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.
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Comments :
Sep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
But sin is a matter of intention.
Unfortunately, no. I think this is the nub of the problem you're having with Catholic moral theology as applied to this particular issue if I'm understanding your statement correctly. There's a public domain explanation here, though it doesn't specifically apply to NFP. I'll try to dig up one of those later.
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Pseudodionysius: But sin is a matter of intention.
Unfortunately, no. I think this is the nub of the problem you're having with Catholic moral theology as applied to this particular issue if I'm understanding your statement correctly. There's a public domain explanation here, though it doesn't specifically apply to NFP. I'll try to dig up one of those later. · 7 minutes ago
We are going to split some hairs now.
Robbing you would be sinful no matter what my intention.
Cutting you with a knife can be good or bad depending entirely on my intention (to hurt you or to cut out your cancer).
Having sex for right and wrong reasons is a matter of intention. If sex was essentially bad or essentially good it would be so at all times, no matter how hard Grendel protests.
Edited on Feb 4 at 8:19amFeb '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Joseph Stanko
.....
And that leaves me scratching my head wondering how in the world an act completely unattached from procreation could result in pregnancy. That can't be your meaning, so what am I missing here?
Joseph, it sounds like a case of your "seagulls can fly" example from a recent ssm thread. Are you saying that heterosexual sex in general is about procreation despite individual instances where procreation is impossible or not intended - The Act as opposed to an act?
I understand how it applied to that ssm discussion as this was employed to acknowledge the natural and desired limits of government involvement in monitoring marriages for fertility. In this instance, though, there is no barrier between God and our actions. It's fine that The Act is ordered towards procreation, but cant I subvert that order in any given instance just as well with NFP as I can with condoms or the pill? What if I get married and never stop using NFP to avoid pregnancy?
I agree with Tommy, the Church seems to condone sex even when conception is intentionally avoided. I don't understand why the method of avoidance matters.
Edited on Feb 4 at 8:48amSep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
We are going to split some hairs now.
There are 3 parts to a moral act: intention is only one. You said sin is a "matter of intention", which I took to mean "sin is solely a matter of intention" which it isn't. You must take into account 3 parts: the object, circumstances, end (intention). They cannot be cleaved. Also the encyclical Veritatis Splendor (1993) was drafted specifically to address the error of Proportionalism which was being taught in many Catholic seminaries to justify contraception, by claiming that you could justify it if you had a proper intention.
I have to run out for a few hours, but I think you would enjoy the first link I gave you as it discuss VS. I'll have more later.
Sep '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
I agree with Tommy, the Church seems to condone sex when conception is intentionally avoided. I don't understand why the method of avoidance matters.
Hang in there. I have a few conflicting engagements this weekend, but its a worthwhile question and I think I can give you enough public domain readings combined with my commentary that I can get you pointed in the right direction (pardon the unintentionally bad pun).
Feb '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Greetings all: I just put up a post in the member feed and I respectfully request you to come and read it? It is on the differences between natural methods and artificial methods of family planning, so I feel it may be appropriate. Thanks in advance.
Jun '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Tommy De Seno:
It is the intention of the Church that we do get to enjoy sex that is not oriented toward conception. You just refuse to address that those encounters even exist and that the Church is A-OK with them.
Paul VI again:
Yes, it is permissible to use NFP with the intention of avoiding children. Yes it is permissible to enjoy sex without intending conception. No one is denying this, so please stop repeating the straw-man argument that we are.
Jun '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Tommy De Seno
Cutting you with a knife can be good or bad depending entirely on my intention (to hurt you or to cut out your cancer).
But there is also an objective, observable difference between fatally stabbing someone through the heart and surgically removing a cancer. It's not the same action performed with different intent, but two different actions.
If I as someone completely untrained in medicine took a knife and tried to operate on a cancer patient I would most likely kill him regardless of how pure my intentions to heal were. Willing a thing does not automatically make it so.
As Pseudo said, intention is one component of a moral act, but the objective action is important as well.
Jun '10
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Ed G.
Joseph, it sounds like a case of your "seagulls can fly" example from a recent ssm thread.
I understand how it applied to that ssm discussion as this was employed to acknowledge the natural and desired limits of government involvement in monitoring marriages for fertility.
Actually that's not the point I tried to make. Others on the thread made that point but I disagreed. It's not merely that government monitoring would be overly intrusive, I don't see fertility as a requirement for a valid marriage in the first place.
The point I was trying to make is something I once heard described in a lecture about natural law theory as "the privilege of the normal case." In natural law we are trying to determine the teleology, the end or purpose of something, and we do that by looking at the normal case. To determine the teleology of intercourse we consider its effects in the normal case of a healthy adult couple. We can then draw conclusions about the moral and immoral uses of this great gift we have been given. Those conclusions are not invalidated by the existence of abnormal cases such as infertility.
Apr '11
Re: Birth Control vs. The Church
Tommy De Seno
Robbing you would be sinful no matter what my intention.
Cutting you with a knife can be good or bad depending entirely on my intention (to hurt you or to cut out your cancer).
Having sex for right and wrong reasons is a matter of intention. If sex was essentially bad or essentially good it would be so at all times, no matter how hard Grendel protests.
As I said before, the Contraceptive Mentality focuses on conception. The Christian is concerned with aligning his will with God's and using His gifts in accord with their natures.