Birth Control vs. The Church
Should insurance plans at Catholic colleges be forced to cover birth control? The Obama administration thinks so, as the New York Times gleefully reports. Of course, the Times' piece is less a news story than it is an editorial against the Catholic Church, but it's an illuminating read as a case-in-point of this new morality of entitlement that has stitched into today's culture, especially youth culture. Young people think they have the right to have premarital sex, and they think they are entitled to full protection against its consequences, i.e., having a child or contracting STDs.
Here's the Times:
Bridgette Dunlap, a Fordham University law student, knew that the school’s health plan had to pay for birth control pills, in keeping with New York state law. What she did not find out until she was in an examining room, “in the paper dress,” was that the student health service — in keeping with Roman Catholic tenets — would simply refuse to prescribe them.
As a result, students have had to go to Planned Parenthood or private doctors to get prescriptions. Some, unable to afford the doctor visits, gave up birth control pills entirely. In November, Ms. Dunlap, 31, who was raised a Catholic and was educated at parochial schools, organized a one-day, off-campus clinic staffed by volunteer doctors who wrote prescriptions for dozens of women.
Many Catholic colleges decline to prescribe or cover birth control, citing religious reasons. Now they are under pressure to change. This month the Obama administration, citing the medical case for birth control, made a politically charged decision that the new health care law requires insurance plans at Catholic institutions to cover birth control without co-payments for employees, and that may be extended to students. But Catholic organizations are resisting the rule, saying it would force them to violate their beliefs and finance behavior that betrays Catholic teachings.
...
Despite Catholic teachings, surveys have found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women, as in the general population, have used contraceptives.
At Catholic universities, some students support the right of the schools to uphold religious doctrine. But others, particularly professional and graduate students, have found the restrictions on birth control coverage onerous. Undergraduates are often covered by their parents’ insurance, but graduate students are usually on their own and are more likely to be married or in relationships and in regular need of birth control.
...
A 23-year-old who asked that her name not be used said she became pregnant while studying at Fordham. In high school, she said, she had taken birth control pills, but she gave them up at Fordham because she could not afford the doctor visit needed for a prescription. She and her boyfriend were using condoms when she became pregnant. Though Catholic, she considered abortion, but chose to have the baby. She said she knew six other Fordham students who had become pregnant and had abortions.
This is crazy. These young women, as the Times is reporting it, are acting like their Catholic colleges are putting them in an impossible position, where they—the women—are left without a choice. "Now I'm going to have to have sex without protection!" you can hear them crying. "What about my reproductive rights!" But the beauty of being a young woman today is that there are plenty of choices to make—thank you, feminism—in a situation like this: You can drop out of your Catholic school and go somewhere that better matches your lifestyle; you can pay for your own birth control (what a thought!); you can decide not to have protected sex; or you can have unprotected sex.
These are real choices—real alternatives—so why doesn't the Times mention them as serious alternatives? Because they are hard choices that no one wants to face up to; because they are choices that have consequences, as most important decisions do. To the Times and to the young women in the story, sex shouldn't have consequences. That it would is an outrage.
Against this fantasy, the Catholic colleges remind us that we may be entitled to making our own decisions, but we won't be coddled and protected from the fall out of those choices. This is a lesson that young women everywhere—especially those who choose to go to Catholic colleges--should learn.
- Comment (170)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (6)
Comments:
Jan '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
The whole point of Humanae Vitae is that while the end result of birth control is the same, the method is important. It's not something that you can ignore, or dismiss.
If you read the introduction to Humanae Vitae, Paul6 says "the recent course of human society and the concomitant changes have provoked new questions. The Church cannot ignore these questions." The 1960s were the first time that people could use technology to perform actions that previously had been only possible naturally.
The divide between trusting nature vs. developing biological technology was still new then. Sadly, it isn't noticed anymore, but it should be.
Part of Paul6's message is that for all its good intentions, technology shouldn't be a lever to play God. Sure, fertility treatments will bring a couple a baby. But that same technology often produces hundreds of "spare" embryos, who are discarded or aborted. Many of the "advances" have come at a moral price.
The method matters.
Jan '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
The commitment of the church to preserving respect for God's creation, as God created it is, indeed, "unique" in the modern world. We know it doesn't go over well these days. But that's our choice.
To some degree, we Catholics use technology all the time to improve on God's creation. Nothing wrong with that. But the point of Humanae Vitae is that there are certain areas that should be left alone.
The creation of life is one of those areas where nature is really important. Because it isn't just "making babies." Procreation is a thread in a larger fabric. That fabric includes marriage, family, love, society, and the bonds that tie individuals together. Humanae Vitae argues that keeping marriage and family and sex in its natural state is a thread that will unravel the whole fabric if you try to pull it out.
Maybe we're crazy. Maybe. But with all this technology, are families and marriages any closer? Families used to find answers in each other, not in a lab or a tube. The answers weren't always happy, but we found them in each other. Was that really so crazy?
Sep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
When I asked my Lutheran pastor for something to read on this he actually gave me John Paul II's Humanae Vitae. · 24 minutes ago
katievs will kill me for not letting her riff on this first but here goes:
Paul VI's Humanae Vitae had, in JPII's opinion, an underdeveloped philosophical anthropology - or philosophy of the human body, which is different than a theology of the body but I won't go into details right now. This is where elements of personalism that you often hear katievs mention come in. A philosophy, as you all know, appeals to human reason itself, not revelation, so JPII wanted to explicate some matters that he felt made a better appeal to the affective element or the human heart.
In brief, there are 2 purposes to the human marital conjugal act - unitive and procreative. If you elevate the procreative above the unitive, you make the woman into a utilitarian baby machine. If you elevate the unitive over the procreative you elevate pleasure too high (note no one said sexual pleasure was a bad thing per se). They are equal. (....to be cont'd)
Sep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
....cont'd
As a priest put it to me once in an email (from memory):
"God does not ask the impossible. God will grant you the grace through the sacraments (Eucharist, Confession) as well as through prayer and the marriage itself to develop a healthy Christian asceticism. Artificial means of birth control impair the unitive aspect of the conjugal act and will cause the man and woman to fight about sex. It is possible to damage the marriage through unreasonable withholding of sex just as surely as it is possible to damage the marriage through overindulgence of the sexual act. Imperceptibly at first, you will eventual drift into a lukewarmness in your spiritual life as well as your marital life. NFP methods do not guarantee but certainly promote a healthy communication between the spouses and allow you to be open to God's will in your lives and to do His will in your marriage. We are all called to a unique Christian vocation. Using artificial means impairs and makes more difficult but does not destroy communion with Christ and the Church. The choice is yours alone of course, but be assured of my understanding....(cont'd)
Sep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
....(cont'd) from many years in both the confessional and spiritual direction that the advice I give you is sound."
Sep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Peter Christofferson
Hey kids, news flash: there's a word for people like you who find Catholic strictures "onerous". We're called Protestants.
Either live as your church clearly instructs you to do or get out, but for heaven's sake stop acting as though it's the Church that's being unreasonable here. · 2 hours ago
Funny. As a convert to the Catholic Church, I always have the same thoughts but am chided for being overly "harsh". Someone explained it to me once with an analogy to teenagers who want to constantly complain about Mom and Dad being such jerks but then turn around and ask them for the keys to the car on the weekend.
Jan '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Well, OK, I'll say it since Fordham is a Jesuit school: did these kids miss orientation?
Sep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Perhaps they went to this orientation instead.
Jan '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
When my now wife and I were going through marriage prep it was explained to us that the difference between artificial contraception and NFP is a matter of means and not ends. It is not wrong to want to space out your children but it is wrong to use improper means.
There is a huge moral difference between my wife and Icoming together in a conjugal act when my wife's fertility is low and my inserting some artificial contraption (or her disfiguring her own body through sterilisation) to frustrate the natural purpose of congress.
After all, as my wife cannot conceive during certain times of her cycle, we have no intention of actively frustrating the purposes of congress because we cannot intend something which cannot happen. It does not interrupt the act through artificial means.
Put it this way - NFP is achieved by abstaining from coitus during my wife's fertile period. Artificial contraception is achieved by interrupting or sterilising the act. That's not the same thing.
Jan '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Pseudodionysius
Perhaps they went to this orientation instead. · 10 minutes ago
Yeah ... sheesh ... I went to Weston when it was still "orbiting" Harvard. They moved to BC a couple years after I left. (I had nothing to do with it! I swear! Leave the hat out of this!)
-- -- --
May '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Pseudodionysius
Mollie Hemingway, Ed.
When I asked my Lutheran pastor for something to read on this he actually gave me John Paul II's Humanae Vitae.
katievs will kill me for not letting her riff on this first but here goes:
Paul VI's Humanae Vitae had, in JPII's opinion, an underdeveloped philosophical anthropology - or philosophy of the human body...
Kill you, dear Pseud? Never. Plus, I can't get into this now, being under a pressing deadline until Wednesday.
Really briefly, though:
1) you are right about JP II think HV needed a better philosophical grounding. He gave it in his Love and Responsibility, written when he was still a bishop in Poland. He developed the Theology of the Body decades later, as Pope.
2) But the anthropology he called for is a philosophy of the person, not a philosophy of the body.
And Tommy--in case you don't feel like reading that super-long post of mine that Katie-O and Charlotte linked, let me just say here that, I hate and despise birth control as a destroyer of life and love, while I love and thank God for the beautiful, life-giving gift of NFP.
Edited on January 31, 2012 at 6:01amJan '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
If you want heartburn from reading a completely disingenuous opinion from a politician, who either doesn't understand the controversy or doesn't care, read the following: Barbara Boxer in typical form.
She argues that this policy simply allows women to "choose whether to obtain contraceptives, regardless of where they work." No. This policy says that their employer has to provide them and pay for them.
She argues that "If their mission is primarily religious and the majority of their employees and clients share that faith, religious institutions do not have to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees. So, despite what his critics claim, the president's policy does in fact respect religious freedom." No it doesn't. The policy exempts a church, but not a school or hospital that serves the public. It says that a church's place is restricted to worship, and that charity and public service are the sole prerogative of the civil government.
- - - -
It also says that unless you provide your employees with contraceptives, you cannot serve the public.
One wonders what public servants are doing to the public that they would need condoms?
Oh. Yeah. Now I understand.
Aug '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Beneath all this is the absurdity of having insurance pay for birth control in the first place. Insurance is supposed to protect against an unexpected expense. Having health insurance pay for birth control is like having homeowner's insurance pay your cable bill.
Jun '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
I believe the Obamacare mandates apply to all health care plans nationwide, period, no exceptions. Even the plans offered by Hillsdale and Grove City.
Apr '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Tommy De Seno ...
Sex using the rhythm method seems no less divorced from procreation than sex using any other method. Its basis is still release of the urge with an intentional avoidance of procreation. · 11 hours ago
No wonder you are confused.
Following NL, the Church teaches that sex is ordered toward procreation. That means three parties are active in every use of sex: the man, the woman, and God (an illuminating aside: marriage, as a sacrament, gives grace). When the couple act to shut God out, they set their wills against God’s, which is the classic definition of sin. cont. . . .
Edited on January 31, 2012 at 1:00pmApr '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
...cont.
There are many cause of conception; availability of an ovum is just one. God allows His creation the freedom of their natures, i.e., He produces results through natural causes (rather than miracles). Hence, a couple that uses sex when the ovum is unlikely to be available are still in concert with God’s will. (See the third proposition, above.)
On a personalist note, compare a couple disdaining "safe" sex and throwing themselves naked and open to love of each other and God, with a couple who plot thus: we will engage in this profoundly unitive physical act, but we'll place rubber barriers and dose ourselves with chemicals to be sure we don't touch, especially preventing a certain part of you from touching a particular part of me. (Umm, yum!)
Aug '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
"I would love to see the fact-checking on this story. The fact that a law student cannot afford even a doctor's visit strikes me as awfully fishy. I don't trust anonymous sob stories from the NYTimes."
Getting back to the actual case, What does a visit to Planned Parenthood actually cost the patient? What is the cost of a year's tuition at the Fordham Law School? Given financial assistance, what does the average Fordham law school student spend on tuition, on text books?
Anyone know?
This is quite apart from what I, as a non-lawyer, see as a clearly unconstitutional restriction on religious freedom. As I read it, such freedom does not pertain only to churches (however they are define), but it also pertains to individuals who hold religious beliefs. Am I wrong on this?
May '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
cbc: "I would love to see the fact-checking on this story. The fact that a law student cannot afford even a doctor's visit strikes me as awfully fishy. I don't trust anonymous sob stories from the NYTimes."
Getting back to the actual case, What does a visit to Planned Parenthood actually cost the patient? What is the cost of a year's tuition at the Fordham Law School? Given financial assistance, what does the average Fordham law school student spend on tuition, on text books?
Anyone know?
I guess Fordham's "Miscellaneous Personal Expenses" does not include contraceptives.
Apr '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Mollie Hemingway, Ed. Errr, all popes look alike to me
I absolutely love this comment.
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Charlotte
Mollie Hemingway, Ed. Errr, all popes look alike to me
I absolutely love this comment. · 8 minutes ago
I suppose I should clarify that I was joking, though that's obvious. There's a world of difference between, say, Leo X (who handled the Lutheran Reformation so disastrously) and Benedict XVI (who could be mistaken for a Lutheran some days).