[Few things make me angrier than religious dominance concerning my body. How many times must I say it USCCB? Your religious freedom is not infringed by the existence of women, birth control, marriage equality, lgbt people, or abortion! No, really, I promise. But every time you pull a move like this you infringe on my right to a secular government and the right to be free from religion. Sit down and shut up, maybe listen to Catholics For Choice and take some notes. And once again, these posts become painfully relevant.] (Source)
Women’s health and rights organization are asking supporters of contraceptive coverage to send a message to the White House. Planned Parentood’s action is here.
This week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) threw itself a pity party in Baltimore. According to the bishops, their “religious liberty” is threatened unless they are able to ensure that every single person in the United States (well, actually the world) is made to follow Catholic canon law to the letter. According to the New York Times, the bishops are “recasting their opposition” to same-sex marriage, birth control, and other fundamental aspects of public health and human rights, because they view both government and culture as infringing on the church’s rights.
“We see in our culture a drive to neuter religion,” Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the bishops conference, said in a news conference Monday at the bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore. He added that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were trying “to push religion back into the sacristy.”
But the sacristy is where the vast majority of Catholics appear to believe the bishops should be focusing their efforts. The Times notes that in light of the ongoing evidence of massive cover-ups by the Vatican and the USCCB of the priest pedophilia scandal, the bishops’ “pronouncements on politics and morality have been met with indifference even by many of their own flock.”
The bishops issue guidelines for Catholic voters every election season, a document known as “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship,” which is distributed in many parishes. But the bishops were informed at their meeting on Monday that a recent study commissioned by Fordham University in New York found that only 16 percent of Catholics had heard of the document, and only 3 percent had read it.
Nonetheless, the Bishops believe their own right to practice their religion is threatened by your right to practice yours or to act as a moral agent in your own life. Their freedom of religion is threatened unless they can ensure that all LGBT persons are denied the right to marry or adopt children. It is threatened unless all women are denied the rights to decide whether and when to have children. It is threatened unless a Catholic hospital can let a woman die from complications of pregnancy rather than provide her with or even refer her on an emergency basis for a life-saving abortion. It is threatened unless a two-celled fertilized egg has more rights than the living, breathing woman in whose body it floats.
They are not “free” until you are not free.
And they certainly are not “free” unless women are denied access to affordable birth control.
An integral part of the Affordable Care Act is the new benefit requiring health plans to cover preventive health care, including cancer screenings, immunizations, and birth control, with no co-pays. Inclusion of these benefits came about through dogged efforts by female legislators, including an amendment authored by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), known as the Women’s Health Amendment. The Department of Health and Human Services, tasked with implementing health reform through regulations and oversight, took the advice of an expert panel of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and recommended birth control be covered as a women’s preventive service because it is basic health care, and because it improves health outcomes for women and their families. Research shows that improved access to birth control is directly linked to declines in maternal and infant mortality among other health benefits. The IOM recommendations are supported by a vast amount of research and affirmed by the World Health Organization, the International College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Public Health Association among many other medical and public health bodies.
Regulations promulgated by HHS this summer mandate coverage in all employee-based health plans of contraceptive methods without a co-pay. The current provision includes what many already consider to be a sweeping refusal clause, exempting certain religious organizations for which religious values are their primary purpose; that primarily employ persons who share the religious tenets of the organization; that primarily serve persons who share the religious tenets of the organization; and that are nonprofit organizations. The regulations would still require institutions such as Catholic hospitals—for which one assumes the primary purpose is evidence-based health care—and universities (primary purpose, education?) to offer insurance that covers contraception without a co-pay. Nothing (repeat: NOTHING) in this new benefit requires an organization to dispense birth control, or an individual to take it. This is simply a matter of ensuring women have access to affordable preventive care by providing it with no co-pays. For an excellent and thorough review of this issue, read the testimony of Catholics for Choice President Jon O’Brien.
Still, this has so riled the USCCB that Archbishop Timothy Dolan took his lobbying straight to President Obama, with whom he met privately at the White House last week. In what I take to be a somewhat ominous comment, Dolan stated at a news conference that he “found the president of the United States to be very open to the sensitivities of the Catholic community.”
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![keepyourbsoutofmyuterus:
Her name was Savita Halappanavar.
She was 31.
She was a dentist.
Her husband was Praveen Halappanavar, 34, an engineer at Boston Scientific.
She was 17 weeks pregnant in Galway, Ireland.
She presented with back pain at University Hospital Galway on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying.
She asked several times over a three-day period that her pregnancy be terminated.
This was refused because the foetal heartbeat was still present and the doctors told her, “this is a Catholic country”.
She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.
She died of septicaemia a few days later.
Mr Halappanavar took his wife’s body home on Thursday, November 1st, where she was cremated and laid to rest on November 3rd.
There are now two investigations are under way into her death.
[This info via this link. For more.]
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According to the World Health Organization, 26.1 million people seek unsafe abortions every year in the world because they do not have access to safe ones. 47,000 die from those unsafe abortions.
I have been unable to find a stat of how many people, like Savita Halappanavar, die because they are denied abortion as a medical option.
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Her name was Savita Halappanavar.
So many people will die in situations similar to hers and we will never know their names.
This is unacceptable. It is morally bankrupt. It is the definition of tragic.
Her name was Savita Halappanavar.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdgkqsH1JJ1qhb2nco1_400.jpg)
![propaganda-for-life:
unfriendlyatheist:
mailboxy:
[Image: a rosary with blue glass beads with fake fetuses in them, with red cross beads throughout. There is a gold cross at the end. End description.]
fetus rosary.
[Image: photo of Vladimir Putin with his eyes widened and his lips frowning in shock. End description.]
That reaction pic is perfect. XDDDD](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lusdodyfxG1qbjxpjo1_500.jpg)
