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As long as we have a health insurance system that is largely provided by employers who receive certain federal tax benefits, we need regulations to ensure that the insurance offered is actually, you know, worth something to people’s health.
Reproductive health is a very important part of health care and it is only logical that employers should be required to cover it. It’s not a coincidence that the one exemption that is being sought happens to involve the subordination of women, and involves invoking a “principle” so essential to the faith that it has been overwhelmingly rejected by practicing Roman Catholics. What we have here is a potemktin religious “community” trying to subvert gender equality by imposing anachronistic, medieval, reactionary views on birth control on lay Catholics who by and large don’t believe in them.
Shorter RC: “Smash religious conscience if it threatens my appetites! Even if it doesn’t affect me personally, it galls me to think that someone, somewhere thinks something I dislike!”
Because everything is always about Planet RC.
And if folks working for Catholic institutions don’t like their policies, they’re free to work elsewhere. Nobody’s forcing anyone to do anything here – except the feds forcing Catholic institutions to provide coverage for services they find morally reprehensible.
And once again, we’re told that we REALLY just afraid of the free exercise of female sexuality. It has nothing to do with the rights and dignity of the unborn. Nope. Nothing at all. That’s why we operate crisis pregnancy centers staffed with volunteers who provide complimentary diagnostic services and hand out free diapers, baby formula and other necessities, and run homes for expectant mothers who need safe places to live. Clearly, we hate these women. RC has spoken.
You reduce women to being 1) virgins, 2) harlots, or 3) pregnant, barefoot, in the kitchen.
No one is this bad at reading comprehension. You’re trying too hard. Troll elsewhere.
Some offense, but you’re remarkably dense when you’re not spewing someone else’s soundbites.
Right. Because Pope John Paul II didn’t mean anything he said about feminine genius. They’re all virgins, harlots or barefoot & pregnant.
My friend Teresa Tomeo might take issue with your characterizations of what the Church thinks of women. So would Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (obviously, nothing more than a brainwashed, patriarchally-oppressed and sexually-feared woman).
But don’t let facts stand in the way of an agenda-driven rant.
You are reducing the constitution of the United States into prohibiting religious freedom. Reproductive “health” is nothing but bad medicine. And for the State to mandate this by forcing Catholic institutions to buy into this bad medicine is bullshit you claim to be against your “ideal”, such as “promiscuous”, “childless”, “reducing womanhood to animalism” Reality check? sounds like you are on the side of Reality Distortions.
Reality Check: You reduce women to 1)whores 2) murderers, 3)and gender neutral
As a Catholic woman I’d like to point out that I am none of the above and I have never been pejoratively called any of the above by anyone other than people angry with the church.
I wonder if Reality Check is the same person who does Fact Check. The similarities between the two are striking: whereas Fact Check is not concerned with facts, Reality Check is not concerned with reality (e.g. reproductive health means nothing more than contraception).
It would be pretty awesome if Reality Check busted out the “Truth-o-Meter”.
This is really a red herring. The Catholic church is not trying to prevent anyone from using birth control if it does not violate their conscience. The church is not going to fire anyone who goes to the drugstore and purchases any contraceptive of their choice. The church is simply asking that it not have to directly pay for the violation of its basic teachings. Do you think religious liberty should mean that religious institutions should not be coerced to do things that directly violate their basic tenets? That’s what’s at stake here. The best analogy I’ve seen is to a rule requiring vegetarian restaurants to serve their employees beef (or maybe give them McDonald’s gift certificates) since beef is good for you and if people want to eat beef the fact that they happen to work at a vegetarian restaurant shouldn’t prevent their access to beef on their lunch break.
A better analogy is if we discovered tomorrow that the regular consumption of pork would greatly reduce the incidences of obesity with obvious benefits to our national healthcare. HHS mandates that all Jewish organizations (among others) provide pork to their employees unless their organization never provides any services to the public and all of their employees follow the same beliefs.
“the one exemption that is being sought happens to involve the subordination of women”
Right, because easy access to birth control and abortion has been such a boon to the dignity of women.
+1
Like
(I really miss the thumbs up/down tool from Mark’s old blog.)
Right on Sean!
Birth control advocates promised long ago that contraception would bring about more respect for women and end prostitution.
It doesn’t matter what you think. There is no compelling reason to violate religious freedom and conscience rights here, and the Supreme Court will slap it down hard, just as it did with the 9-0 case a couple weeks ago.
It’s not even a matter of birth control alone. “The pill” also acts as an abortifacent at times, which means employers would be forced to fund abortion. (Of course, Obamacare already funds abortion in a labyrinthine manner anyway)
My goodness, are you still here? I envy the amount of free time you must have if you can spend so much of it trolling.
Get a hobby. Volunteer somewhere. Read a book. I recommend starting with “The Cost of Choice” by Erika Bachiochi et. al., but really, almost any book would be a more productive use of your time.
RC: You’re so full of shit. Your tireless efforts to spread lies and further the culture of death on this and many other websites is truly disgusting. I am saddened that there might be people out there that have believed your lies and, heaven forbid, acted upon them, whether it meant killing their unborn child or some other action that might have led to the destruction of their soul.
There’s no such thing as a soul. The rest of your comment shows once again that you are utterly terrified of female autonomy, and would prefer dead women in back alleys to safe and legal abortions.
Do you have any thoughts not derived from bumperstickers?
["Thoughts" being a rather generous assessment of your commentary, but what the hey.]
“Safe and legal abortions” result in a dead woman – approx. 50% of the time. (Always one dead person, at least.)
And ah, yes, that soul thing… see any Japanese horror movies lately, RC? There’s a culture haunted by losses of children, for sure.
Remember Chile? Remember how you brought it up and then I showed you its maternal mortality rate is lower than Pro-Choice Cuba? Remember how you never responded to that?
Well now I give you Poland. In 1993 they put up more restrictive laws on abortion. Has Poland experienced in upsurge in maternal mortality since ? Not according to the UN. They place its maternal mortality ratio as below the Netherlands.
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/89006.html
The OECD also indicates maternal mortality in Poland has went down a great deal since 1993. Also that has been consistently below that of the Netherlands since 1996 or so.
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
Back to the UN they don’t put Poland too great in Gender-Inequality, but Poland is still listed by them as having less gender inequality than the US or UK.
http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/indicators/68606.html
Nations and women can and do manage fine outside your ideology.
I think that Sebelius postponed the implementation of the rule by one year so as to try to minimize its effect on this fall’s election. There could be subterfuge here, too, if the courts refuse to hear a lawsuit unless and until the rule has been implemented — i.e., that there is a tangible harm already present the gives the lawsuit “standing.”
Therefore, I would advise the Bishops so: be pro-active. File lawsuits in every jurisdiction that you can, all over the nation, in hopes that at least one Court will take the case and expedite the resolution of the problem (presumably in our favor).
Also: make this one issue your top priority…… by, for example, having ALL 200+ Bishops march on the White House, carrying placards. I would actually recommend deliberate civil disobedience, provoking Federal police to get arrested…. Imagine the effect on the electorate of seeing 200+ Catholic Bishops being handcuffed and led off to be fingerprinted!!
Make a joint declaration of excommunication for politicians who do not renounce prior public statements advocating for the various facets of the Culture of Death, especially abortion.
The key here? The Bishops need to present a public, united, vociferous, in-your-face attitude. Enough of the mealy-mouthed “waiting for the courts,” etc. Enough of waiting for politicians to attack! Go on the “attack” yourselves…..
Jesus voluntarily went to His death — the Bishops should deliberately seek to be arrested for protesting this egregious violation of our rights.
You know the government messed up when you have all of the USCCB in agreement!
Encourage your pastors to talk about this at Mass. This needs to be done, if your bishops haven’t encouraged them to do so, take the lead.
I know that our bishop has and a letter will be put into the bulletins in our diocese next Sunday.
RC – I really don’t believe you think this way, after many of the people (most of them, women) on this blog have offered prayers for you and for your well being. If you do, there will be nothing that can be written or said here or anywhere else that could change your mind. Why would you waste your time trying to change ours?
In regards to your statement about Catholics by and large accepting abortion, etc., I highly doubt that a majority of Catholics believe that, but even if they did, like my mama used to say, “if your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”
I don’t know about abortion but by far the vast majority use birth control methods that aren’t approved by the Pope, that’s for sure. That should be a big clue that your position on contraception is nearly as unhinged as the ruling of masturbation as mortal sin.
Show me the teaching that proclaims Catholics to be perfect. We sin. Therefore, “Catholics do ______” doesn’t work as a argument for why the Church is wrong.
Again; just because…does it make it right?
“as unhinged as the ruling of masturbation as mortal sin.”
Please stick to the subject. We can discuss your hobbies later.
I don’t think that the bishops and most of the Catholic Faithful are angry enough. I agree with what John said. The bishops need to tell the government to f— off. This means actually demonstrating, getting angry, making our voices heard so that the media will not be able to ignore us. This is also the problem with how the pro-life movement has been conducted these nearly 40 years. Yes, I am glad that there are some crisis pregnancy centers that help women, etc but I don’t think we are angry enough. Look at the March for life. It looks more like a family barbeque and stump for republican politicians who pander to the pro-lifers to get votes. We aren’t angry enough. Yes, prayer, fasting, etc is good and should be done but its time we got in their faces. Occupy the offices of health and human services. Occupy Washington DC. Not just the bishops, the lay faithful. We need demonstrations. Its time to stop being mealy mouthed. Our rights are being stripped away. Its time we stop rolling over and taking it from stupid politicians, the media, etc.
Reproductive health? Since when is it providing a health benefit to disrupt the proper functioning of a healthy bodily system by administering drugs which can and often do have serious side effects or by surgically altering a properly functioning organ? Pregnancy is not a disease. Why should I be forced to pay for others to mutilate their bodies.
So you’re saying a woman’s “natural state” is pregnancy? Wow.
Talk about tunnel vision.
There are many therapies available for people suffering from reading comprehension problems. One of them may be right for you. Ask your medical provider.
RC has a variety of slogans, and the one she selected was the closest fit available to the actual argument! Give her a break!
No. A mature woman’s, and man’s, natural state is fertility. That’s why they call it “reproduction”.
A man’s normal state isn’t sleeping, well not most men, but that doesn’t make sleeping a disease. If a person thinks caffeine unhealthily affects the sleep-cycle they’re not saying men should be asleep most of their lives.
Pregnancy is a natural possible outcome of sex. Do you really think it’s a disease or tumor? Or in some way unnatural? If so explain why more clearly.
estimated 50 million abortions a year. 10 times that with contraception. Two or three years, another billion people on a already overpopulated world. COOL!
1) who says it’s overpopulated?
2) even if the world were overpopulated, how would that justify the evil of abortion?
3) what’s up with your math?
Your posts reek of the “just enough of me, way too many of you (brown-skinned folks)” mentality.
I’m going out on a limb (and I may be incorrect), but I think that above comment was sarcasm…
I dunno. Could be. But I seem to recall similar comments posted by someone with a similar handle. Ah well… I’m frequently wrong.
I think you’re right….see below….
I agree with the above comments. Christians are not getting angry enough.
There is a time and place for “turning the other cheek”. This is not that time.
Even if readers do not agree with the RC’s positions, they need to be concerned about “rights of conscience”, as freedom of religion is part of the Bill of Rights.
Hmm… I think I’d rather have the Gestapo waste time on their search for me and my family than give them my information willingly… since you know that’s what they’re going to use this list for.
Agreed. I would *not* give my name to anyone in the Federal government.
Really? You’d rather keep off the grid to protect yourself from American government persecution than stand up and be counted with the bishops who are on the front lines of this thing? I’m pretty paranoia-friendly, but that strikes me as awfully timid.
Not me. My family.
I can take anything, but seeing my family suffer is something that I don’t want to see.
I take your point Steve, but I also know they probably know who I am anyway.
That IS my point: If they’re coming after us for THIS, they’re coming after us anyway. I won’t live in fear. Not of this, and not on this issue. And you know I have a family too. There’s a time and place to be inconspicuous, and there’s a time and place to stand up and be counted.
Don’t worry. I am standing up. The name means nothing at this point. My pastor knows who I am, my Knights of Columbus brother in two different states know who I am, I give money, I volunteer, and I wish I can do more. This blog is one way of doing it.
Should read “brothers”….
Well, the name would mean something on the White House petition: It would be one more name, among what is now a couple thousand and will hopefully very soon be more. (The goal set by the White House for a petition to receive an official response is 25,000. Granted, the administration has a history of ignoring even petitions that reach this threshold, but it’s still worth something to go through channels, to hoist them on their own petard.)
Thousands of people have signed their names, putting their faith in each other for the sake of the common good. If we ALL sign the petition, they can’t round us ALL up, can they?
Don’t underestimate the power of the Dark Side.
But you’re right…I’m in!!
Cheers!
As for me, as of today, I’m going on strike against Reality Check’s posts. Skippin’ right past ‘em. Finger in ears, “la-la-la!”
It’s called wising the hell up, already.
And I highly recommend that others do the same.
In fact, if anyone does reply to Reality Check in future, I would support someone replying to that person, “TOTD’O”, which stands for “Tool of Troll! d’Oh!”
I was just using him/her mostly as a tool to link to statistics. I find stats interesting. Still you have a point.
What are you talking about? Female autonomy? Men aren’t allowed to have sex outside of marriage either. Priests can’t have sex. It has nothing to do with control and everything to do with the spirituality of sex within a marriage. The church doesn’t teach that the guy gets to ditch his pregnant wife or that she has to stay home. You’re so detached from reality. What happened to you that made you so angry?
“What happened to you that made you so angry?”
The 1960′s.
Would have been nice to see this amount of response, by the higher ups when the sexual abuse scandals were exposed.
It’s true. Completely revamping child security in every diocese since 2002, making Catholic churches pretty much the safest place for children is nothing compared to strongly-worded letters to legislators.
C’mon. The abuse scandal? Is that the best you have? Got any Galileo or Crusades shots?
Umm…Randy…there are archives. You will find the regulars on this blog are pretty consistent and the abuse scandal is no different.
I realize that our responses to RC are meant for the benefit of others who may have similar questions and a working mind. but I suggest to ignore the really silly objections that do not help anyone. Instead let us pray for this poor soul, as those prayers will surely be more useful for all involved.
If there wasn’t armed revolution from the pews against the legalization of abortion in 1973, what makes ya’ll think this silly little abuse will be any different. We Amurican Catholics will take it and continue to ask for more of the same. It’s just so easy to change the channel – oooh look reruns of Dynasty!
Ahem . Every time I go to the petition page, it tells me to sign in to whitehouse.gov. And every time I sign in, it takes me back to my “profile page”.
I had the same problem Will. I closed all my browser windows and then went back and tried again. Worked.
Me too. Maybe the White House is not taking any more votes on that petition.
Something is seriously wrong with the website. They make it very hard to sign the petition. Either the White House can’t get a good website designer or they deliberately want to throw up obstacles so that most people will give up and not sign the petition.
But please persevere, just keep going back and signing in and out until it lets you click that little green button (that is when the site isn’t apologizing to you because it is unavailable.).
FWIW, I found the petition easy to sign, but I had to use Internet Explorer to do it. Wouldn’t work in Firefox.
Woo hoo! When I signed the petition yesterday, there were under 100 signatures. Right now there are going on 2500. Keep it up everyone!
This is ridiculous on so many levels. I am glad to see the USCCB united on this, although I think there is something deeper at play here the bishops don’t get.
This is what happens when you trust government to do the job you should be doing, and when you throw your support to the government getting involved in religious and personal matters. The bishops generally supported the ultimate federal intrusion into healthcare, Obamacare, and now they act surprised when the government is intruding even more.
Many bishops, and many Catholics in the pews, supported the bull, and now can’t believe he is wrecking the China shop. As Ron Paul says, if you get in bed with government, you had better expect the diseases that come with it.
More accurately, the USCCB stance on Obamacare was decidedly mixed from the outset.
The USCCB was generally favorable to the idea of universal healthcare, but they took no position on the individual mandate — and more importantly they were outspoken in their opposition to including abortion etc. in universal healthcare, not only for Catholics, but for anyone. They were clear from the outset regarding the need to respect moral principles in implementing universal healthcare, and took an activist approach to encouraging Catholics to petition their legislators, etc. to see that moral principles were respected.
You can quarrel politically and economically with the bishops’ stance, and you can argue that they were naive to trust this administration to implement universal healthcare in a way in keeping with sound moral principles. But it’s not like the bishops advocated a carte blanche approach opening the floodgates to whatever government wanted to do, and are now surprised at how the government has chosen to cash the check.
The USCCB was generally favorable to the idea of universal healthcare, but they took no position on the individual mandate — and more importantly they were outspoken in their opposition to including abortion etc.
In other words, they only wanted one side of the coin and not the other.
There is no in-principle reason to insist that the two things are linked in the “flip sides of the coin” way you suggest. In principle, one could have a workable national healthcare system that did not include abortion or other morally objectionable services.
No, you could have such a thing conceivably, but not in principle, because there’s nothing principled about it. You thought you could give an expansionist government all sorts of power over others, while carving out an unprincipled exception for yourselves.
You can just keep telling yourselves that it’s not really two sides of the same coin, simply because an all-powerful non-Catholic government that somehow never uses its power in a way that violates Catholic social teaching is hypothetically conceivable, and you will continue to get duped in reality, each and every time.
And yes, this is a moral issue and not just a political one. When you have every reason to know better and no excuse not to, but you reject wisdom and allow yourself to be duped in a way that directly facilitates evil because of your utopian political ideology, you share moral culpability for the result.
I signed that petition even though I’m not a Catholic, and my own personal ox isn’t being gored (yet), because unlike so many of the bishops and Catholic charities, I don’t just watch other peoples’ freedoms and rights of conscience get trampled without protest until it hurts my own interests. But if the leaders of the Catholic Church in America still don’t learn their lesson, even after this, then screw them. They can just stew in their own juices next time.
All right, if you aren’t Catholic, I won’t make a thing of it. I’ll just say that nothing I said was meant as a defense of an “all-powerful” or intrusive government, and leave the political theory discussion for another day. Thanks for signing. Cheers.
I signed it.
Anyhow, some food for thought here: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2012/01/selective-and-belated-protest.html
Many of us warned that exactly this would happen when Catholic Charities and the American bishops were playing footsie on Obamacare. It was always foolish to believe that you could allow an expanding secular government all the way up to a line of your choosing, and then expect it not to cross it indefinitely.
“Expanding” government is not a fundamental moral issue. In principle, state-run universal healthcare is not inherently unjust. The bishops were agreeable to the government providing and regulated services that people actually need (whether government providing them is prudentially advisable is another question). They were not agreeable to the government providing or mandating immoral services. It may have been foolish to believe that THIS administration would be willing to shoulder moral services without also advancing and mandating immoral ones, and I agree that those who opposed the whole thing from the start have the right to say “Toldja!” Supporting Obamacare was an error from the start. But it was a prudential error, not a basic moral one, as the article you link to suggests.
That’s right.
In principle, the notion of a universal health care program – under a truly Christian government – may be a morally positive thing. But not in cahoots with the present Culture of Death government we have at the helm.
You all know the story of the boy and the snake. For those who don’t, here goes:
A boy was climbing a path up a mountain and he came across a venomous snake. The snake asked, “Please little boy, will you pick me up and carry me to the top of this mountain? It’s very difficult for me to slither up these steep slopes.” The little boy answered, “No. If I pick you up, you’ll bite me and I’ll die.” The rattlesnake said, “No, I promise I won’t bite you. Just please take me up to the mountain.” The boy carefully picked up that snake and closed it in his shirt next to his chest, and carried it up to the top of the mountain.
Just as they reached the summit, the snake stirred and bit the boy in the chest. The boy cried out in pain and threw the snake upon the ground. “Why did you do that?” the boy asked the snake, “Now I will surely die!” The snake looked up at him and grinned, “Yes, you surely will die. And you knew what I was when you picked me up.”
Happens every time. When we pick up Death.