5 Things You Should Know About Religion and Contraception

[cbayer]

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/08/religion_contraception.html


Most Religious Americans Support Contraception




By Eleni Towns | August 1, 2012


A provision of the Affordable Care Act that requires health insurance plans to include coverage for a range of preventive health services for women with no co-pays goes into effect today, including important services such as annual well-woman visits, screenings for gestational diabetes and HIV, testing for HPV, and breastfeeding support. In addition, the law requires coverage for all FDA-approved contraceptive methods and family planning counseling for women at no additional cost.

The contraception provision exempts churches and other houses of worship with moral objections to birth control from providing coverage. What’s more, the Obama administration provided an accommodation to religiously affiliated organizations such as hospitals, universities, and charities that object to contraception, requiring insurance companies to provide contraceptive coverage directly to employees and students, removing the religiously affiliated organizations from the transaction.

Despite the exemption and accommodation, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and their conservative allies continue to voice their fierce opposition to the law’s contraceptive coverage provision. The bishops launched a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign that included their “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign aimed at persuading the public that the contraceptive coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act violates religious freedom. In addition, the bishops and their allies filed more than 40 lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, seeking to enjoin the regulation.

Religious liberty is a core American value—one we all treasure. But in this case, the cry of threatened religious liberty distorts the real issue, which is that the bishops and their allies are seeking to impose their doctrinal views on a diverse public that holds a variety of different views and beliefs, and they are trying to allow employers to use religion as an excuse to discriminate against their female employees. Ironically, it is their heavy-handed tactics that are threatening the religious liberty, as well as the equal rights, of others.


more at link

[HockeyMom]

1. Not enough for the Catholic Church

They want all Catholic private employers to be able to deny contraceptive coverage. How many really would that be? They HAVE to know that individual Catholic support, and USE, contraceptives. Their agends is to FORCE ALL companies, and people, to comply with THEIR religion.

[MineralMan]

2. I grew up in California in the 1950s and 1960s.

At that time, before the birth control pill was available, condoms were only available at the pharmacy counter, and only to people over the age of 21. The Roman Catholic Church was the force that got that law passed in California, years before. Every package of condoms had a label that read, "For the Prevention of Disease Only." The Roman Catholic Church's intrusion into the rights of non-Catholics was clear to me then, as it is today.

For women, contraception was available in those days only by prescription, in the form of diaphragms. Again, this was not available to anyone under the age of 21.

The Roman Catholic Church's doctrine against contraception was the civil law in California. That era ended, but the same church is still trying to impose its doctrine on everyone, even today. We must not let them do so.

[cleanhippie]

3. Perhaps most Americans do, but most religious INSTITUTIONS do not.

And it is the INSTITUTIONS that have the money, power, and influence.

But you know that.


Here is a question for you cbayer. Is a church a person or is a church an institution made up of the people that support it?

If it is a person, then corporations are people too, my friend.

But if it is an institution made up of the people that support it, how can it be that most religious PEOPLE support contraception, yet the institutions made up by those people do not?