Photo Courtesy of Associated Press: All male Republican panel at the Congressional Hearing
Nathan Crites-Herren
The Paw Print
Perhaps the sanest thing to come out of the expectedly conformist and rather conservative Obama administration is the rule that would require health insurance plans, including those provided by Catholic-affiliated hospitals and universities, to offer free contraceptive for health related issues and birth control.
Women have struggled for generations against a health care system that saw contraceptives as separate from health care, rendering millions of women without the right to safe and effective contraceptives. Keeping contraceptives out of health care has been the job of conservative Republicans and the upper echelon of the Catholic Church, creating convenient myths about contraceptives, declaring it is giving way to a society of irresponsible sex-craved individuals who feel has if there is no consequence associated with sex. That dogmatic viewpoint has kept contraceptives in the periphery of the health care debate, despite the unanimous agreement among health care professionals as to the immense utility contraceptives provide.
Not only do contraceptives provide women with essential and effective birth control, but they have also been proven to prevent ovarian cysts like polycystic ovarian syndrome which if untreated causes women to go through menopause at an early stage. Countless women have had to go without treatment, allowing the cyst to destroy their ovaries and leave them at higher risks of cancer and osteoporosis.
It seems that the Obama administration has found a win-win situation for both insurance companies and religious institutions. The rule does not require Catholic institutions to pay for the contraceptive plan; rather it requires the insurance companies to pay for coverage. This allows the Catholic institutions to keep their faith and “moral high ground” about birth control, while the insurance companies pay for coverage. Benefiting from the rule are the insurance companies as well, the overall use of contraceptives is by far more frugal than the medical costs of birth in a hospital.
Despite the accommodations made to Catholic institutions and insurance companies, there is still deep resistance on Capitol Hill to the newly mandated contraceptive policy. As always, patriarchal, conservative Republicans have chosen to spin the contraceptive issue into one of conservative morality, trying to once again tell women how to live their life and treat their bodies.
Demonstrating the level of ignorance that permeates the male dominated Republican Party, the recently formed congressional hearing on the contraceptive measure headed by a Republican majority failed to include a single woman panel member. To add insult to injury, the only female witness that minority Democrats called during the hearing was denied, due to a “lack of proper qualifications.” Republicans effectively denied a woman’s voice in the hearing, pretending as if they understood the details and truths of contraceptives while spouting the popular patriarchal and church propaganda of the evils of contraception.
Clearly, Republicans and their Catholic Church backers are turning the real issue of essential health care for women into a moral debate, which pegs women as instigators in promiscuous acts of sex, which if given free contraceptives would increase and somehow damage the moral fabric of society. The fact is sex is here to stay, and denying women the basic right of contraceptives will not decrease sex out of wedlock or encourage abstinence. Instead, it will only continue the vicious cycle of ignorance towards women’s issues that has plagued this country since its inception. Essentially, people will continue to have sex no matter what abstinence dogma is imposed on them.
We must look beyond the narrow morals of a few conservative and dogmatic religious supporters to realize that in order to have a healthy community, contraceptives are a necessity. It will take something close to a miracle for the conservatives on Capitol Hill to see otherwise, which leaves the Obama administration and women nation-wide up a river with no paddle struggling against the currents of ignorance.
What’s Been Said…