POLITICS FEBRUARY 13, 2012
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On Friday the White House reached a compromise on the contraception mandate that can satisfy both reproductive health advocates and Catholic hospitals. For those like Rick Santorum, though, who have been loudly and repeatedly accusing the Obama administration of engaging in “overt hostility to faith in America," this isn’t enough. But if this is really a war against religion, maybe it’s time to ask the people of faith who are supposedly under attack. People like me.
My expertise on this topic is personal. Mine is a family in which priests and nuns outweigh any other profession except nurses. My mom taught nursing and medicine at a Catholic college, and placed nursing students in Catholic hospitals for 40 years. Family, faith, and taking care of people—these values are at the core of what we were taught growing up. Perhaps that is why the harsh tones, the imaginary division of the world into two camps—the faithful under attack and the attackers—seems more politics than theology. Certainly it is extremely distant from the millions of lives that could be affected by these conservative outcries. This would merely be entertaining election year political shenanigans if there were not so many lives at stake. More than 11 million women use birth control; millions more will have access to it under the new law.
In fact, birth control use is nearly universal in the United States, even among Catholic women. One recent study shows that 98 percent of sexually experienced Catholic women will have used birth control at some point in their lives. Nearly 60 percent of women use birth control pills for something other than, or in addition to, contraception. For example for women at risk for ovarian cancer, taking birth control pills for five years reduces their risk of getting cancer by 50%. Should women have to explain to employers they need coverage for serious illnesses, not birth control, in order to obtain the medicine their doctor prescribes?
Yes, there is a religious freedom question at stake, not only for employers but also employees. But much of this is already settled territory. The wide use of contraception long ago opened up the complex nature of religion in the public square and already found resolution, well before these election year political attacks. The new Department of Health and Human Services rule comes years after advances in 28 states, where regulations similar to the HHS rule have prompted religious leaders and policy makers to create solutions that serve women and their families and faith-based organizations. Take, for example, DePaul University, the nation’s largest Catholic college, which has confirmed that its employee benefits include prescription birth control coverage. DePaul is not alone—the Archdiocese of New York provided contraceptive coverage for medical reasons even prior to a state law mandating it, as did Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Diocese itself now provides coverage under Wisconsin law.
I agree with the Bishops that there are cases when the religious freedom of an employer trumps that of an employee. For example, when I was a secretary at the Sacred Heart Rectory, I wouldn’t expect my health care plan to include prescription contraception because I worked for the church. Under Obama's regulation, religious institutions, like the church I grew up in, are exempt. Synagogues and other houses of worship do not have to provide contraception. Period.
But when Notre Dame is the single largest employer in South Bend, Indiana, with Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center not far behind, how could we say, “Sorry, you should move if you want to have affordable access to these health services.” It is discordant with my Catholic and my American values that a receptionist at the local hospital making around $26,000 a year should have to shell out nearly $600 for birth control or cede control to her employer over when to start a family, when she is already paying in to her health care plan. The new agreement would take this difficult question off the table by allowing the women and men working at these religious affiliated organizations to receive the equal and affordable access through their insurers directly without engaging their employers.
It is about time we raise the policy debate in Washington to keep up with complexity of faith, health and family that most Americans already navigate in their daily lives. Most Americans are religious. Fifty-five percent told Gallup that religion is “very important” to them. But these same Americans are also focused on the health of their families and they are, in fact, using birth control. Newt, Mitt, Rick, and all the other gentlemen trying to demagogue this issue would be best served listening to the folks in the pews before launching any more pious screeds. Most of America’s faithful families aren’t under attack from a “war on religion.” I for one don’t feel under attack—except perhaps from a small group of Republican presidential candidates who keep ignoring the voices, values, and lives of women like me.
Tara McGuinness is Senior Vice President for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Correction: The original version of this article stated that Marquette University was in Madison, Wisconsin. It is, in fact, located in Milwaukee.
9 comments
Nothing can be added in the way of comment here. This article was perfectly written. That's because it came both from the heart and the head. Bravo, Tara.
- magboy47.
February 13, 2012 at 12:12am
Well written. Sharp, succinct explanations and reasonable arguments augment the central moral thesis. I don't know where there's room for disagreement here, though the aggressively religious right will surely continue to find a way. If you watched some CPAC coverage on C-SPAN this past week, you might have noticed (especially from the panel discussions led by the remarkably self-brainwashed Jordan Sekulow) that American conservatives seem to believe that Planned Parenthood is a branch of the federal government. Like, they really seem to believe this. They claim there is a "war on religion," on freedom, on their concept of morality, and they have convinced themselves that virtually all Democratic party supporters are actively waging this war. Thus, they are morally compelled to go on the offensive every chance they get, every time they perceive an infringement on their [selectively] Bible-based code, women's health and long term political feasibility of the Republican party be damned. It's all very strange.
- Konstantin
February 13, 2012 at 2:04am
Excellent, excellent, excellent. Smart commentary from a Catholic woman - someone with an actual spiritual and health stake in the question. Thank you TNR for publishing this.
- IowaBeauty
February 13, 2012 at 10:38am
if insurance companies don't need to cover contraception, then allow them to not cover pregnancies either as pregnancies are far more expensive. It is time to decouple insurance from work. Why the hell should any employer anywhere have the right to decide what insurance company you get and what they cover? Republicans would make us slave to corporate masters. I will tell you what Republicans, how about creating a public option so that employees can then decide for themselves what kind of coverage they want? If a church doesn't want to cover contraception they won't have to, in fact with a public option they won't have to provide any health care at all.
- blackton
February 13, 2012 at 10:53am
Ah, but blackton, the public option is the work of the devil. And we don't want the devil involved in our health insurance--only God in the case of employees of the Church. Republicans whine about the fact that most employers have to provide health insurance, but they don't mention the economic power that doing that gives them over their employees.
- magboy47.
February 13, 2012 at 11:17am
This is confusing to a non-Catholic: if taking birth control is a sin, then why do so many Catholics do it (sin) with impunity? One answer is that Catholics believe in gradation of sins, and this one must be a low level sin. Of course, the Bishops have to pretend that sin is sin, and birth control, being a sin, must be condemned. It would be helpful to non-Catholics if Catholics printed a guide to sin, with a grade (A through F) for each sin. That way non-Catholics (as well as Catholics) would know which sins to take seriously and which sins not. Maybe Protestants would follow the Catholics and accept gradation of sin as well; that way, we would all understand one another much better and avoid these dust-ups.
- rayward
February 13, 2012 at 11:51am
Thank you, Tara! It's nice to hear a voice of sanity on the issue.
ray - it's a big grey area, actually. Taking the pill isn't a sin. But taking the pill might lead to the loss of a fertilized embryo that otherwise would have implanted in the lining of the uterus, which is murder/abortion. But there's no way to know, for sure, if or when that ever happens; but if you can't/don't take the pill then it's a non-issue (So you can't take it). At least, that's the way it used to be. Every so often, the CCB/Church forgets itself, actually listens to counter-arguments, accepts the validity, and changes their argument accordingly; I don't think they've changed their arguments on the pill, but you should hear the lengths they've been stretching to explain why condoms are bad.
- GSpinks
February 13, 2012 at 3:55pm
Thank you, amen; ditto to the comments above. Apart from the interesting observations about sin, pills, etc, blackton is on the nose here, we should completely decouple health care from employment.
- Sophia
February 14, 2012 at 3:51pm
I do not understand why the administration did not present this as an "insurance reform"/"consumer protection" part of the ACA because that is essentially what is. Present it as a regulation on insurance companies rather than a mandate that employers provide coverage for contraception . To make a bad analogy, if the Church were morally opposed to seat belts and legislation authorized the administration to mandate that car makers include seat belts in their cars, I think it would have been much harder for the Church and its allies to argue that it violated religious freedom. They would be expected to continue to buy cars as needed, continue to teach the faithful they shouldn't use them, and maybe argue that car makers should have to include seat belts but I don't see how they could claim a regulation on a third party was a violation of their religious freedom. So the administration mandated that insurance companies can only provide plans that include coverage for contraception -- so Catholic institutions continue to buy insurance but encourage the faithful and even the non-Catholic employees not to use that part of the plan.
- kcarson1
February 14, 2012 at 6:39pm