The debate surrounding the Health and Human Services Department’s contraception mandate has too often been framed as one between essential women’s health and the scruples of some hierarchical old priests. But Catholics of all stripes are coming to the defense of the hierarchical old priests, recognizing that this debate is, in reality, about religious freedom on the most basic of levels. This view even passed the E. J. Dionne test: Dionne wrote that the administration “utterly botched” the handling of contraception with the new health-care law.
He wrote, “Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings.”
Even the most liberal of Catholics realizes that this debate is really about Constitution 101.
The political Left, however, sounding increasingly hysterical, is more or less making the argument that cheap birth control is crucial for women’s health. According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, contraceptives “have significant benefits for [women’s] health, as well as the health of their children.” In the words of Laura Murphy, the director of the ACLU’s Washington office, “access to affordable birth control is essential for women and their families.” According to Dr. Laura Johnson, the chief of the Division of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, “giving women and their families, regardless of their employer, full access to these essential services gives them the best chance at living happier and healthier lives.”
Since they are making this a Health 101 issue, let’s all pause for a moment and consider some facts.
Let’s start with the fact that oral contraceptive pills are considered to be carcinogenic by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research. As Nikolas Nikas and Dorinda Bordlee note, “The American Cancer Society website has published that list, where the pill ranks alongside asbestos, coal tar, benzene, and tobacco products.”
Contraceptive pills have also been linked to the dramatic spike in sexually transmitted diseases among women today — including HPV, which now afflicts nearly half of all women ages 20 to 24. This might explain why the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) lists “Using birth control pills for a long time (five or more years)” as a major factor increasing one’s risk of getting cervical cancer (which is directly linked to HPV). Some forms of hormonal contraceptives, such as Depo-Provera, actually list in their own FDA label that taking the drug increases one’s risk for breast cancer.
So there’s a lot to consider when discussing the health aspects of this HHS rule. And is it true, in any case, that there is a crisis of accessibility when it comes to these drugs? I tend to doubt it, when I read that schools are now installing Plan B dispensing machines in dormitories and fitting 13-year old girls for contraceptive implants.
As the facts I have outlined above indicate, there can be a debate on the merits of contraception. But even those who disagree on that issue should agree that the HHS mandate is a grave offense against religious liberty.
— Ashley E. McGuire is editor of Altcatholicah.
EDITORS NOTE: This post was originally misattributed to Michael Potemra.
ObamaNation had been pretty smart about keeping their Big Brother agenda flying under the radar of most folks, who are too busy trying to get by to follow every "transform US" Democrat machination. But this issue is plain and simple and even the most casual observer gets it. It's a Soviet style government mandate, your personal religious beliefs be damned. You will obey or you will be punished.
Can you hear me now?
This is a huge political mistake by His Oneness. He has made all the fears about ObamaCare self evident. For this outrage to become headline news now (and everyday going forward if Obama won't back down) is also perfect as it allows the electorate time to fully grasp what is at stake on 11/6/2012.
Vote GOP or vote for the totalitarian agenda of the Democrat Party.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYikes!
We're reminded that the White House wants to ensure that all women receive the necessary "preventative care". Why not give the unborn children the "Preventative Care" they need to preserve their lives? What on earth does "Preventative Care" mean? Why it means contraceptives of course, and once that's accepted and everyone yawns and says its okay after all, the term "preventative care" will include abortions.
The only thing both forms of "health service" prevent is human life.
What is so creepy about all this is that the pro abortion people put out the word that this was simply about "choice". Women should have the opportunity to choose to end their pregnancy with abortion. Now, not only do they have the choice, but I have to pay for their choice. Not much choice for me I guess.
After we all come to pay for abortion what other "preventative care" will be mandated? I know. The tests have shown that the child in the womb has Downs Syndrome, or mental retardation or maybe just a cleft lip. Let's provide "Preventative Care" and terminate his life so he won't have so much suffering. It's happening in the UK and Europe already.
What about the poor woman who is pregnant and the child will be born into poverty? Let's provide "Preventative care" so the kid won't have to live a life of poverty. For that matter let's provide "Preventative Care" to all the poor people in Africa so they won't have to endure poverty either.
See that old lady in the nursing home? She doesn't have any money left. She has Alzheimer's. She doesn't have any friends or family. We could prevent her suffering the ravages of her disease, and a lonely and terrible decline. "Preventative Care" will be provided. In fact, the government mandated insurance plans will make you pay for it.
Do you object to being forced to pay for death by the ironically and creepily named "Department of Health and Human Services"? Do you stand up against this tyranny? We need to prevent you causing more damage in our perfectly created society. So you will be removed to a "Treatment Center" to receive "Preventative Care".
Geesh! The imagination boggles! Anything at all that might be deemed unpleasant could be regarded as something to be prevented. You don't like the growing power of the state? You want to lead a protest movement?
Perhaps you need to be prevented from causing such unrest. Permanently.
Some protestor disappears? A pro life charity is hounded out of existence?
No problem. They simply received "Permanent Preventative Care" courtesy of the Department of Health and Human services.
Yikes!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNice one, Glenn Beck!
I'll be sure to look over my shoulder for Obama's Nazi Commie Vampire minions, come to haul me away to a FEMA re-education camp.
Here's another one to chew on: Did you ever notice how the word "contraception" bears an eerie resemblance to the word "concentration"? As in, "concentration camp"?
You're so right. If our doctors start practicing "preventive medicine", it's a foregone conclusion that government agents will start murdering and imprisoning people to "prevent" them from expressing unpopular opinions. And if women keep using these "contraceptives" I'm certain that we'll all wind up in a concentration camp.
It's all right there, right in the words, if you just stare at them hard enough.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHey MV,
Make fun of this all you want but he is absolutely right. Does it mean nothing to you that this is already happening in Britain and other countries? Seriously, you really discount what is going on under that health model. If you think it is not true just do some research. Even under our model, there is pressure from doctors to withhold care for the handicapped. For example, what is so hard to believe that once a child is discovered prenatally to have downs that there will not be some compulsion of some sort to abort not to mention the hatred others will have towards that parent and child because we have to pay for it. The American culture already has this mentality when you consider over 90 percent of children with downs syndrome are aborted. Is it really another great leap to believe that our government wont reflect that sentiment in the form of some compulsion or penalty? My god, there is a movement to track children's BMI in school. You really don't think this cannot get creepy. If you want to give health issues, i.e. life and death issues, to the government, you take an extraordinary risk that you will give up fundamental liberties just like the Catholic Church. Don't take the chance. Wake up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDude, seriously? I can't even believe I am replying to you. Let me just quote the original comment:
"Do you stand up against this tyranny? We need to prevent you causing more damage in our perfectly created society. So you will be removed to a 'Treatment Center' to receive 'Preventative Care'.
You don't like the growing power of the state? You want to lead a protest movement?
Perhaps you need to be prevented from causing such unrest. Permanently.
Some protestor disappears? A pro life charity is hounded out of existence?
No problem."
Sure, it's just a short hop, skip, and a jump from insurance coverage for contraception to permanent detention in a Nazi-esque brainwashing reeducation camp.
A believe the technical nomenclature for this is "paranoid delusion."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYour imagination seems to be boggling quite a bit here.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHas there ever been a totalitarian regime that didn't boldly assert that its excesses were necessary to advance the common good?
Sure, a legitimate government has a role in advancing the common good -- but the mark of totalitarianism is, as the name implies, its requirement that all remaining spheres of self-organization and private conscience must yield to the Collective Plan. There is no opt out.
The First Amendment specifies several basic individual rights as beyond the reach of Collective Plans. To violate those Constitutional guarantees so flagrantly betrays more than a passing dalliance with the totalitarian tendency (I said tendency... for now). The talk of public health is a flimsy pretext.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse“access to affordable birth control is essential for women and their families.” According to Dr. Laura Johnson, the chief of the Division of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, “giving women and their families, regardless of their employer, full access to these essential services gives them the best chance at living happier and healthier lives.”
What a canard. If the essential service is to provide contraception, and if you are employed and receiving health care benefits from an employer, then you're most assuredly working full time or near full time, and if you can't afford a monthly prescription like "the pill" then maybe look for another job, give up a lunch or two at the cafeteria or an evening meal at a fast food joint, or something else.
Birth control these days is quite affordable.
Let's burst these ridiculous talking point right now and get to the truth: We're seeing liberal fascism at its most insidious worst in this administration.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBeware of the Risen People who have Harried and Held,
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYe that have Bullied and Bribed."
-Padraig Pearse
"The debate surrounding the Health and Human Services Department’s contraception mandate has too often been framed as one between essential women’s health and the scruples of some hierarchical old priests."
That's the Fox News description. I don't see priests, scrupulous or otherwise. I see a few conservative hospital administrators being amplified through the rafters by the Republican noise machine.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReally, I actually missed them.
The ones I have seen are the Catholic clergy, Bishops and College admins.
Maybe I should tune in MSNBC more.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is a typical way The Left makes its arguments......emotionally and darn the facts.
Contraceptives are not required for women's health. To use or not to use birth control is a choice. To have sex or not to have sex is a choice. Just because women can choose to terminate an unwanted pregnancy that is the result of sex without contraceptives (and even sometimes with contraceptives) does not make contraceptives a health issue.
I have a question about this mandate...
Does it require that condoms be provided or covered or only birth control that is "female-centric"? I was curious if the rule is also sexist as well as a violation of basic constitutional rights and protections. An odd thought, I know, but I am just curious.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile we're talking about contraceptives and health, you might want to include that using oral contraceptives actually reduces a woman's risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou beat me to it!
Both the extreme left and extreme right are expert cherry pickers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAmazingly easy to throw out a strawman argument without substantiation....but I can throw out actual, verifiable substantiation on the studies that link the use of oral contraceptives to INCREASED breast cancer incidence. You know, "while we're talking about contraceptives and health" and all....
Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer. Breast cancer and hormonal contraceptives: Collaborative reanalysis of individual data on 53,297 women with breast cancer and 100,239 women without breast cancer from 54 epidemiological studies. Lancet 1996; 347:1713–1727.
Marchbanks PA, McDonald JA, Wilson HG, et al. Oral contraceptives and the risk of breast cancer. New England Journal of Medicine 2002; 346(26):2025–2032.
Althuis MD, Brogan DD, Coates RJ, et al. Breast cancers among very young premenopausal women (United States). Cancer Causes and Control 2003; 14(2):151–160.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe "strawman argument" comes from the link provided in the post to the American Cancer Association. Quote from that site:
"Estrogen-progestogen oral contraceptives (combined) (Note: There is also convincing evidence in humans that these agents confer a protective effect against cancer in the endometrium and ovary)"
And, from one of the articles you cite:
"The results provide strong evidence for two main conclusions. First, while women are taking combined oral contraceptives and in the 10 years after stopping there is a small increase in the relative risk of having breast cancer diagnosed. Second, there is no significant excess risk of having breast cancer diagnosed 10 or more years after stopping use. The cancers diagnosed in women who had used combined oral contraceptives were less advanced clinically than those diagnosed in women who had never used these contraceptives."
Presumably, women seeking gynecological care to obtain contraceptives are more likely to also have breast cancer screening.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy mistake. External Link
The part about oral contraceptives reducing the risk of ovarian and endometrial cancers is #3.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNot a straw man argument at all: Clareita is completely right. I was prescribed birth control pills by different doctors over a period of many years as a way of decreasing my risk of ovarian cancer, of which my mother died. For part of this time I was a student and trust me, when you are on a very limited budget, monthly birth control pills don't seem that cheap.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs long as we are talking about women's health, why is it that of all the prescription drugs in the world which might be key to ensuring that women lead "happier, healthier lives", only contraceptives must, must MUST be provided free, with no copay, by all employers? What is more essential to the health, even to the very lives, of women: contraceptives or, I dunno, antibiotics, insulin, blood pressure medicine, etc? Especially considering that if your employer doesn't pick up part or all of the cost of contraceptives there ARE low-cost non-prescription alternatives, there are county & city health clinics which hand out birth control pills like candy corn (trust me, my mom was a county health nurse for over 20 years, I'm not making this up...) and there IS a 100% free, 100% effective method of not getting pregnant and not getting venereal disease which is readily available to any woman at any time. For heart medicines, none of these alternatives exist, and yet are they covered by the "everyone must provide it with no co-pays" mandate? Nope. Because the Left is so totally, fixated on contraception and abortion access that it has become essentially a holy sacrament for them, no dissension (read: "heresy") allowed. This whole HHS mandate has nothing whatsoever to do with "women's health"; It has everything to do with punishing any institution which fails to pay total, unquestioning homage to the reigning orthodoxy of the Left.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou could also note that they can be potentially deadly for women who have clotting disorders and it's quite rare for even OB-GYNs to test to see if a woman has such a disorder. Go ask my wife how fun it is to have clots in your lungs due to hormonal changes.
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