Remember that the Catholic Church spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars covering up pedophile priests. So enjoy Nicholas Kristof's New York Times opinion today.
Op-Ed Columnist
Beyond Pelvic Politics
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
I MAY not be as theologically sophisticated as American bishops, but I
had thought that Jesus talked more about helping the poor than about
banning contraceptives.
Damon Winter/The New York Times
Nicholas D. Kristof
The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a
patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout
to women of dubious morals. On the contrary, few areas have more impact
on more people than birth control — and few are more central to efforts
to chip away at poverty.
My well-heeled readers will be furrowing their brows at this point.
Birth control is cheap, you’re thinking, and far less expensive than a
baby (or an abortion). But for many Americans living on the edge, it’s a
borderline luxury.
A 2009 study looked at sexually active American women of modest means,
ages 18 to 34, whose economic circumstances had deteriorated.
Three-quarters said that they could not afford a baby then. Yet 30
percent had put off a gynecological or family-planning visit to save
money. More horrifying, of those using the pill, one-quarter said that
they economized by not taking it every day. (My data is from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan research organization on issues of sexual health.)
One-third of women in another survey said they would switch birth
control methods if not for the cost. Nearly half of those women were
relying on condoms, and others on nothing more than withdrawal.
The cost of birth control is one reason poor women are more than three
times as likely to end up pregnant unintentionally as middle-class
women.
In short, birth control is not a frill that can be lightly dropped to
avoid offending bishops. Coverage for contraception should be a pillar
of our public health policy — and, it seems to me, of any faith-based
effort to be our brother’s keeper, or our sister’s.
To understand the centrality of birth control, consider that every
dollar that the United States government spends on family planning
reduces Medicaid expenditures by $3.74, according to Guttmacher.
Likewise, the National Business Group on Health estimated that it costs
employers at least an extra 15 percent if they don’t cover contraception
in their health plans.
And of course birth control isn’t just a women’s issue: men can use
contraceptives too, and unwanted pregnancies affect not only mothers but
also fathers.
This is the backdrop for the uproar over President Obama’s requirement
that Catholic universities and hospitals include birth control in their
health insurance plans. On Friday, the White House backed off a bit —
forging a compromise so that unwilling religious employers would not pay
for contraception, while women would still get the coverage — but many
administration critics weren’t mollified.
Look, there’s a genuine conflict here. Many religious believers were
sincerely offended that Catholic institutions would have to provide
coverage for health interventions that the church hierarchy opposed.
That counts in my book: it’s best to avoid forcing people to do things
that breach their ethical standards.
Then again, it’s not clear how many people actually are offended. A
national survey found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women
use birth control at some point in their lives. Moreover, a survey by
the Public Religion Research Institute reported that even among
Catholics, 52 percent back the Obama policy:
they believe that religiously affiliated universities and hospitals
should be obliged to include birth control coverage in insurance plans.
So, does America’s national health policy really need to make a
far-reaching exception for Catholic institutions when a majority of
Catholics oppose that exception?
I wondered what other religiously affiliated organizations do in this situation. Christian Science traditionally opposed medical care. Does The Christian Science Monitor deny health insurance to employees?
“We offer a standard health insurance package,” John Yemma, the editor, told me.
That makes sense. After all, do we really want to make accommodations
across the range of faith? What if organizations affiliated with
Jehovah’s Witnesses insisted on health insurance that did not cover
blood transfusions? What if ultraconservative Muslim or Jewish
organizations objected to health care except at sex-segregated clinics?
The basic principle of American life is that we try to respect religious
beliefs, and accommodate them where we can. But we ban polygamy, for
example, even for the pious. Your freedom to believe does not always
give you a freedom to act.
In this case, we should make a good-faith effort to avoid offending
Catholic bishops who passionately oppose birth control. I’m glad that
Obama sought a compromise. But let’s remember that there are also other
interests at stake. If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities
and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our
population.
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