A Missed Opportunity

February 21, 2012

Patt Reid, The Revered Review, Patt's POV

Sex is in the air,

and on the air,

and on the internet. It’s all around us.

The past couple of weeks have, once again, put sex and sexuality on the top of everyone’s agenda it would seem. The weekend past, the discussion was about President Obama’s decision to mandate that insurance companies were obliged to make no-cost birth control part of every insurance policy issued. The only exclusion was for religious organizations that employ only persons of that faith, which explicitly states the belief that birth control is a sin. If a religious organization employs persons or serves persons of other faiths, ones that do not hold this belief, those organizations must provide no-cost birth control coverage for all employees. Once again, the issue of separation of church and state is being pushed to the fore. Faithful Catholics are outraged that they should have to pay for something they consider to be a sin. I understand that outrage, I really do “get it”. I argued here on TRR an opinion piece that expressed this outrage. But, though I do disagree with Mr. Bradley’s view that progressives were persecuting the Church, I was triggered to put some more thought into the subject, as I was inclined to see if more as a war on women.

THIS IS BIRTH CONTROL WE ARE DISCUSSING, NOT ABORTION

Let’s be clear, we are not talking about abortion. We are talking about birth control. I do realize that some interpretations of the way certain birth controls work include the assumption that those methods “cause” abortions every month. I don’t agree with that view, I see that as an extreme view, and not a generally held view. It further leads into an argument I don’t want to get distracted with at this moment: personhood. I personally don’t believe that the potential of a child is the same thing as a child, be it an egg or sperm or a union of the two. Every woman who has experienced pregnancy knows that first feeling of “life”. The argument in religious communities is that life begins long before, that it begins either with the potential of conception, or actual conception. Others argue that life really begins when the embryo is capable of surviving on it’s own. I’m not going to argue for either side here at this time. I only want to look at the mandate of birth control in this instance, not personhood. I’ll save that for another day.

IT SEEMS THAT CATHOLIC WOMEN AND MEN ROUTINELY DEFY THE CHURCH

It has been documented that 98% of Catholic women have practiced birth control at some point in their lives¹. A recent poll suggests that 77% of Catholic women want the next Pope to reverse the anti-birth control stance. Furthermore, Catholic schools, charities and hospitals do, in fact, receive public funds from our tax dollars². The separation of church and state has become hazy. The view that Catholics are universally opposed to birth control also seems to be clouded in reality. And, most Americans believe that birth control is an essential part of women’s health care³, by far, more critical to the well being of the woman and family than almost any other issue. If the inclusion of birth control as a preventative health issue is to be questioned, then let’s also address the issue of Viagra being covered by insurance. I submit that Viagra is a recreational drug and cannot understand why the Church is not reacting against this being covered. One has to wonder, if the Church supports Viagra for men, which allows unrestricted sexuality for them, but opposes birth control for women, which restricts their sexuality, for whom are the men needing the Viagra? The chart below graphically demonstrates the wide approval of birth control coverage for all women:

PHOTO CREDIT: Planned Parenthood

IT STARTED WITH THE ATTACK ON PLANNED PARENTHOOD

There has been a relentless attack on Planned Parenthood especially; claiming outrageously that 97% of the work of PP was abortion (this was “not intended to be a factual statement” we’re told). In fact, that is a totally reversed statement of the truth, only 3% of the work of Planned Parenthood is abortion-related. And that is not funded by tax dollars. In fact, the extremely important work of PP is largely the testing and treatment of STD’s, contraception, cancer screening and prevention, and other women’s health services. This is the only source for millions of poor women to get these services. It is estimated that 1 in every 3 women has used PP at some point in their lives. And did you know that PP also serves men? That it counsels women on “body image” and self-esteem? It also provides medical care for pregnant women, to reach healthier outcomes of birthing⁴. The services of PP are illustrated by proportion in the pie chart below:

PHOTO CREDIT: Planned Parenthood

When the Komen Foundation came out with the decision to defund Planned Parenthood, because it was “being investigated” by some legislators with an agenda, the uproar was heard across the land. The groundswell in support of PP was instant and humongous. It seems that Komen also funds projects at Penn State (and many other places), but they did not opt to defund Penn State, even though it also is under investigation at this time. Therefore, their political agenda was exposed, and was made to appear that they did not support all women’s heath, but only that of some privileged women. Within 24 hours, they were forced to reverse their decision to defund PP, but made no clear commitment to continue to fund them beyond this year. The jury is out on this issue for now. Furthermore, the takeaway from this is that those legislators who want to attack Planned Parenthood, and/or women’s reproductive rights, do not have the sentiment of America on their side. They’d best pay attention.

WHY DOES BIRTH CONTROL MATTER?

Why is birth control such a critical issue among women, besides the obvious physicality? There are really many radiating issues around BC. that, when analyzed, boil down to power and control. Why is birth control a desirable thing in the modern world?

The world population as of today is 6,995,196,389⁵. As an aside, this number has increased by more than 3 million since I first wrote this column little more than a week ago! The world population is expected to top 7 Billion in April of this year. Practical reality is that we are reaching a crisis of sustainability of the world’s population. Does anyone remember ZPG from the 60’s? Zero Population Growth, two parents, two children. China has long had a ruling that a couple could only have one child. That’s not the way we roll in America, no one suggests that thinking here. But being responsible citizens of the earth is still an important and worthy goal.
Incomes for working people have flat-lined for the last 30 years. Unfortunately, cost of living has not. It now takes two incomes to take good care of a family, to have any hope of educating one’s children and improve the quality of life for the entire family.
Medicine has advanced to the point that more pregnancies result in a happy and healthy births than ever before. So, when a child is desired by the parents, they have a higher than ever chance of realizing that dream. There are ways that even infertile people can become parents. This is a wonderful thing.
There are cases where getting pregnant would be life threatening to the mother.
If a woman can control her fertility, it improves her ability to retain employment and be a productive member of the economy of the country, as well as provide for her children.
When a woman can have control over her body, she is in a better place to control the outcome of her life.

And there it is: control, power over one’s existence.

IS IT A WAR ON THE CHURCH OR A WAR ON WOMEN?

In 2010, a mid-term election gave us a House full of Republicans who had run on jobs issues and, in opposition to anything-Obama, but most specifically Obamacare. So, the right has ushered in these Republicans, in both House and Senate, as well as Gubernatorial positions all across the country. I’m sure everyone here knows that there has been no serious effort to provide jobs. Instead, an extraordinary number of laws targeting women’s reproductive rights have been introduced at both the federal and the state levels. Nearly every day, we hear of some new legislation being introduced to impede women’s access to birth control, and most certainly to impede abortions. Some estimates of the number of such legislations exceed 190! Most do not pass, but the attacks don’t stop coming. There have been several attempts to re-define rape. Wording in abuse cases has been altered from “victim’ to “accuser. Most recently (Feb. 2, 2012), the GOP voted not to renew the Violence Against Women Act, because it would now include victims of LGBT violence or foreign-born women.

Points to consider when determining whom the war is being waged against:

There are 22 states that already have mandates resembling President Obama’s original ruling in place and they have been widely supported by Republicans. Just a sampling below
1. Gov. Romney’s healthcare overhaul opted to keep a contraceptive mandate that had been put into place by his Republican predecessor.
2. In 2000, President Bush never challenged a similar federal mandate to insurance companies. These laws were caused primarily because Viagra was being covered for men. Women were enraged that their birth control was not also covered.
3. In the same year, Iowa became one of the first states to overwhelmingly back the bill that mandated birth control coverage, with a Republican-run state government.
4. In 2001, Gov. Petaki (R) of NY, with GOP support, enacted a similar law.
5. In AZ, Rep. Binder, a pro-choice Republican, pushed a bill that exempted churches but not their affiliated institutions. AZ Gov. Jane Hull (R), a Catholic, signed the measure into law.
6. Congress is offering up the Blunt Amendment, which would empower any employer for any reason to deny any point of coverage with which they disagreed. This makes clear that the agenda is not over religious freedom at all, it is an attack on Obamacare. And it is an attack on women. Period!
7. President Obama offered a compromise that would allow women who wished to have access to birth control at no cost to the church, but the church STILL rejected it. So, it’s not the issue of being forced to buy, it’s the issue of birth control. Period!
8. The Catholic Church has called for many other things in its doctrines, why do we not honor them in our political policies? Why are Catholics not up in arms about our lack of Universal Health Care? Or, that privatization has caused lack of access to needy people for what is their basic right, according to the teachings of the church?
  1. Pope Benedict called for Universal Health Care at the 25th International Conference of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry at the Vatican Nov-18-2010 ? “Care for human life from conception to its natural end must be a guiding light in determining health care policy”, the pope said.
  2. Cardinal Bertone follow with, “Private health insurance companies should conform to human rights legislation and see to it that privatization not become a threat to the accessibility, availability and quality of health care goods and services.”
  3. Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, said in opening remarks that to have good health “is a natural right” recognized by international institutions.
  4. Granting the wishes of the Catholic Church would codify the ability of one religious group to force its religious teachings on a vast number of people who do not share those views. This is an onerous step toward theocratic impositions.
  5. The Catholic Church has special benefits as a result of its status as a church: they don’t pay taxes, they do get government (taxpayer) funds to support their charities and schools. The compliment to this special status is that they stay out of government rulings.
  6. There was an acute and deliberate absence of women in the discussions around this subject. The men of the various religions and the men of Congress have once again taken the patriarchal stance that they somehow deserve the privilege of making these decisions on behalf of women. It also smacks a bit of “birthing envy”, I think!

WHY THIS ISSUE, WHY NOW?

OK, so to get back to my title, how have these past weeks shown us a missed opportunity? When we elected President Obama in 2008, one of the overwhelming reasons we did so was the desire for single-payer healthcare. All through the battles in Congress, poll after poll showed that, at minimum 60%, of Americans supported single-payer. Some now couch this as Medicare for All, the movement for this has not waned. Every other developed/western/modern country has some form of universal health care; in many cases it co-exists with private healthcare for wealthy people who want special privileges (think Germany). But all the right wing pundits got all het up, screaming about socialism and communism. Let’s be clear about this: single-payer, or universal health care, is NOT socialist. The government in no way “owns” healthcare, or the medical world. It merely channels payments, and it negotiates. The doctors are NOT employees of the state. The hospitals are not owned by the state. This is NOT creeping communism. This is the will to have a healthy and productive community. It is in the best interest of the entire country to have a healthy population without breaking the bank. Clearly, the negotiating power of over 300 million people is a powerful tool to keep prices down.

I realize I’ll get some blow-back from this position, so let me present a few more points why this is good for America:

Separating healthcare/insurance from the employer’s responsibility: Our healthcare is tied to our employment. This is driving costs, especially for small businesses, which have very little negotiating power. Imagine the savings to small business and independent contractors if the burden of healthcare were lifted from their shoulders!
Our medical outcomes are emphatically not as good as advertised. The US ranks behind countries with universal healthcare in infant mortality, life expectancy for women and men, outcomes of many diseases, and more. We have been trending downward in these rankings over the last few years.
Healthcare costs would be lowered significantly against GDP. America pays about 40% more per capita than other industrialized nations. The CBO and the General Accounting Office concluded that a single-payer system would lower health cost by $100-$200 billion per year! That’s astounding.
Single-payer systems are shown clearly to not stifle research and innovation. Places like France lead in the work on AIDS, for example. Other countries are way ahead of us in certain cancers, treatment and research both.
The stories about long lines or lack of access are completely overblown and not supported by studies. Further, the US is exceptional in that we have about a 30% oversupply of medical equipment and surgeons; and it is estimated that demand would drop by as much as 15%. The one caveat is a shortage of Primary Care doctors. This would correct over time as PCP’s become more central, resulting in higher incomes than they now have.
Finally, if we had government sponsored healthcare, it would remover the conflict that Catholics have raised about having to purchase something they consider to be a sin. This problem would never have arisen.

A summary including some of the points I have made in this last listing, and many more points than I will list here, can be found on line⁶. Yes, this is a site in support of universal health care, but the facts quoted are easily found with a Google search to those who would wish to pursue and question. It’s time to stop having the hysterical, knee-jerk reactions to single payer health care. It’s time to move in the best interests of our citizens and our economic health.