Thursday Reads: Male Politicians and Pundits should Worry about their “Erectile Dysfunction” and STFU about Women’s Health (and Other News)
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, morning reads, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Team Obama, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: autonomy, Birth Control, chastity belt, Chris Matthews, contraception, EJ Dionne, history of birth control, Mark Shields, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, privacy, Rick Santorum, sponges, Tim Kaine 50 Comments
Morning News by Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940)
Good Morning!
I thought this painting was appropriate, since we are being dragged back into the 19th Century by both Democrats and Republicans these days. We all know about the war on women being waged by Willard “Mitt” Romney, Rick “the Dick” Santorum, Nasty Newt Gingrich and Ron “White Power” Paul. But Democrats have now been empowered the Catholic Church’s attack on Obama’s attempt to protect women’s health care.
But now “liberal” pundits like Chris Matthews, Mark Shields, and E.J. Dionne have joined the battle to remove any semblance of privacy and autonomy from women.
Today former DNC Chairman and Governor of VA–and likely Senate candidate Tim Kaine came out against the requirement that contraception be included in health insurance policies.
Pat J is right. We need a women’s freedom party. Aren’t any of these dinosaurs aware that birth control (and abortion) have been with us during most of recorded history? Check out this series of photos in Newsweek drawn from the history of birth control.
Did you know that Aristotle recommended birth control methods for women in the 4th Century BC?
The philosopher recommended that women “anoint that part of the womb on which the seed falls” with olive oil in order to prevent pregnancy. His other top picks for spermicides included cedar oil, lead ointment, or frankincense oil. If the lips of the cervix were smooth, he noted, then conception would be difficult.
Sponges used for contraception
Ancient Egyptian women used sponges.
Long before Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes weighed the merits of a man to determine his spongeworthiness, women were using sponges as a method of preventing pregnancy. The sponge has its roots in early Egyptian civilization, and this photo depicts the variety of models available in the early 20th century. Those sponges were made of a variety of materials, and were sometimes drenched in lemon juice or vinegar to act as a spermicide. Today’s sponges (called, in fact, Today’s Sponge) are synthetic, and use a chemical spermicide.
Another early method was the chastity belt. Perhaps religious nuts like Rick Santorum and Mark Shields would find that one acceptable?
At Wonkblog, Sarah Kliff thinks the Obama administration “sees political opportunity in the contraception battle,” because of the data shown in this chart:
(Public Religion Research Institute)
Kliff writes:
while Catholic leadership has blasted the new regulation, polls show that a majority of Catholics are actually more supportive of the provision than the rest of the country. A poll out Tuesday from the Public Religion Research Institute finds 52 percent of Catholic voters agreed with the statement, “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” That’s pretty much in line with overall support for the provision, which hovers at 55 percent – likely because Catholics use contraceptives at rates similar to the rest of Americans.
A majority of Catholics – 52 percent – also agree with the Obama administration’s decision to not exempt religious hospitals and universities from the provision. “Outside the political punditry, most Catholics agree with the administration on the issue,” says one Obama campaign official, explaining the view that this could be a political win.
And a lot of this likely isn’t about Catholic voters at all.
Rather, it may well be about the demographics that are most supportive of this particular health reform provision: young voters and women. In the PRRI poll, both groups register support above 60 percent for the provision.
Those two demographics are important here for a key reason: they were crucial to Obama’s victory in 2008. Third Way crunched the numbers earlier this month and found that the “Obama Independents” — the swing group that proved crucial to his 2008 victory — are, as Ryan Lizza put it, “disproportionately young, female and secular.”
Let’s hope Obama keeps all that in mind instead of bending to the will of the old gray white male Catholic Bishops and the elderly male fake-liberal pundits who won’t STFU and let women make their own choices.
Even some of the saner folks in the GOP are warning their wingnut colleagues that a fight against contraception would be a “disaster” for their party.
Margaret Sanger: A Rebel With A Mighty Cause
Posted: February 6, 2012 Filed under: birth control, black women's reproductive health, children, Civil Liberties, education, Feminists, health, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, just because, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Women's Rights | Tags: An American Rebel, Birth Control, contraception, Margaret Sanger, sex education, women's reproductive rights 11 CommentsA Book Review; Review of a Life
Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of catching Jean Baker, history professor at Goucher College, featured on BookTV. Baker discussed her book ‘Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion,’ but more importantly connected the dots between the Right Wing’s attack on Sanger and the Pro-Choice, Family Planning movement.
A couple years ago while Glenn Beck hurled his diatribes, chalk boarding his twisted worldview on an unsuspecting public, he took Margaret Sanger to task. Beck described Sanger as one of his ‘evil’ progressives, a woman dedicated to racism and the application of eugenics in America.
The attack startled me. Why Sanger? I knew she had spearheaded the whole idea of inexpensive, reliable contraception and that her family clinics and her own reputation had come under constant assault. Anything and everything having to do with sexual behavior was taboo when Sanger began her work in the early, heady days of the 20th century. I also knew that Hillary Clinton had specifically mentioned Sanger as a personal hero. At the time, I thought that was Beck’s aim—discredit Sanger, discredit Clinton.
Au contraire!
Though Hillary Clinton did, in fact, make it on the list of evil progressives [along with Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, even Lindsey Graham and John McCain], the attack on Margaret Sanger had and continues to have far broader implications. This is particularly true in any discussion of birth control, abortion and/or family planning and in the midst of a concerted effort to push a fetal personhood amendment to the fore.
The recent dustup between the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood is a case in point. Women’s healthcare has become politicized. We as women are discussed in a myriad of parts—our uteruses, our vaginas, our breasts, our reproductive capabilities. Too often, our autonomy as full-fledged human beings, adults capable of thought and decision-making about our own destiny is dismissed, made secondary to the considerations of others. Sadly, today’s opposition to female self-determination is the same that Sanger faced throughout her lifetime: men, who were convinced they had the right to an opinion and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and other religious institutions that felt and continue to feel perfectly justified to chime in, making moral declarations, complete with Biblical arguments and opinions.
Young 'Maggie'
Professor Baker claims [and makes a very good argument] that the attack on Sanger’s work is also directly related to the attacks now being waged—female autonomy, the ability for women to direct their own reproductive lives. But Sanger had an especially hard road to travel, introducing her radical vision on the heels of the Victorian era.
Whatever’s old is new again!
While reading Baker’s new biography, I was startled by the similarity of the arguments, the pitfalls, the myriad of excuses to block any and all reasonable discussion when it comes to reproductive freedom. That being said, it’s hard to contemplate a time when the very discussion of or writing about birth control was considered perverse, pornographic and could end in jail time. Such was the case in the early 20th century.
Sanger’s efforts were so reviled by the status quo and Catholic Church that she was forced to leave the country for a brief stay in the UK or face arrest. She faced continuous harassment and was eventually arrested for her public, relentless stands. But ironically, this woman who had a spotty formal education, no training in public speaking would become by age fifty, one of the most influential women in the world.
Why? Because she would not stop. Because she was totally gripped by a single, burning idea–women were entitled to information [sexual or otherwise] and had a right to be empowered when it came to their own bodies.
Her background was fertile for dissent, her family a template for radical reaction. Born Margaret [Maggie] Higgins in 1879 in Corning, NY., she was the sixth child of 11 surviving children. Her mother, a devout Catholic, died at the age of 48, suffering with tuberculosis, the scourge of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
But here’s a factoid that Sanger’s critics rarely mention: her mother had eighteen pregnancies during her short life.
Eighteen!
Sanger’s father, a stone carver who royally ticked off the Church with his firebrand criticisms of Rome’s dictates, found it difficult to provide for his huge, ever-growing family. The family was poor, shanty Irish poor, with too many mouths to feed and an increasingly sick mother, made all the worse by cramped, squalid surroundings.
Though her impossible dream had been medical school, Sanger went to New York City following her mother’s death. There she trained as a nurse and midwife and spent several years attending patients on the Lower East Side. The living conditions in the tenements were appalling—cramped, rat-infested, devoid of anything approaching basic hygiene. She watched scores of young immigrant women die of pregnancy-related complications and botched abortions [many self-performed]. And she listened to scores of these women beg attending physicians [when available], pleading for help to prevent back-to-back pregnancies, birthing more children than they were able to feed or care for. To no avail. From that experience, that massive wave of human suffering, the idea of birth control and family planning was born.
Sanger took the remedy upon herself. Because no one else dared.
A prolific self-taught writer, Sanger traveled across America and was invited around the world to speak to the issue of contraception, sex education and reproductive services. Her work became the basis for health clinics dedicated to the health and education of women. She was, in fact, the mother of Planned Parenthood.
Ahhhh. No wonder she’s on the enemies’ list.
So what are the arguments against Sanger? Read the rest of this entry »
It’s Time to End Tax Exemptions for Churches That Insist on Politicking from the Pulpit
Posted: January 30, 2012 Filed under: fetus fetishists, health, Health care reform, medicine, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: abortion, Birth Control, Catholic Church, churches, contraception, Diocese of Marquette, HHS Security Kathleen Sibelious, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, religion, religious institutions, tax exemptions, women's health 47 Comments
American Catholic Bishops Conference
My apologies if this post is a little incoherent. I’m hopping mad right now! We don’t yet live in a theocracy–although that danger clearly exists. As of today, the U.S. Constitution still requires the separation of church and state. Priests, ministers, bishops, and other church leaders are not supposed to be advocating for and against political candidates from the pulpit. In their roles as private citizens, they can hold whatever political beliefs they want and they can donate to political candidates. But they need to stop forcing their political views on church audiences.
Yesterday, in Catholic churches all over the U.S., parishioners heard a letter from their bishop denouncing the Obama administration for the January 20th HHS decision to require health plans to cover birth control services without requiring “a co-pay, co-insurance, or a deductible.” HHS Secretary Katherine Sibelius stated that the reason for this requirement is that access to contraception is important to women’s health.
Scientists have abundant evidence that birth control has significant health benefits for women and their families, it is documented to significantly reduce health costs, and is the most commonly taken drug in America by young and middle-aged women. This rule will provide women with greater access to contraception by requiring coverage and by prohibiting cost sharing.
Sibelius explained that this requirement applies to religion-based institutions that employ or serve people who don’t belong to their religion. Therefore, churches per se would be except from the rule, but universities and other religious-based organizations would have to abide by the rule.
Via Business Insider, here is the full text of letter that was read in churches in the Diocese of Marquette (Michigan):
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
I write to you concerning an alarming and serious matter that negatively impacts the Church in the United States directly, and that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all citizens of any faith. The federal government, which claims to be “of, by, and for the people,” has just been dealt a heavy blow to almost a quarter of those people — the Catholic population — and to the millions more who are served by the Catholic faithful.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers,
including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.
We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made second class citizens. We are already joined by our brothers and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture,
only to have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of Catholics to do the same. Our children and grandchildren deserve nothing less.And therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would also recommend visiting http://www.usccb.org/conscience,to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Obama Administration’s decision.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
+Alexander K. Sample
Most Reverend Alexander K. Sample
Bishop of Marquette
The author of the Business Insider article, Michael Brendan Dougherty, uses a flawed analogy to defend the bishops for their action and their decision to flout the law.
it would be like the government mandating that all delis, even Kosher delis, serve pork products and then justifying it by saying that protein is healthy, and many Jews who don’t follow Kosher laws and many non-Jews go to those delis. The law wouldn’t technically ban Jews from owning delis, but it would effectively ban their ability to run them according to their conscience.
WTF?! Jewish delis do not receive federal funds to subsidize the selling of pork, and scientists have not found pork to be vital to the health of more than half of the U.S. population. For Dougherty’s information, unwanted pregnancies can be dangerous to women’s physical and mental health. Furthermore, the more unwanted pregnancies there are, the more abortions there will be. The rule will therefore reduce the number of abortions in this country. And BTW, no individual is required to use birth control. The Catholic bishops know that most Catholics used it, and they are simply trying to intimidate people. If an individual Catholic wants to follow the church’s ludicrous (IMO) rules against birth control, she is free to do so. An editorial by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune says it much better than I could:
The Obama administration…made the right decision. Birth control access is critical for women and children’s health, ensuring that kids are born to parents ready for this responsibility. Lost in all the heated rhetoric over this milestone public health measure are several important points.
This policy does not require anyone to use birth control. In addition, courts have already rejected claims by Catholic organizations that requiring contraceptive coverage in employee health plans violates their religious freedom.
Requiring these religiously affiliated institutions to cover birth control in their plans is nothing new. Twenty-eight states (Minnesota isn’t one) already have “contraceptive equity” laws requiring birth control coverage for many plans covering prescription drugs.
In 2004, the California Supreme Court, noting that many of these organizations’ employees are not Catholic, soundly rejected a challenge to the state’s contraceptive equity law. It concluded that the state can enact employment laws to protect workers, even if these laws conflict with the employers’ religious beliefs.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Catholic Charities’ appeal. New York’s highest court rejected a similar claim by Catholic Charities on grounds that the law didn’t target religious beliefs and that a broad public interest is served by addressing gender disparities in medical costs.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also decided on multiple occasions that religious beliefs do not protect discriminatory practices, such as failing to comply with civil rights laws.
Denise Grady, in an article published in The New York Times and The Herald Tribune writes:
About half of pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, and about four out of 10 of those end in abortion, according to the Institute of Medicine report, which was released last July. It noted that providing birth control could lower both pregnancy and abortion rates. It also cited studies showing that women with unintended pregnancies are more likely to be depressed and to smoke, drink and delay or skip prenatal care, potentially harming fetuses and putting babies at increased risk of being born prematurely and having low birth weight.
Grady provides a number of real-life examples. Here’s just one:
One recent Georgetown law graduate, who asked not to be identified for reasons of medical privacy, said she had polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition for which her doctor prescribed birth control pills. She is gay and had no other reason to take the pills. Georgetown does not cover birth control for students, so she made sure her doctor noted the diagnosis on her prescription. Even so, coverage was denied several times. She finally gave up and paid out of pocket, more than $100 a month. After a few months she could no longer afford the pills. Within months she developed a large ovarian cyst that had to be removed surgically — along with her ovary.
“If I want children, I’ll need a fertility specialist because I have only one working ovary,” she said.
A spokeswoman for Georgetown, Stacy Kerr, said that problems like this were rare and that doctors at the health service knew how to help students get coverage for contraceptives needed for medical reasons.
Really? Then why was this woman “denied” coverage “several times?” Give me a break!
Even supposed “liberal” E.J. Dionne weighed in on the side of the church:
In its interim rules in August, HHS excluded from this requirement only those “religious employers” who primarily serve and employ members of their own faith traditions. This exempted churches from the rule, but not Catholic universities or social-service agencies and hospitals that help tens of thousands of non-Catholics.
As a general matter, it made perfect sense to cover contraception. Many see doing so as protecting women’s rights, and expanded contraception coverage will likely reduce the number of abortions. While the Catholic Church formally opposes contraception, this teaching is widely ignored by the faithful. One does not see many Catholic families of six or 10 or twelve that were quite common in the 1950s. Contraception might have something to do with this.
Speaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question. But speaking as an American liberal who believes that religious pluralism imposes certain obligations on government, I think the Church’s leaders had a right to ask for broader relief from a contraception mandate that would require it to act against its own teachings. The administration should have done more to balance the competing liberty interests here.
I am sick and tired of this sh*t! We’re talking about the rights and the health of more than half of the population! Does Dionne realize that 98% of Catholics have used birth control at one time or another? It’s time to take away the tax exempt status of churches who use the power of the pulpit to try to intimidate their parishioners into voting for or against a candidate based on ridiculous (IMO) religious rules that hurt women. If religious universities and charities wish to ignore the law, then they too should lose their government subsidies and/or tax exemptions.
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