Richard Doerflinger, speaking for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, responded to a Wall Street Journal article about Wisconsin’s Medicaid Family Planning expansion saying: “It reflects a view of women which is extremely dismissive . . .” Mr. Doerflinger goes on to recommend that the expansion be rejected because family planning advocates are only interested in a woman’s reproductive function and making sure it isn’t used.
Family Planning Health Services, Inc. and the Wisconsin Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association are very proud to release this engaging video interview with Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice. Mr. O’Brien explores themes of political power and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. He establishes a clear three-question structure within which legislators and the public can evaluate lobbying efforts and policy recommendations like Mr. Doerflinger’s:
Is it factually correct?
Who does the speaker represent?
What are the consequences to ordinary working people?
Mr. O’Brien says that good Catholics can support contraception. He describes the history of the Vatican’s Birth Control Commission which was: “far less than divine inspiration. It was a matter of stacking the deck!” Even though the outcome was pre-determined to oppose use of the birth control pill, according to O’Brien, education and dialogue . . . “changed the hearts and minds of the bishops” on the Commission. “Can you imagine how many lives could have been saved,” O’Brien asks, “if the Pope had enough faith in Catholics to accept the Commission’s recommendations?”
Mr. O’Brien’s emphasis throughout the interview is that the bishops and legislators must “Listen to the lives of ordinary Catholics. He says: “We are the ones who go to the ballot box.” On reproductive health issues, according to O’Brien, “The bishops have failed to convince Catholics not to use contraception. So what do they do? They go off to Capitol Hill or to your state assembly and behind the doors they try to pressure legislators into not allowing access to family planning.” With no equivocation he says: “There’s something that’s downright wrong and un-American about that!
O’Brien states that the information that the hierarchy gives on contraception and condoms is inaccurate and that the bishops do not speak for Catholic voters. But to make his most important point on testing the validity of lobbying by the bishops against family planning, Mr. O’Brien praises the courage and example of Bishop Kevin Dowling from South Africa. Paraphrasing Bishop Dowling, who has differed with Church teachings on the use of condoms to prevent HIV/Aids, O’Brien says: “Using condoms to prevent AIDs is not about preventing the transmission of life. It is about preventing the transmission of death.
If we apply the test to Mr. Doerflinger’s statement regarding Medicaid family planning, it is factually incorrect, it represents the view of some (but not all) of the 350 U.S. Catholic Bishops, and the consequence would be to reduce access to health care for thousands of American women.
After James Wagoner’s call for a ‘radical pragmatism’ to end the myth that sexual health care and education encourage risky behavior, we spoke with Congresswoman Gwen Moore (D-WI).
Congresswoman Gwen Moore explains that the consequences of ignorance about sexual health are too severe to permit ideological debate. Our next interview with Sarah Audelo of Advocates for Youth, says the age of sexual misinformation must end.
Sarah Audelo, of Advocates for Youth, says the high rates of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies among our young people compel us to teach them how to protect themselves. Our next interview, with Clare Coleman of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association discusses that there are economic as well as health reasons to expand access to care.
Clare Coleman discussed patient care, standards of reproductive health care, and evolving health care delivery models. If the question is: “How can family planning clinics and programs put the pieces together in a patient-centered way,” her answer is that; “The source of funding has to be less important than the standard of care. She is leading a lively discussion about innovations and integration of family planning services in the primary preventive health care system. Congresswoman Lois Capps (D-CA) emphasizes that federal support for family planning services is key to our economic recovery.
After Congresswoman Capps talked about the immediate opportunity to receive federal support for expanded family planning services, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) celebrates the end of ‘gender as a pre-existing condition’ in health care and what the health care insurance reform victory means for women’s health.
Congresswoman Baldwin (D-WI) summarizes the new opportunity and we wrap up this introductory video with a call to action. Look for expanded interviews as well as more interviews on this topic in the near future.
Investments in health. The morality of supporting BP and opposing reproductive health services…I am wondering if my United States of America is so poisoned by fumes and political pollution that women, their children and their families don’t count with these people attacking reproductive health care providers.
The author of an opinion letter printed in the Wausau Wisconsin paper this morning was reacting to a reader’s letter that was supporting family planning. She said: “If by preventing unplanned pregnancies, he is referring to dispensing contraception, how does that prevent unplanned pregnancies?’
Like the majority of states, Wisconsin has a Medicaid Family Planning Waiver that expands access to routine preventive contraceptive and STD care. Overall, our program has been successful at reducing geographic gaps in access. By providing contraception, we are reducing unintended pregnancies, reducing teen pregnancies, and reducing the need for abortions – all at substantial savings to taxpayers. Wisconsin’s estimated five-year savings was $487 million. Best of all, for states with budget shortfalls, Medicaid Family Planning expansions provide $9 in federal funds for every $1 in state funds.
There is an enormous national opportunity before us and very little time to waste on efforts to reason with the irrational. Primary preventive health care delivery is changing and if we are to move closer to universal access to reproductive health care, reproductive health care providers and supporters must seize the opportunity. Federal health care reform law provides the 27 states with these expansions with an opportunity to strengthen their existing programs by requesting a permanent state plan amendment from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). For the other 23 states and the District of Columbia, there is a parallel opportunity to begin providing these services.
In Wisconsin, we must move quickly to strengthen our program and solidify the gains we have made under the Doyle administration and we don’t need legislative action. In eight months we will have a new governor and a new legislature. Even with a supportive administration, coordination and approval is not instantaneous. So it is time to move ahead and get to work. Here are the terms with which we will approach our Department of Health Services:
Presumptive eligibility must be available for provision of immediate (same day – same site) contraceptives and STD services.
Full eligibility must be processed in a timely manner to avoid gaps in coverage and gaps in care.
Income eligibility must be broad.
Covered comprehensive services must include most contraceptive methods and Emergency Contraception.
Services must be confidential.
Eligibility for students and minors must be based on their own income.
A successful Medicaid family planning program must contain these structural essentials:
A formally established state department-level workgroup or council that brings key leadership in public health, family planning, and primary preventive health care together in an advisory capacity .
A written commitment to integrating and normalizing sexual health care and education by fostering public-private partnerships.
A written assurance that reimbursement rates to reproductive health care providers will be sufficient to maintain statewide access to family planning services.
We are moving ahead right now to expand, improve, and strengthen our family planning program by negotiating a permanent state plan amendment based on what we have learned over the past seven years. That federal contract will protect and solidify our program’s gains. With that protection, we will continue to answer the question “How does dispensing contraception relate to preventing unwanted pregnancies?” not so much with rhetoric, but with results.
“A defender of the church,” proclaimed the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel headline for an extensive story about the new Archbishop-designate, Jerome Listecki. The subtitle for the article was: “Archbishop designate Listecki vows collaboration, but unafraid of debate.” The subtitle was probably derived from the bishop’s description of how he planned to participate in the political process. He said: “If we don’t challenge one another’s statements, then we’re relinquishing our responsibility to the common good.”
The following month, young Catholics for Choice (yCFC – a Washington D.C. based organization) and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS – an agency with family planning clinics in eight Wisconsin counties) formed a unique sectarian-secular advertising partnership, produced informational ads for broadcast, and then embarked on a two-day Wisconsin “road-trip” to draw media attention to their campaign and to build public (including the Catholic public) awareness and knowledge about emergency contraception.
The purpose of the joint media campaign was two-fold; 1) to inform the public about how Plan B works so they would have it on hand in advance of need and, 2) to inform Catholic women of reproductive age that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops health care directives permit the use of emergency contraception to prevent pregnancies resulting from rape.
In the January 2010 issue of the Journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, Ron Hamel, Ph.D., makes it very clear that the ethics of access to emergency contraception for Catholics needs to be fully examined and explained. Professor Hamel’s article and the YCFC/FPHS EC campaign are an effort to fulfill that responsibility when there is significant resistance.
The campaign succeeded in getting a response from the Archbishop-designate and thus succeeded in its secondary purpose. The headline on the Christmas Eve edition of the La Crosse Diocesan newspaper is: “Bishop Rejects Young Catholics for Choice Message.” The front page column ran adjacent to the departing bishop’s message. But what he rejected so prominently: “ . . . that Catholics can disregard Church teaching on contraception, abortion, and human sexuality in general and remain Catholics in good standing,” was only weakly connected to the message that yCFC and Family Planning Health Services (FPHS) were promoting.
Bishop Listecki, like most of the Catholic protestors in front of the FPHS clinic, will allow “no room for interpretation,” once the bishop’s authority has been invoked. Many within the church see the bishop’s pattern of authoritarian rebukes, condemnations, and admonitions as futile efforts to suppress dissent and they understand they are not the views of other Catholics or even the other American bishops. Just as importantly, the denials and condemnations are not solely inflicted on the faithful. The prayer vigil protestors’ and Bishop Listecki’s efforts to eliminate access to emergency contraception, if they succeed, would apply to women regardless of their faith.
Erik Cieslewicz and Brooke Sperry have produced a documentary about the joint campaign that will be released February 17th, 2010. The web-posting will occur on the same day that another Lenten prayer vigil outside an FPHS clinic (which does not provide abortion services) begins in central Wisconsin. The video shows the challenge as well as the fun of the effort to educate the public in the face of consistent efforts to suppress and to misinform. Earlier, “40 Days for Life” prayer vigils played a large part in motivating FPHS and yCFC to cooperate in the advertising effort to correct misinformation being spread by their opponents.
Wisconsin has taken steps to advance the scope of the sex education our students will receive with the recently passed Healthy Youth Act. Wisconsin State Representative Donna Seidel talks with Dino Corvino in the attached podcast outlining the reasons behind this legislation. Across the nation, the rates of teen pregnancy have increased. The accompanying article from the Washington Post, January 1-26-2010, outlines what has happened and the increases in teen pregnancies in the last few years. Representative Seidel clarifies just why that is a concern for all of us
A glaring absence of the Emperor’s clothing seems to be escaping our attention in the recent House health care reform proposal with the inclusion of the Stupak amendment. The Emperor is naked and while everyone is critiquing, arguing and validating the fabrics, thread and adornment of his new clothes, those of us looking at his bare bottom wonder how everyone became so deluded.
The collective blindness of the Kingdom is truly exposed in the concession of excluding abortion care to pass a House proposal that included a public option. Using women’s health and reproductive justice as the deal breaker once again demonstrates that reform is not intended to address basic issues of health care disparity in our country.
The belief that contraception is intrinsically evil, though sincere, does not make it true. The belief that it is “written in everyone’s heart as “natural law” is no more persuasive.If true, it seems there would be no disagreement.
Catholic leaders know they have not persuaded one another, the public, or their own laity, to agree that contraception is evil. So when it comes to public policy, rather than engage in dialogue and debate, they seem to make a statement and end it with a “Dixi” (Latin for “I have spoken”) as though that is all that should be necessary.
