guessed it would be, especially considering that this isn't a subject I wade into frequently. But that won't come until the end of the post. First, the bullet point warm-up:

* In any case like this, you have to look at two separate issues: (1) How important is the secular public purpose of the policy? And (2) how deeply held is the religious objection to it?
* On the first issue, I'd say that the public purpose here is pretty strong. Health care in general is very clearly a matter of broad public concern; treating women's health care on a level playing field with men's is, today, a deep and widely-accepted principle; and contraception is quite clearly critical to women's health. Making it widely and easily available is a legitimate issue of public policy.
* On the second issue, I simply don't believe that the religious objection here is nearly as strong as critics are making it out to be. As I've mentioned before, even the vast majority of Catholics don't believe that contraception is immoral. Only the formal church hierarchy does. What's more, as my colleague Nick Baumann points out, federal regulations have required religious hospitals and universities to offer health care plans that cover contraception for over a decade. (The fact that some such employers don't cover birth control is mostly the result of lax enforcement.) It's true that the Obama regulation tightens this requirement, but only modestly: it covers organizations with fewer than 15 employees and it bans copays. Dozens of states already have similar rules on the books. So when Kirsten Powers says, "One thing we can be sure of: the Catholic Church will shut down before it violates its faith," that's just wrong. They've been working under similar rules for a long time without turning it into Armageddon.

[realFedUp]

1. Thoughtful post

And as an aside I'm wondering what the Catholic bishops stance is on Viagra
and its inclusion in insurance coverage.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Recent poll says 58% of Catholics say to leave the rule alone.

[MiniMe]

3. The thing that bothers me most about this "fight" is that things like the pill is used for reasons

other than bc. A lot of women have "female" problems and take the pill as a medication. It has nothing to do with birth control sometimes, it is more for a woman's health. I would love to see somebody address that. I was on the pill for years, and it wasn't for birth control. So once again, the church wants to ignore women's health because of their male oriented answers to all questions.