“Pro-life” Catholic colleges are all salty about a new law requiring insurance plans to cover birth control. Because even though 98% of Catholic women will use contraception at some point in their lives, and even though birth control is widely accepted in the medical community as an important preventative tool (and often an important treatment for a variety of medical conditions), male Catholic leaders have decided that a baby is a gift from God and expecting medical insurance to cover medication is like expecting pork to be served at a Jewish barbeque:
Senior Catholic officials said that students at Catholic universities should know what to expect, and that those who disagree with the policies can choose to go elsewhere. “No one would go to a Jewish barbecue and expect pork chops to be served,” Mr. Galligan-Stierle said.
Birth control for women of reproductive age: Kind of like expecting bacon at synagogue. Right?
This is an issue, of course, because Catholic colleges and universities don’t just cater to religious Catholic students. Institutions like Fordham in New York and Georgetown in DC are hardly hyper-religious centers of the faith, sought out by Catholic students seeking a Catholic education. The reality of those schools is that they have a diverse student body, and I would venture to guess that the majority of students are not practicing Catholics. It’s also a cold hard fact that birth control is widely used even among practicing Catholics.
The United States has one of the highest abortion rates in the developed world — that is in large part because of lack of birth control access. And if you’re a student who relies on your school insurance plan for coverage, that is often your only option for birth control. Yes, there’s Planned Parenthood, but Republicans are intent on getting rid of PP, too — and if you have health insurance, you really should be able to use it for the most common and necessary medications. Yes, there are condoms, but (a) they are not as reliable as hormonal birth control, and (b) they require that a male partner agree to use them consistently and correctly. While in my dream world all young women would feel entitled to demand that their partners use condoms and simply wouldn’t have sex with men who refuse (or who badger or guilt them), that isn’t the world we live in. And it’s women who end up paying the price.
Birth control is also medically necessary for many women. Take this woman, for example:
One recent Georgetown law graduate, who asked not to be identified for reasons of medical privacy, said she had polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition for which her doctor prescribed birth control pills. She is gay and had no other reason to take the pills. Georgetown does not cover birth control for students, so she made sure her doctor noted the diagnosis on her prescription. Even so, coverage was denied several times. She finally gave up and paid out of pocket, more than $100 a month. After a few months she could no longer afford the pills. Within months she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be removed surgically — along with her ovary.
“If I want children, I’ll need a fertility specialist because I have only one working ovary,” she said.
How very life-affirming.
The Republican presidential candidates naturally fall on the side of “religion > bitches.”
But the Republican candidates have said that moral and religious values weigh heavily in birth control issues. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, said in an e-mail that he regarded the administration’s rule requiring religious employers to furnish birth control as wrong. “This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency,” she said. Mr. Romney has also pledged to end a federal program, Title X, that provides family planning services to millions of women.
Mr. Santorum has taken the position that health insurance plans should not be required to cover birth control. He also favors allowing states to decide whether to ban birth control. He and Mr. Gingrich both support “personhood” initiatives that would legally declare fertilized eggs to be persons, effectively banning not just all abortions but also certain contraceptives, including IUDs and some types of birth control pills.
Mr. Gingrich wants to withdraw government money from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions in addition to providing contraceptives, though the federal money cannot be used for abortion.
The emphasis on birth control over the past year or two is fascinating. Birth control has always been on the radar screens of the most extreme anti-abortion activists, but the hostility toward it in mainstream politics is relatively new. The vast majority of American women use birth control at some point in their lives. The vast majority of Americans support birth control access. The vast majority of Americans are able to put two and two together and recognize that more birth control equals fewer abortions. That opposition to birth control is now a mainstream GOP position — the fact that hostility to female autonomy and women’s rights have gotten this extreme, and are only headed rightward — should strike more than a little terror into all of our hearts.
I just…wow. I don’t eve know any more.
What!? Santorum and Gingrich support the personhood movement? I never that thought that such a stunningly vacuous and reductionist view of personhood could ever gain ground as a mainstream legal/political idea, that thesis was wrong. I lose again for underestimating the absurdity of the Republican echo chamber in its ability to make the abjectly stupid reasonable.
It’s not just Catholic universities that do this; it’s Catholic hospitals too. My husband works at a Catholic hospital so our family health insurance doesn’t cover any kind of birth control at all. If I need to go to the doctor to discuss birth control, that doesn’t get covered either. So if I wanted the pill, a diaphragm, or IUD, not even the consult appointments would be covered by my insurance. It’s ridiculous.
Except if you go to a barbeque and pork isn’t served, you will probably live through the experience without your health and life being severely impacted. So, major analogy fail.
I of course think birth control should be available to all persons seeking it for contraceptive reasons. But I also appreciate the mentions of the other medical conditions for which birth control pills are prescribed. A member of my family has a severe problem with developing ovarian cysts and has had several surgeries to remove enormous cysts. Her doctors have put her on a strong hormonal birth control pill and have advised her to stay on it because her condition could become life-threatening if a huge cyst were to burst. So ignoring these conditions, as anti-birth control people almost always do, also trivializes women’s health issues.
I went to Church with my dad yesterday, I was raised Catholic and like to go when they do the old fashioned Mozart masses at his church.
During the Homily the priest started talking about this and busted out a similar kosher analogy. He said “it would be like going to a Jewish delicatessen and forcing them to serve bacon!” I kind of did a, “wait, what?” double take, like, an “are you seriously comparing bacon to reproductive rights?”
Though, I groaned internally in general when he started doing a pro-life Homily. I suppose I should have expected it though, my dad’s priest is one of the most outspoken anti-choicers in the area. It’s a shame that he presides over the church where they do the cool old high masses.
What an incredibly stupid analogy.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the analogy works okay, but it goes the opposite way. I mean, yes, you wouldn’t expect an Orthodox barbecue to serve pork, and nobody’s requiring Catholic churches to hand out condoms. But if your synagogue offers its employees health insurance, it seems perfectly reasonable to expect the insurance to let patients order pork from the hospital cafeteria without the synagogue making a fuss. And even more so if the pork was medically recommended for some reason.
As far as I know, Jewish institutions don’t care if their non-Jewish employees take the money they earn in their jobs and use it to buy pork (just don’t bring it inside the shul): we Jews don’t believe the Torah obligates everyone to abstain from pork — just Jews. In as much as the Torah represents a contract between us and God, for us to say that you (a non-Jew) shouldn’t eat pork would be about as silly as for me to say that you (neither a fellow employee in my collective bargaining unit nor my employer) is subject to the provisions of my employment contract. Certainly, there are elements of Jewish law we Jews believe apply to everyone (the so-called Noachide laws), but the no pork thing is not one of them — so major analogy fail on purely legal/contractual grounds alone.
And even more so if the pork was medically recommended for some reason.
If the pork was medically recommended for some reason and no non-pork substitute was possible/available, then the pork is allowable even to an Orthodox Jew. Certainly, there are “fences” in place to make sure that this doesn’t become an excuse to have bacon for “medicinal reasons”, but, for example, prior to the development/availability of human recombinant insulin, porcine insulin was used, even by religious Jews.
This is so fucking offensive. During the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church would force Jews between eating pork and getting killed. There are no words.
Oh wait, there are.
Fuck you, anti-choice douchebags.
Someone should point out to those who use the barbecue analogy that not all Jews choose to keep Kosher.
The Georgetown woman’s story is horrifying to me on a personal level. Every single woman in my family is on or has been on hormonal birth control for health reasons–ranging from horrible pain to anemia. I am also pretty sure that my insurance has switched policies on whether or not my parents had to pay out of pocket for my birth control (the first time it was prescribed, they had to pay full price, but since I can use generic, that wasn’t a big deal. The second time it was covered, even though my reasons for taking it hadn’t changed). This also meant that my sister delayed getting bc for her condition because she didn’t want our parents to have to pay that much–even though (a) we’re middle class and can easily afford it and (b) her condition is more official and severe than mine, and therefore more likely to be covered.
Yes, not having babies is important. But I can use a condom (at least for now), and it will work pretty well. If I don’t have my birth control I get debilitating cramps every few months.
(Also, at brunch two days ago, I overheard a story about a super-catholic, male student stealing the condoms from the bathroom in his dorm section. Don’t do that! If you don’t want to use a condom, fine–hopefully, you won’t get laid, either. But don’t be an asshole.)
In re the shift toward a more explicitly anti-birth-control position amongst the so-called pro-life movement: I think part of what held back the anti-birth-control tendencies of the movement in the past was the belief amongst many Protestants that the ability to use a condom was part of what separated them from the Catholic riff-raff and the understanding amongst many Catholics of the importance of a right to privacy, the basis of Griswold v. CT, to religious freedom (if you don’t have a right to privacy, how do you hide your priest hole?). Now, though, right wing Protestants and Catholics have become so comfortable working together on this issue that right wing Protestants are taking a more Catholic point of view on birth control and Catholics are less afraid of Protestant persecution and hence less concerned about the right to privacy.
Given that so many people have used birth control, anti-birth-control would be, you’d think, unpopular. Unfortunately, deeply ingrained in the American mindset is the view that sex is a privilege: e.g., if you can’t afford a baby then you shouldn’t have sex (even my birth-control-using, Planned Parenthood supporting parents have expressed such sentiments which you’d think would be alien to both their Jewish religion — which has a different view on sex — and liberal viewpoints). An attack on birth-control won’t be too unpopular (provided it’s ostensibly just about access of “those people, who shouldn’t have sex in the first place” to birth control), unfortunately.
“If you don’t want to use a condom, fine–hopefully, you won’t get laid, either. ”
Unless you’re a lesbian. ;)
As you’ve written and some have commented, there are any number of Catholics who openly defy the Church’s ban on birth control. This has been the case for years. Several disagree with the Pope and consistently have, despite the stated official position. There are liberal Catholics and conservative Catholics.
It’s often said that the nature of Protestantism encourages schism and splintering. That’s true, but in the Roman Catholic Church, undeclared factionalism has existed for a very long time. The word Catholic means “universal”, so there have been efforts made to keep the faith together at all cost.
In any case, its very hierarchical structure is either ignored to some degree or followed religiously. These are overreaching efforts to try to assert control for all. One might even see them cynically if they weren’t so deadly earnest.
It’s simpler than you think—many Catholic colleges and universities want fewer women to attend, and need this to happen voluntarily so as not to lose federal funding. Why? Because they think fewer women mean more vocations (translation: men becoming priests). Catholic institutions of higher learning are thought to be key to getting more vocations. (“more vocations” is also the reasoning behind abolishing altar girls).
I graduated from a small, Catholic woman’s college a little over 10 years ago. While it wasn’t something shouted from the rooftops, the college had a standing practice of having a local Gyn at the health center twice a week for exams and bcp scrips. I have no idea if that practice continues since I graduated, but I suspect it still does. Because the main mission of my alma mater was educating and empowering their young women, not making us all into incubators for the Church.
But this whole thing speaks to the bigger reasons why so many women like myself have found ourselves estranged from the Church. The Catholic Church of the 1970s and 1980 was much more progressive and laissez faire, and I couldn’t have imagined any parish priest even in my midwest home town pontificating against bcp back then and getting taken seriously by most parishioners. I find it appalling and horrifying that Pope Benedict and his toadies have made it their mission to drag the Catholic Church back into the dark ages, all the while thumbing their noses at the most vulnerable who will adversely affected by their actions.
Like Lolagirl, I grew up in the post-Vatican II Catholic Church, which was far more focused on social justice and ecumenism then on this culture war nonsense. I don’t recognize my Church anymore–it’s like they’re trying to be as exclusionary as possible, and they are worrying so much about whether the table is perfectly set and all the diners are clean and polite, that they are forgetting about the hungry standing outside the door.
And Nazi Catholics. Just sayin’.
Not to mention that they would spy on “New Christians” (Jews who chose to convert rather than being expelled or sometimes killed), and, if they didn’t eat pork regularly, would accuse them of still being secret Jews, and often end up burning them at the stake.
Given its history, the Catholic Church should not be using Jewish practices as any kind of analogy or excuse, ever. Even if the analogy made any sense, which it clearly doesn’t.
[...] Feministe has a round-up on the recent squabbling about whether or not religious organizations that don’t approve of birth control should have to have health plans cover it. Aside from the misogyny and offensive attitudes on display in general, let us analyze the statement made by a few people that requiring such organizations to require it would be like serving bacon at a Jewish barbeque. Well, let’s see: suppose someone attending the barbeque had a life-threatening illness that required them to eat pork. And supposing that person had to attend the barbeque and to eat while there. Well, now, I suppose they’d just fire up a separate grill upwind, since under those circumstances, Jewish law requires them to eat it. And if they weren’t Jewish? All the more so. Now, shut up. [...]
Forgive my ignorance, but I always thought that “freedom of religion” just meant that you (you! the individual person standing right over there!) could worship freely as you choose, not that “freedom of religion” meant that religious establishments/institutions were free to force their religious beliefs and practices on everyone else.
Or am I wrong in my interpretation?
I totally love the above, btw. For the win.
The problem with Catholics/Evangelicals is that they do not seem content to police only their own members… they want to police everyone else too.
Seriously. Having to offer BC (oh the horrors!) as part of the health insurance package is not the equivalent of being strapped down and having a IUD forcibly inserted. Just because it is offered does not mean that people have to take advantage of it…
Also, I wonder… are those Catholic/Evangelical institutions going to wail and gnash their teeth like this over covering Viagra or other ED medications? My guess would be no…
Ugh.
Good old Catholism still being as backward as usual. You think they would have learned from what happened in the middle ages when they were the shit but i guess not.
I kinda love (hate) how birth control is considered a huge freakin’ issue NOW, but never once was this position discussed in the 18+ years that I attended Catholic mass. And I attended pretty much every week.
Wow. It’s a direct attack on “religious liberties” that are themselves a direct attack on the liberty of women. And there’s no sense of contradiction there. At all. So an abstract concept like an institution is more important than a living, breathing woman. Unbelievable.
Federal money comes with strings attached. Catholic hospitals, universities, social service charities that accept federal subsidies have to play by the rules, and the new rules are that federally mandated health insurance must include access to a full range of preventative health care services for women, including contraceptive care.
You don’t want to play? You have a few options (or a combination of these options). You can stop accepting federal money entirely (as in refuse to treat Medicare/Medicaid patients or to accept federal grant/loan money at the university level); and/or you can, as a religious institution, hire only those employees/accept only those students who adhere to your own faith; and/or you can refuse to provide a group health insurance plan at all and pay the tax/fine imposed on employers who decline to do so.
As I keep reading about this, I’d also like to know exactly whose “religious liberties” are being infringed upon, since 98% of the faithful sitting in the pews are in fact using (or have used) artificial birth control. How exactly is this policy infringing on the rights of the celibate all-male Catholic hierarchy? And how is it that these bishops who have enabled the rape of children for decades by shuffling pedophile priests from parish to parish think they retain any shred of moral authority?
I’m not and have never been Catholic, but I attended a Catholic school for years (the expensive, “Ivy League feeder” type where about 50% of students were Catholic). They did teach us the Catholic church’s position on birth control (which they interpreted as rhythm method only), but then they proceeded to teach us all of the methods of birth control and how to use them effectively. They also taught us that the rhythm method is basically ineffective. This was in the 1990s. My guess? They didn’t want pregnant students on their hands.
They taught extreme anti-abortion views though, and showed us an “abortion video,” which was horrifying (and I put in quotes because I now question its validity). They also taught us that it was virtually impossible to become pregnant from rape because the “body goes into shock.” This was their response to questions about the allowance of abortion in cases of rape.
So, the fight never ends. I’m a 20-something oral contraceptive-using womun, & I can totally see Roe v. Wade being overturned within the next half-decade, as well as the complete elimination of all contraception. So, we all better wake the fuck up and fight harder, right now. Seriously…at this rate the United States will be identical to Pakistan before the next generation reaches adulthood.
In the event that all the “legal,” contraceptive options are taken off the table, the resourceful womyn among us will utilize some…interesting abortion methods, some of which may be totally fucked up: 1) pennyroyal tea (old-fashioned as hell, but has some degree of success; 2) black cohosh; 3) a few shots of Everclear; 4) the good old wire coat hanger method (and we REALLY don’t want people to go that route, ever again.
On a related topic–one which we were discussing last month–Michelle Duggar miscarried during her 20th pregnancy. Fortunately, she’s okay.
I might be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure I’m not, but my mother used to have nuns working with her on her campaigns, albeit they didn’t wear nun garb when they came to the house, and I do recall asking my mother about that. (She was a state legislator for twelve years, and was openly pro-choice) Apparently they were also pro-choice, although I don’t know how open they were in their church. The eighties. Go figure.
As a non-American, all I can say is: vote those fuckers down and out.
It is not generally known, but if you present to an emergency department of a Catholic hospital as a rape victim of childbearing age, they will not tell you about emergency contraception. Depending on your health insurance, this may be the only game in town. Disturbing.
In this country we have a choice of what religion we are or if we have nothing to do with religion. If you choose to get your medical insurance through a religions group then sorry you made the choice to follow their rules. We have the right to choose a religion not the right to tell religions what they should do.
This varies by jurisdiction. At least ten states (including mine) have enacted laws requiring that rape victims be offered emergency contraception in all hospitals, including Catholic hospitals. No such law has ever been struck down by the courts (to the best of my knowledge).
But you do have a point. In 80% of US states, if, as a rape victim, you have the misfortune of being taken to a Catholic hospital following your assault, there is no legal obligation that you be advised of the availability of emergency contraception.
Some of the comments reminded me of something my Israeli mother-in-law told me when I asked about using pig parts in medicine/surgery. She said people are supposed to live by the Torah not die by the Torah. So, yeah, there will be pork at a Jewish barbecue if that’s the only thing to eat (hypothetically speaking, if there is nothing edible on the planet but pigs or something). So analogy fail because there is a difference between mundane choices and medicine/health.
Emolee wrote:
I threw up a little in my mouth after reading that. That’s such a short step to “well, since you’re pregnant, I guess you wanted it and weren’t really raped.”
(nb, I know that just because you relayed this information does not mean you espouse this opinion. I don’t want you to think your opinions make me want to throw up.)
Nell wrote:
Yes, I agree with this. If they don’t want to pay for it out of their own money that’s fine, they can pay for bc separately out of the money that goes to them from my taxes.
ps: does the new website have a way to automatically make the block quote by clicking on a comment anymore?
[...] Jill Filipovic is promoting the meme that won’t [...]
lets flip this around then – maybe you wouldnt expect someone keeping kosher/halal/veg*n to serve pork or other animal products in their own home, but if you invited someone into your house with known dietary restrictions, it would be a real dick move not to provide something they could also enjoy.
just as seeming to offer a “public” service but placing restrictions on who and what public needs are getting met is a dick move.
I just wanted to amplify what DAS said upthread about all Jews being permitted to eat pork if there is no other food available. According to Jewish law, the only commandments that one is not permitted to violate in order to save someone’s life are blasphemy, sex crimes (adultery, rape, incest, etc), and murder (and abortion doesn’t count as murder, even a little bit). Literally EVERYTHING ELSE is up for grabs. You want a culture of life, you evil SOBs? Come talk to the Jews.
Given its history I’m not sure the Catholic Church should be speaking about morals or conduct in public, ever.
Actually, if a doctor told a Jewish person that eating pork is necessary for his/her health, any rabbi consulted would tell that person to eat the pork. In Judaism, life comes before everything except taking a life, worshipping other gods, sexual immorality (defined as sleeping with people you are prohibited to sleep with – gilui arayot).
So no, that analogy doesn’t work at all.
Just to be clear — I don’t believe that garbage at all. And I think it was morally reprehensible and dangerous (educational malpractice!) to teach us such a load of crap.
Vanessa:
If religions benefit from taxpayer money, they don’t get to pick and choose which secular rules they follow and which they won’t. Religious organizations get all kinds of tax exemptions, and colleges accept federally funded loans.
Also, maybe “religions” should stop trying to tell those of us who are uninterested in their bass-ackward, superstitious gabble how to live.
I was reading more about this today and to think that graduate students and professors will take the most of this hit instead of undergrads upsets me.
They’re absolutely right. No one should ever see a penny of their taxes go to support policies with which they disagree. Attention Pentagon: Please forward my share of the money used in the Iraq War to Bitter Scribe, care of Feministe. Thank you.
Just wanted to note that the trackback at comment #38 is for an anti-choice website. I’m not sure if such things are moderated or not here at Feministe.
What’s even more annoying is that the other blog gets all annoyed about Jill taking the position that lack of access to birth control is linked to increased abortion rates without specifying why Jill’s opinion is (supposedly) erroneous.
Since the vast majority of US Catholics _do_ use contraception methods beyond FAM, I’m wondering if the Church’s strong push against contraceptives (seems to be stronger than its push against the death penalty and war) is an effort to keep their flock in line, so to speak.
The Church has known since before it decided that Contraception Iz Bad that even Proper Married Baby-Having Catholics find it valuable for timing and spacing pregnancies, and it’s clear at this point that it’s fighting a losing battle on this rule in the US and parts of Europe. That the US Church is pushing back so hard really seems like a last-ditch effort to maintain their authority and enforce this rule for the sake of enforcing it,
I can’t believe the era that Republicans are stuck in, in America. Someone said it before me, but I’ll reiterate; you all better just vote to make sure this bullshit doesn’t pass as law. Considering all that’s been said (not to mention the economic implications of sending women who are professionals/ students et cetera into a pre-oral contraception age) it’s pretty unbelievable really.
What a breath of fresh air these comments are. So MANY young women around me are blase about this whole thing, thinking the battles are all won. Mark my word – women are poised to be trodden down again unless we wake up.
[...] that be enough to save his bacon from the guillotine? Tune in later [...]
[...] that be enough to save his bacon from the guillotine? Tune in later this month to find [...]
[...] that be enough to save his bacon from the guillotine? Tune in later this month to find [...]
[...] that be enough to save his bacon from the guillotine? Tune in later this month to find [...]
[...] Jill Filipovic is promoting the meme that won’t [...]