NEW YORK BOSTON |#Popular: Irish Celebrity Gossip Irish in US Politics Irish Festivals Irish Roots Irish Entertainment Offbeat Irish

Home Page > Blogs > News blogs > People and Politics > Madness for Church and GOP to oppose contraceptive use for women or men

People and Politics by Patrick Roberts

Madness for Church and GOP to oppose contraceptive use for women or men

Posted on Thursday, February 09, 2012 at 08:31 AM

Larger Text

E-mail

47 Comments

RSS

47 comments

Next Previous Page 2 of 4 pages

eiriamach | Feb 11, 2012, 01:25 PM EST

It's déjà vu all over again. I was fighting these battles side by side with other women 40 years ago. It's disappointing to see how very little churchmen have learned since then. If they'd learned nothing else, they should have learned that they'd lose again, and that in the process, they'd open the eyes of enough people to the mean-spirited nature of their cause that their GOP allies would also lose the 2012 election. Congratulations to Pres. Obama for buying off the bishops by making contraceptive coverage free for Catholic employers while holding firm on insuring women's reproductive health care!

Report abuse

eiriamach | Feb 11, 2012, 01:09 PM EST

Gearoid4 writes, "The U.S Church has an inalienable right according to the American Constitution, as in the First Amendment." NO, it does not have such an inalienable right. Inalienable rights belong to individuals; they are bestowed by God equally on us because each of us is created equal. Religious organizations as such, as well as corporations, do not have inalienable rights except through the rights of individuals to organize themselves as religious groups and to establish and manage businesses. When the members-- including the laity-- of the Catholic Church rise up and say that their rights are infringed by a health mandate requiring equal insurance coverage, then we should listen to their complaint. But we know that 98% of Catholic married couples have used contraceptives. It's reasonable to conclude, therefore, that they have not joined their voices to the bishops' because they want for their daughters the same freedom to act responsibly that they have had while government was protecting their inalienable right to have as many children, and only as many children, as they could provide for.

Report abuse

eiriamach | Feb 11, 2012, 11:59 AM EST

Gearoid4, if you had a tumor, you'd seek a surgeon and urge the surgeon to interfere quickly with 'natural' progression of cancer. When the choices of men are in question, Catholic doctrine teaches that they should strive to rise above nature, but when the bodies of women are in question, Catholic doctrine teaches that we should "respect the natural biological cycles ... without interrupting what God has ordained." To be fully human, men should do better than nature and women should submit to nature. The old double standard is alive and well, and it's called Catholic teaching. The Ella pill does not work the way earlier versions of the 'morning after' pill worked. There is no evidence that it is an abortifacient, and if it does interfere with implantation of a fertilized ovum, so does a mild cold or a defect in the zygote. In any case, we cannot know how much spontaneous abortion of fertilized ova occurs except that it is frequent-- that, too, is ordained by nature. But you would not allow women to use that natural process to avoid impregnation by a rapist! There's an incredibly sexist double-standard manipulation of "nature" and "natural" in that kind of thinking, much confused. Everyone has a right to the best quality and fullest extent of health care available in his or her state. The US Constitution gives no one and NO RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION the "religious freedom" to deny me or any other women our right to equal health care and health insurance. To call that interference "freedom of religion" is an outrage; that interference is misogynist male tyranny.

Report abuse

Gearoid4 | Feb 11, 2012, 10:31 AM EST

I have taken stock of my comments, Eiriamach. It is not a popular stand to go against the general current which is flowing in an anti-life direction i.e treating pregnancy as some sort of disease which must be medically erased at source. I am not advocating irresponsible, endless pregnancies but rather that married couples or any couples respect the natural biological cycles of women without interrupting what God has ordained. Couples who do so, often report that it leads to a closer and more mutually satisfying relationship.

Report abuse

Gearoid4 | Feb 11, 2012, 10:10 AM EST

How is contraception a health issue in the general understanding of the word? Pregnancies are part of the natural order of life in the reproductive cycle of women, unless conception is prevented or stopped through surgical or chemical intervention. Contraception is not a right that can be dispensed at the whim of anybody. Pregnancy should not be treated as a health disorder because of certain responsibilities that it brings People who oppose contraceptive methods, do not want women to be subject to endless pregnancies that they may not be able to cope with. Tat is why the Church recommends Natural Family Planning methods which respect the reproductive cycles of a woman and allow the married couple to co-operate with each other in mutual love in regulating births if need be. It does not break the link between sex and the unitive aspect of love. You are incorrect to state that the HHS has nothing to do with abortion pills. In fact, the Ella pill is covered by the insurance policies mentioned in the HHS law and is widely regarded as an abortifacient, which makes the womb a hostile environment for hosting the fertilized egg. "Rights" are involved here and it is clearly the constitutionally-guaranteed of Religious groups which are being trodden on.

Report abuse

eiriamach | Feb 11, 2012, 09:53 AM EST

I wish you'd contemplate the consequences of your words, Gearoid4, just once before you post them. Can't you see that your lecturing women about not having rights to contraception leads to some Catholic men treating women as though we have no rights--as though women are God's gift to men for beating up on and discriminating against as inferior? Let me hasten to add that in reviewing the readers' comments to the NY Times articles about the bishops' assault on women's health care, I am encouraged to see that the majority of posters, who overwhelmingly support the administration, are male as far as I can tell from screen names. They seem to be grateful to their wives and female partners for taking moral responsibility for birth control, and they feel the injustice of depriving women of equal health care coverage. But the Catholic Church's pogroms against women and gays are doing untold harm to our society and continuing to generate misogyny, homophobia, bullying and abuse. They keep Neanderthal ideas of male-female relationships alive in the 21st century. Biodh naire oraibh!

Report abuse

eiriamach | Feb 11, 2012, 09:29 AM EST

Gearoid4, women who use contraceptives must have gynecological exams, prescriptions written by MDs, and monitoring of their medications by MDs. OF COURSE contraception is a health issue! It is a health issue even if we do not mention the many non-reproductive-system health problems for which physicians prescribe hormonal treatments that coincidentally function to make pregnancy impossible or dangerous. Whatever health care resources are available in a society MUST BE EQUALLY available to all, women NOT excepted! Using contraceptives is, by definition, acceptance of "responsibility" for procreation! That responsibility, btw, is MORAL responsibility for the consequences of sexual activity. The HHS rules proposed by the Obama administration have NOTHING to do with abortion. None of the medications that can be prescribed under the rule is remotely abortifacient. For you to associate this issue with abortion is clearly disingenuous. For you to presume to lecture women that they are not entitled to equal health care is arrogant. For RCC to try to commandeer the First Amendment to impose its irresponsible 'moral' teaching on women's consciences is tyranny, and certainly not an exercise of "freedom."

Report abuse

Gearoid4 | Feb 10, 2012, 07:00 PM EST

People talk about "rights" without the concomitant responsibilities associated with them. Contraception is not an inherent right and for anyone to link it with health issues is disingenuous, as pregnancy is not a life-threatening or debilitating condition. Abortion is certainly a health issue for the growing child in the womb which usually ends in a brutal finality. Freedom of religion is guaranteed under the US constitution as laid-out in the First Amendment, through which Obama and his cohorts are prepared to trample underfoot

Report abuse

seanomelb | Feb 10, 2012, 05:50 PM EST

Collette2 tell that to the exploited children, BTW did you ever use contraceptives? The Pope also states that capital punishment is a sin. Is "Sanctorum" and his right wing holier than thou pals to live by the popes teaching on CP and condemn it.Afterall the pope is infallible!!!

Report abuse

eiriamach | Feb 10, 2012, 05:26 PM EST

Whenever this issue comes up, I remember my grandmother, who spent three weeks of every month of her married years praying that she would not be pregnant again and trying to raise six children in a three-room apartment in the lingering years of the Great Depression. And I think of my great-great-grandmother, who brought twelve faithful Catholic children safely through An Górta Mór and then immigrated to the USA at age 70. Wouldn't the Catholic Church have some use for the moral heroism of strong women if it ceased to burden them with the "sinfulness" of contraceptives or guilt over using them? It just seems to me that with the difficulties church officials find themselves in these days, they could use the help of such women, but alas, they'd rather keep women silent, subordinated, guilt-ridden, and out of the way. And isn't that what this furor over insurance coverage for contraceptives is all about?

Report abuse

Collette2 | Feb 10, 2012, 01:38 PM EST

jim..... The pope is infallible on faith and morals, what more needs to be added to that. We as nominated catholics under obedience are morally bankrupt. Nothing to blow our trumpet about.

Report abuse

jimgordo1 | Feb 10, 2012, 01:10 PM EST

kilgara -- you need to revisit your basic Catholic doctrine: The Pope is infallible on faith and morals when he declares that he is speaking as the successor to St, Peter. That doctrine has been invoked only TWICE in history: For the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and the Assumption in 1950. The Pope is NOT infallible under ordinary circumstances.

Report abuse

eiriamach | Feb 10, 2012, 06:50 AM EST

There was a time in the USA when there would be a conservative backlash against the bishops' assault on separation of church and state. Religious doctrine must not dictate national policy, conservatives would say. And to call the bishops' assault "freedom of religion" would be laughable nonsense! The Constitution doesn't give any religious organization the 'freedom' to deny me my freedom. But now, all the GOP candidates are catering to the religious right; Romney is meeting with "evangelical organizers." Religion trumps equal treatment of women under the law, and the GOP is happy to trash the Constitution. Are there any real conservatives anymore?

Report abuse

kerry214 | Feb 10, 2012, 02:42 AM EST

What business does the GOP or any Man for that matter telling me what to do with my Uterus. Santorum led a prayer group on the floor of Congress during the Terri Schiavo mess. Saying she was still alive, she was showing signs of life. It was later proved the poor woman had been BRAIN DEAD for years.

Report abuse

kilgara | Feb 10, 2012, 12:38 AM EST

The Pope cannot be in error in matters of faith and morals i.e. contraception.If you are a practicing Roman Catholic you MUST believe this, If you do not , you are something other than a practicing Roman Catholic.Do you really think that the Church is going to support and promote a practice that it tells its own members that you could well burn in hell for all eternity if you use it. Case Closed.

Report abuse

Next Previous Page 2 of 4 pages