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Can a Catholic Support Deregulation of The Pill?
On this week’s flagship podcast, Rick Wilson predicted a win for the GOP in Colorado’s senate race this year. The polls and my gut tell me he’s right. Republicans have a great candidate in Rep. Cory Gardner, while Democrats are saddled with Sen. Mark Udall, who has hitched his wagon to President Obama’s agenda on every issue from gun rights to fracking. Udall has run his campaign on exactly one theme (I was one of the lucky ones to be push-polled on it): Gardner wants to take away women’s choice to abort, even in cases of rape and incest. Even the Denver Post called it “an insult” to the voters.
I’m thrilled to vote for Gardner next week. We’ve had a political dry spell here in Colorado when it comes to savvy Republican candidates. The up-the-leg tingle that made me an enthusiastic Gardner supporter was his counter-attack on Udall’s “anti-woman” message. Gardner proposed making the Pill over-the-counter. His proposal is sensible, timely, and tactically brilliant. He even managed to put Planned Parenthood in the awkward position of opposing greater access to cheap, safe, effective contraception for women. Imagine that.
When I recently shared this information with a very liberal, Obama-supporting family member, he was stunned that a Catholic (me) could support such a proposal. I don’t think his confusion is all that uncommon. We often hear Ricochet members accusing SoCons of wanting to “impose their morality” on everyone else.
I don’t speak for all SoCons, or all Catholics for that matter, but I believe freedom is the overarching theme of the Bible and the Faith: the covenant of freedom from slavery in the Old Testament and the covenant of freedom from slavery to sin in the New Testament. God gave us free will so that we could choose to love Him without coercion. Part of loving what is godly is being free to choose what isn’t. I voted for marijuana legalization partly for the same reason, and I know several other Catholic SoCons who did the same. It wouldn’t have passed without us. We have to make choices in a fallen world and live with the consequences.
I believe in the Church’s teaching on contraception. It is, at minimum, a barrier to total, self-giving, self-abandoning love, in which true freedom resides. I defy anyone to tell me the best sex they’ve ever had wasn’t when they were making babies. There’s a reason for that. God made it good.
But, as long as the means of preventing pregnancy doesn’t take another’s life, I think as a practical matter — and even as a matter of principle — people should have that choice. The pill is a proven technology. There’s no reason the government should be regulating access to it as a prescription.
I’m open to correction, though. Help perfect me if I’m wrong, friends!
Support Cory Gardner in any case. We haven’t had such a good choice in a long while.
Image Credits: 1) Shutterstock user kitty 2)”Cory Gardner, Official Portrait, 112th Congress” by US House – http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=350858354960858&set=a.161267763919919.30635.160924893954206&type=1&theater. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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I am not a Catholic, and I like this approach, but I would like to see The Pill unavailable for purchase by minors.
The complete array of effects of The Pill have not been thoroughly studied, especially in minors, whose brains are still developing. Research is stunted because The Pill is such a darling talisman of the left.
We talked about The Pill before:
http://ricochet.com/the-physiological-legacy-of-the-pill/
It seems OK to me for a Catholic, or any Christian, to see some matters of moral teaching to be things that should not be required of non-believers. That is a trade-off the Christian Founders were happy to make in return for the Free Exercise of Religion.
From A Thomistic Case for Tolerance:
Agreed.
And I think The Pill, like alcohol and marijuana, have definitely had deleterious effects on individuals and society.
All I can hope to do is teach my children about the nature of authentic love, and try to persuade others of the same.
Thanks, Joseph. Good stuff.
Obviously! Libertarianism is the intellectual heart of Conservatism.
Yes, but is libertarianism the heart of Catholicism? I guess I’m arguing that in many ways it is. As long as we acknowledge some absolute truths as the ground of our understanding of liberty.
The classical liberal tradition was the fruit borne by the rich nurturing soil of Christendom.
From a political standpoint, Gardner’s move is nothing short of brilliant. It perfectly exposes the left’s ridiculous “war on women” narrative.
From a Catholic perspective, though, I think it gets more complicated.
What I take from Thomas Aquinas is essentially this: the government should not try to make all sin illegal (e.g. premarital sex). That doesn’t necessarily mean that government shouldn’t forbid actions opposed to natural law.
From the Encyclical Humanae Vitae Paragraph 23
“Appeal to Public Authorities
23. And now We wish to speak to rulers of nations. To you most of all is committed the responsibility of safeguarding the common good. You can contribute so much to the preservation of morals. We beg of you, never allow the morals of your peoples to be undermined. The family is the primary unit in the state; do not tolerate any legislation which would introduce into the family those practices which are opposed to the natural law of God. For there are other ways by which a government can and should solve the population problem—that is to say by enacting laws which will assist families and by educating the people wisely so that the moral law and the freedom of the citizens are both safeguarded.”
All that seems to say that a Catholic politician shouldn’t support greater access to contraception. One could argue, however, that Gardner’s proposal wouldn’t actually increase the use of the pill, and would, in effect, reduce government funding for it.
It gets yet more complicated, though, if you consider that the widespread use of non-abortifacient contraceptives results in fewer abortions, which seems like a net gain.
I guess I don’t really have a good answer, but you can’t go wrong asking a good priest.
I don’t think any of us adhere perfectly to any given political descriptor. We all have to make compromises that option bits and pieces of our identities in the service of larger goals.
Agreed. WC asked can a Catholic support deregulation. I’d say a Catholic can support or oppose it, it’s a matter of prudential judgement.
Given the reference to “the population problem,” and the fact that the encyclical came out the same year as The Population Bomb, I’d read this primarily as a condemnation of coercive population control measures such as China’s one-child policy. He then goes on to write:
While not a Catholic I am sympathetic to the Church and I answer your question with a question, is it not dangerous to the Church itself to ask the state to enforce Catholic doctrine?
To me this seems the road Protestants went down and look, are they the better for it? Not to my eye, the faith seems all but destroyed because too many preferred to depend on the legislature rather than the pulpit in order to encourage morality. Faith in God ended up being replaced by faith in the state.
It seems to me Catholics have dabbled far too much in this arena already, I would say learn from the failures of others.
Observation #1: Gardner probably supports deregulated access to the Pill in the same way Obama “supported” traditional marriage in ’08. No one expects a Senator Gardner to actually introduce a bill to that effect, or for such a bill to pass into law. It’s a tactical, political position, pure and simple. (And a good one, I might add.)
Observation #2: If Democrat “Catholics” can support taxpayer funded abortions, it would seem small potatoes to support a politician with Gardner’s position.
(Caveat: I’m a Protestant.)
Jindal, a Catholic, is another supporter of deregulation, I believe. I’m with these guys.
I do not like the Pill; I think it is bizarre to treat fertility as if it were an illness to be medicated. I also think synthetic hormones are risky business. But so is Tylenol, which is currently a leading cause of liver failure. The list of OTC drugs that can cause harm is long, indeed. Adults should be able to evaluate these risks and act accordingly.
Let’s make it clear who believes in freedom and who wants to control your every move.
I agree that the Gardner position is OK, though I think MJBubba has the right idea about minors. I don’t agree about marijuana. I think it’s more dangerous than people realize and that young people are going to be the main ones harmed even though it technically isn’t legal for them. It makes me sad to see a state that I called home for many years become a warning for others.
I’m Catholic and I would support it. With the qualification that the medical reasons for deregulating it support it. There are reasons why medications require prescriptions. I’m not a doctor or a pharmacists, so i can’t speak to that. I would not support deregulating it for political expediency at the expense of people’s health.
Seeing as how the Catholic Church is against all contraceptive use, how can you square Church doctrine with making the pill an over-the-counter medication, which would make contraceptive use even more pervasive?
I’m Catholic too and favor Gardner’s position, but I don’t think that’s a Catholic position to take. If that makes me a “cafeteria” Catholic, then so be it. Following Church doctrine isn’t the most important thing to me, and I don’t feel the need to twist myself into a theoretical pretzel trying to reconcile two opposite things.
Minors can’t buy Mucinex OTC, as I learned at the self-check-out at Walmart yesterday. There’s an ID-check for that!
Voting? Not so much.
I’ll make that claim, and defy you to prove me wrong.
Heh. I was waiting for someone to be the first. And it’s you, Spin! ;-)
Why they call it Free Will, friends! I agree about minors. And I’m delighted to see members of our Junto so conversant with Thomas and HV. My compliments.
I’ll quibble. Love between two people creates something that did not exist before, even if that thing is less tangible than a baby.
But couldn’t you also argue that, since doctors already routinely prescribe the pill on request, making the pill an over-the-counter medication would relieve the doctors of their complicity in an immoral act, and thus result in a net decrease in immorality?
My internist recently recommended that I take high doses of Niacin (an OTC supplement) for cholesterol control. I asked my cardiologist about it, and he said don’t do it. “Niacin has not been proven effective, and it can cause death, strokes…” I interrupted, “You had me at ‘death.'”
My point is that drug use, and even supplement use, is a medical issue and should be treated as such. If there are warnings that should be conveyed before someone starts the use of a particular drug or supplement, then it is justified to require a medical consultation before the drug is prescribed. Preferably a couple of consultations, as my story illustrates.
I’ll leave the moral implications to individuals to decide. But the issue of whether a particular drug should be sold OTC does not seem to me to be an appropriate issue for the political process.
On the other hand, you *did* take responsibility for your own health and seek out additional information – evidence that it can be done. Perhaps if “permission to purchase” a particular drug isn’t an appropriate issue for the political process, then those types of decisions should be taken out of the political process.
One of John Stossel’s provocative stances is to suggest that requirements for *prescriptions* should be loosened across the board. It’s an interesting idea – lots of opportunity for people to do stupid harm to themselves – but information on pros and cons *is* available, and it would *certainly* be a big “freedom” move.
For that matter, if the rules on prescription medicines weren’t in place, the drug manufacturers would have *huge* incentives to ensure that people buying their products had enough information to make *informed* decisions (and sign “user agreements” stating such).
… I’m actually not certain where I fall on this issue, I’m throwing some of the issues out here to get a good look at them.
Would you then make niacin prescription only? You behaved in a responsible manner by seeking a second opinion. Don’t you think other adults are capable of equally rational behavior when it comes to the Pill? After all, which drugs can be considered perfectly harmless? Even water, when drunk to excess, can cause death.
My grandfather had 15 children by his first wife and was very confused by why she fled with the younger ones, while pregnant with the 16th, to another state. He was well on the way to having as many with his 2nd wife, my grandmother. After her 6th child, her brothers took gramps behind the wood shed and informed him what would happen to him if she got pregnant again. She had no more children. Thank the Lord for the pill today.
To be consistent wouldn’t a person who opposed the sale of BC pills over the counter on religious grounds also have to oppose the sale of condoms?
The pill can act as a potential abortifacient (by inhibiting implantation), whereas a condom does not. Assuming the objection is due to concerns over abortion rather than premarital sex, then pills to condoms is not apples to apples.
In an ideal world I would certainly agree with you, but we don’t live in an ideal world. I would fear that if all meds were available OTC, the politicians would keep many more meds off the market entirely. As a compromise, I would suggest that instead of prescriptions, doctors issue licenses. Once a patient was licensed to buy a particular med or device, no further doctor visits would be necessary. One visit for the education, and then the patient is free to do as he or she chooses.
I would advocate licensing gunowners in the same way. Pass a gun safety course and a background check, and you get a license that allows you to buy whatever guns you want whenever you want.