Washington, D.C. – Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the Obama administration’s announcement a reaffirmation of the commitment to ensuring contraceptive coverage.
The Obama administration’s policy will make sure women of all faiths who work at religiously affiliated hospitals, universities, and service organizations can get contraceptive coverage. It guarantees that women will encounter no barriers from their bosses or insurance plans in getting birth control without a copay.
“Today’s announcement makes it clear that President Obama is firmly committed to protecting women’s health,” Keenan said. “Unfortunately, some opponents of contraception may not be satisfied. These groups and their allies in Congress want to take away contraceptive coverage from nurses, janitors, administrative staff, and college instructors—and that agenda is out of touch with our country’s values and priorities. We will continue to fight on every front to support women’s access to birth control as politicians in Washington, D.C. try to take it away.”
Keenan also noted that her organization is committed to ensuring that the policy is implemented fully and fairly, so that women receive this basic health-care benefit without unnecessary barriers.
Keenan also said her organization is mobilizing against legislative attacks, including an amendment offered by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) to the transportation bill that is expected to be voted on as early as next week. Although the Obama administration’s policy already exempts churches and other places of worship from the contraceptive requirement, the Blunt amendment is a far-reaching and extreme proposal. It would completely undo the no-cost birth control policy, which would ensure that virtually all women would get their prescription birth control covered without a copay. The amendment would also go so far as to allow insurers to deny coverage for any service they oppose based on personal views.
On November 2, 2011, Catholics for Choice president Jon O’Brien testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. In his testimony, Jon O’Brien showed how Catholics support the recently enacted healthcare reforms and the recommendation that contraception be included in fully covered benefits for all American employees. He noted, “I firmly believe the requirements under the Affordable Care Act, and the slate of regulations being created to implement it, infringe on no one’s conscience, demand no one change her or his religious beliefs, discriminate against no man or woman, put no additional economic burden on the poor, interfere with no one’s medical decisions, compromise no one’s health—that is, if you consider the law without refusal clauses.”
The US Conference of Catholic bishops (USCCB) are incensed at the decision by the Obama administration to guarantee that the preventive health care benefit package in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) includes contraceptive care. In a USCCB video, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the former Archbishop of Milwaukee, wags an index finger as he invokes religious freedom protected by the “very first amendment.” The archbishop calls upon his flock to contact their elected officials and let them know that “religious liberty must be restored.”
Under a cloak of reverence for religious freedom, the bishops say reproductive health care must be denied. As do the rights to millions of American women, millions of people of other religious faiths, and even to millions of American Catholics – most of who disagree with the archbishop.
Before we ask President Obama to reverse his administration’s decision, there are some troubling questions we should ask the bishops and ourselves lest we destroy religious freedom in the name of preserving it:
A patient who takes birth control pills, under the USCCB’s code of conscience, with the intention of preventing pregnancy commits a sin. If that same patient takes the same prescription for another health purpose, it is permissible. Is there any way that respects a patient’s right to privacy that also enables insurance companies and employers to deny birth control pills to prevent pregnancy while it permits them for regulation of menstrual cycles?
In Wisconsin, we have a Medicaid family planning program to prevent unintended pregnancy. It has been very successful. It saves taxpayer dollars by reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortions among participants. Medicaid payment records show that many Catholic hospitals, clinics, physicians, and pharmacists are participating in the program. These institutions provide birth control services and receive public insurance (tax) dollars in payment. There is no reason for the bishops to wait to exercise their conscience “rights.” They could stop accepting payment for family planning services now. Why wait?
Many people of sincere faith disapprove of childhood immunizations even though they are, like family planning, on the top ten list of major public health benefits. Under the religious exemption based on an employer’s conscience that the USCCB is asking for, an employer with a conscientious objection to immunization might deny its employees’ children insurance coverage for measles, mumps, polio, Pertussis, and rubella vaccines. What would be the public health impact on children when so many are not immunized?
Many Catholic employers throughout the country have family planning and birth control coverage in their insurance policies right now. Is there a reason to wait for ACA permission to exclude contraceptive care from the insurance coverage of their employees? If the bishops implement the limits on insurance coverage they are asking for in their own clinics and hospitals and pharmacies — which even though they haven’t, they say they must — will these employees continue to provide birth control and family planning services to patients and receive insurance reimbursement while they no longer have insurance coverage for that care themselves? Will employees be forced to seek out non-sectarian health care and pay for it out-of-pocket?
In Cardinal-designate Dolan’s former diocese, there is a nettlesome question of who is an employee of the archdiocese and who is not. Today, diocesan attorneys will argue that sexual assault claims against priests working in diocesan religious orders should be thrown out because the priests were not employees. The bishops need to clarify how they are accountable and responsible for the sexual health and morality of the employees of these separately-incorporated religious affiliates – until they engage in criminal sexual behavior.
Those of us who revere the constitution and the individual right to exercise freedom of religion enabled by the separation of church and state must stop the mass media procession that is now engaged in a responsive reading from the archbishop’s hymnal. These sounds you hear are not the chimes of freedom.
The proportions of women in a given state who receive Medicaid and who are uninsured are strongly associated with the state’s unintended pregnancy rate, according to “Variation in State Unintended Pregnancy Rates in the United States,” by Kathryn Kost et al., of the Guttmacher Institute. Notably, although initial analyses revealed a strong relationship between the black or Hispanic composition of states’ populations and unintended pregnancy rates, most of that relationship was accounted for by differences in state-level measures of women’s age, marital status, health insurance coverage and receipt of Medicaid. The greater the proportion of women who lacked insurance, or the lower the proportion covered by Medicaid, the higher the unintended pregnancy rate.
Previous research from the Guttmacher Institute found large variations in rates of unintended pregnancy across states. Nationally, rates of unintended pregnancy are higher among black and Hispanic women than they are among white women, and poor women have much higher rates of unintended pregnancy than those with incomes of at least 200% of the poverty line. Young women and unmarried women also experience relatively high unintended pregnancy rates. Given these disparities, Kost and her colleagues sought to examine whether a state’s demographic and socioeconomic composition was related to variations in rates across states.
The authors did not find a relationship between the proportion of women at risk of unintended pregnancy in the state who are contraceptive users and levels of unintended pregnancy after controlling for demographic or socioeconomic characteristics within each state. They explain that this finding is not surprising. “It does not mean that contraceptive use has no relationship to unintended pregnancy,” says Dr. Kost. “It means that the relationship between contraceptive use and unintended pregnancy does not differ across states.” The authors speculate that what does differ among states is “the extent to which vulnerable populations have access to insurance and Medicaid, and hence to contraception and other family planning services.”
These findings, according to the authors, suggest that efforts to expand insurance and Medicaid coverage among groups with high levels of unintended pregnancy merit examination as ways to lower rates. Understanding variations in unintended pregnancy by state is crucial to helping policymakers and program planners design interventions that most effectively reduce unintended pregnancy.
On Tuesday we told you about the bishops’ campaign to contest the decision to make no-copay contraceptive coverage available to employees, including those working for Catholic institutions. This Department of Health and Human Services ruling was an important victory for the many women and men who need this coverage, especially during these tough economic times. With your help, this victory will actually reach the pocketbooks of American workers.
Right now, the Catholic voice reaching the White House is almost exclusively coming from conservative Catholics, including the US bishops and their allies. The media is continuing this misconception by running these reactions as a reflection of a monolithic Catholic outrage. These protests are not on behalf of employees’ conscience rights, and do not reflect most Catholics’ convictions or practice related to contraception. We need to speak up now and let the administration know that US Catholics support the right to choose contraception, just as they support no-copay coverage for employees’ contraception.
We need you to call and e-mail the White House today with a simple message: the bishops do not speak for me on contraceptive coverage.
Remember to include a personal story in your e-mail to the White House. Your voice is needed now more than ever to preserve this great advance for the well-being of US workers.
We are also looking to share your stories as part of a campaign bring a different vision of Catholics into the spotlight: the experiences of Catholics like you who believe this contraception coverage supports employees’ freedom of conscience and should be available to all Americans, regardless of their employer.
Share your story online and send this link to others you know. There is no more effective way to educate policymakers and the media about the widespread Catholic support for equitable access to contraception.
Thank you for taking action with Catholics for Choice. Please forward this alert to your friends, family, colleagues or any others who may be interested in getting active on this important issue.
Healthcare Reform has meant a lot to people who need access to health care and as the law is fully implemented, it will mean even more. Over the last year, we’ve watched as some leaders have tried to take it back. Check out this ad by Family Planning Health Services to find out how health care reform helps people and what we stand to lose.
[This letter from Lon Newman appeared at Factcheck.org.]
Thanks for the fact check on the South Carolina Gingrich-versus-Romney ad ["Gingrich’s ‘Baloney’-filled Attacks on Romney," Jan. 11]. Confusing the public about emergency contraception pills (ECP) is deliberate, pervasive, and routinely served by opponents of contraception.
Although fact-checking the fact-checking seems tedious sometimes, it is important to explain that available research on Plan B One-Step (“the morning after pill”) shows that it prevents pregnancy by preventing ovulation and/or fertilization.
Ron Hamel, a Catholic ethicist publishing the conclusions of five years of scientific review in the January-February 2010 issue of Health Progress, said: ” … virtually all of the evidence in the scientific literature indicates Plan B has little or no post-fertilization effect, that is, it has little or no effect on the endometrium that would make it inhospitable to implantation. Its mechanism of action is to disrupt ovulation.”
One objection frequently repeated by Plan B opponents is that there is language in the pill package that the drug may prevent implantation. However, Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, a priest, theologian, and scientist also studied the active drug’s effects and determined that it has no post-fertilization effect. On the argument of labeling, he stated that: “ … labels mean nothing without the scientific data to back up their claims.”
The important answer to the question on emergency contraception is that there cannot be an abortion before there is a pregnancy; therefore, preventing unwanted pregnancies prevents abortions. But even if you believe pregnancy is the same as fertilization, you no longer have to put up with the warmed-over baloney that Plan B is an “abortion pill.”
Thanks, again, for your excellent work.
Lon Newman Executive director, Family Planning Health Services Wausau, Wisc.
President Obama listened to all of the women and men who called, e-mailed and wrote to the White House to express their support for family planning decisions staying in the hands of women. In so doing, he remained true to the original vision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and refused to bend the knee to intense lobbying from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Catholic healthcare industry and other special interests who wanted him to expand a refusal clause that would have denied millions of women access to affordable family planning.
The president of Catholics for Choice, Jon O’Brien, said, “The bishops pulled out all the stops in their campaign against women’s access to contraception. The Obama administration stood with those who support religious liberty and believe in giving women the freedom of conscience to make their own reproductive health decisions.
“While the refusal clause that is contained in the legislation is still too expansive, denying many women, as it does, affordable access to contraception, we are relieved by this announcement. Catholics for Choice and our colleagues in the reproductive rights movement expended a huge amount of energy and resources mobilizing the public to take action on this pivotal issue. In the final analysis, this was a victory for common sense and scientific advice in the interests of the common good.
“The battle over this issue is a warning about what is to come, especially as the bishops are playing the victim card in their pleas for special treatment and their false assertions about alleged attacks on religious freedom. The president and Congress will need to get real about what is going on, and remember that this coming November the electorate will not be listening to the bishops, so neither should they.”
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Catholics for Choice shapes and advances sexual and reproductive ethics that are based on justice, reflect a commitment to women’s well-being and respect and affirm the capacity of women and men to make moral decisions about their lives.
[This blog post appeared here. We think the message is simple and direct. Thank you to Laura Kendellen for such a well written response.]
Dear Laura,
Thank you for contacting me regarding right to life and the issue of abortion.
I fully understand the controversy and diverse opinions surrounding this issue. My own views have been forged over a lifetime of raising a family and following the national debate. In all sincerity, and with due respect to the beliefs of others, I believe that life begins at conception.
Our founding documents establish that we have an unalienable right to life endowed by our creator. Because the abortion debate concerns more than one life, there is not a national consensus as to when life begins or when the life of an unborn child should be protected.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court in Roe v Wade imposed a judicial dictate that did not end a debate that would be better resolved through the legislative process. As a result, the controversy over abortion has raged for over 3 decades, and there will continue to be attempts to come to a better resolution of the issue legislatively.
I have cosponsored two current bills in the Senate that help define and resolve the issue. I support S. 91 that defines life as beginning at conception, and S. 906 that prohibits the use of taxpayer funds for procedures that so many Americans strongly believe are morally wrong.
Thank you again for taking the time to share your thoughts. It is important for me to hear the views and concerns of the people I serve. Since taking office, I have received over 300,000 pieces of correspondence and have had over 150,000 people participate in live forums and telephone town hall meetings. Please feel free to contact me in the future if I can further assist you or your family. It is an honor representing you and the good people of Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate.
Sincerely,
Ron Johnson
United States Senator
________________________________
I received the above email this morning. I immediately posted it on Facebook and the comments keep coming.
I’m not sure which email Sen. Johnson is replying to here, but I am so appalled by his use of religious language in official correspondence that I have to share it.
I’m referring specifically to Sen. Johnson’s candid mention of “our creator.” As if everyone believes whatever Sen. Johnson believes. As if imposing his religious beliefs on his constituents is part of his job as a U.S. senator.
Regardless of “our founding documents,” I am a strong proponent of separation of church and state. Everyone is entitled to their own religious beliefs or having no religious beliefs, but religion should have no place in government- in theory and practice.
Unfortunately, that’s not the reality. After all, organizations like NARAL wouldn’t have to exist if it weren’t for the religion-politics crossover.
Although the majority of Americans identify as Christians, 3.9-5.5% identify as non-Christian, and 15% don’t identify with any religion at all.
Furthermore…
A recent Gallup poll shows that those who believe that abortion should be illegal in all cases are the minority;
A Guttmacher report shows 78% of women who have abortions have a religious affiliation;
And the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, for example, is made up of about 40 national religious and religiously affiliated organizations from 15 denominations and faith traditions
Clearly, religion and anti-choice sentiments don’t always go hand in hand.
I expected Sen. Johnson’s response to be anti-choice, but I did not expect such a blatant disregard for religious freedom and separation of church and state. Like many politicians, he is using “the issue of abortion” as a platform to promote his personal religious beliefs rather than to simply state his position.
Sen. Johnson’s response illustrates that he is both out of touch and out of line.
Arriving at the National Women’s Law Center three months ago, I never anticipated just how sustained and systemic the efforts to dismantle women’s health and reproductive rights had become. Sure, I had paid attention to the Planned Parenthood defunding fight (which included the “trade” for a ban on DC funding of abortion services and the “this is not meant to be a factual statement” debacle) and had heard about HR 3and the disgusting “forcible rape” debate. Indeed, it was those events that informed my decision to work on reproductive rights issues full time. But even though I was aware of what was going on, it was only when I became involved with the issues on a daily basis where I gained a whole new perspective on just how far those who oppose reproductive rights are going in order to completely unravel women’s rights. And it got me thinking, if so many bad things can happen in just my three months here, what will 2012 look like?
So in order to be prepared for this year, I decided to give a quick review of my first three months – a recap of the numerous anti-choice measures that cropped up in just the final months of 2011. Because when you lay it all out, you can’t ignore how serious these efforts really are.
In my very first week, the House of Representatives voted on HR 358, which literally would allow women to die at hospitals instead of getting the emergency care they need if it included abortion care. Seriously? Ok, next? How about the Rehberg Draft, the House’s version of the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill, which was never reviewed, debated, or marked up in subcommittee before the subcommittee chair posted it online (meaning circumventing the typical process for getting bills through). The draft included defunding Title X (the family planning program), ensuring Planned Parenthood gets no federal funds whatsoever (once again), expanding refusal rights, and taking away funding for implementing the Affordable Care Act. So basically everything that would hurt women’s and their families’ health. Thankfully, these provisions did not make it into the final appropriations bill (although there was a cut in Title X funding), so take a momentary sigh of relief. But with this sigh of relief there is also one of frustration when considering the 2012 appropriations didn’t include provisions providing coverage of abortion in case of rape, incest, or life endangerment for Peace Corps volunteers or permanently banning the global gag rule. Oh, and don’t forget, the bill prevents DC from using its own funds to cover abortion services. Sigh.
Ok, next up we have the debate of the National Defense Authorization Act, where Senator Shaheen was trying to include an amendment in the bill that would correct a very serious gap in coverage for women who rely on the military for insurance. Does it make sense that military women who fight and sacrifice for our country are left without any health insurance coverage for abortion services when they find themselves pregnant after surviving sexual violence? Does it make any more sense that civilian federal employees and those on Medicaid get such coverage and women in the military do not? Despite it making no sense for not providing this coverage to military women, the amendment was blocked from coming to a vote.
Now back to the House again, where there was a hearing in the Subcommittee on Health of the Energy & Commerce Committee on whether the groundbreaking HHS rule guaranteeing no cost sharing coverage of contraception should have an even bigger exemption for more religious entities, like hospitals and universities. Even though the rule in no way forces someone to take contraception, several witnesses at the hearing said that the rule still impinges on hospitals’ and universities’ consciences. Contraception is widely accepted, widely used, and used to be non-controversial. So it makes you think, are we really debating this? Is this where we are now, that even contraception is now up for negotiation? Ugh.
Just weeks after the HHS rule hearing, there was another House hearing, “HHS and the Catholic Church: Examining the Politicization of Grants” where HHS officials were questioned why a grant to help survivors of trafficking (including sex trafficking) wasn’t given to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Although claims were made of an administration bias against the Catholic Church, the issue boiled down to the fact that the Bishops would not provide or refer for all services that were required to get the grant. This includes providing or referring for the full range of gynecological care (remember what we are talking about here – providing care to sextrafficking survivors). The Bishops weren’t going to provide what the grant required, so they didn’t get the grant. Simple enough.
Next, we move on to a real roller coaster of a week. First, the House held a hearing on the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act of 2011, a bill that would criminalize race and sex selective abortions. The hearing was unbelievably depressing as members of the House advanced the extremely anti-choice, anti-woman bill in the name of civil rights, even quoting famous civil rights leaders, all the while ignoring the very big elephant in the room – i.e. the fact that those touting this “civil rights” law voted against every other civil rights legislation in the past several years. This one requires a big sigh…
Ok, but no time to dwell on a bill that would basically require doctors to racial profile patients, because now we are at one of the most stunning decisions of the year – i.e. Secretary Sebelius’s alarming decision to overrule the FDA’s conclusion that Plan B should be given over the counter status. Ouch, this one really hurt. And just to add salt to the wound, the next day President Obama said he agreed with the decision,because he didn’t want his daughters to be able to get Plan B between the bubble gum and batteries.Thud, my head has officially hit the table. There are so many problems with this decision (including ignoring the difficulty women can face in obtaining Plan B at a pharmacy) and the subsequent commentary, but, at its core, the decision to deny women over the counter access to contraception is a huge loss for this country.The decision has done great damage to the message about the benefits of access to contraception, women’s ownership of their reproductive health decisions, and elevating science over an incorrect political calculation (yeah sometimes I really want to think global warming isn’t happening, but then I look at the science…). Oh, and did you know that Obama’s daughters could get a lot more dangerous medicines at the pharmacy next to the bubble gum that is a lot cheaper than the $50 needed to buy Plan B… But that’s beside the point, right?
And so, with that great disappointment, 2011 is over, and with it the end of my first three months at the Law Center. Oh, and just as an fyi, this is just what happened on the national level, I did not even step into theNINETY-TWO anti-abortion restrictions passed in the states, which would make this blog even more depressing than it is and, not to mention, as long as the dictionary. But just as a reference - this total is almost THREE times higher the last highest number of state anti-abortion restrictions, which was 34 in 2005.
All of these attacks on women’s reproductive health, what is it about? Is it about controlling women’s decisions? Is it about nervousness about people having sex? Or is it just about scoring political points, and getting reelected?
Whatever it is or isn’t, it is madly saddening. Not only because women’s bodies are being used as political points, but because the conversation that happens in Washington about women’s bodies is completely ignorant of the conversation that is happening in the rest of America. That conversation is that there is an America that is struggling to make it. That there is a stubborn high unemployment rate (which, if the proponents of sex and race selection abortion were really concerned about discrimination and civil rights issues, they would work on legislation to help with the fact that black women in America have been particularly hit by job loss during the recovery). That the income gap is growing, people’s houses are underwater, extreme poverty is rising. These are all serious issues that are affecting Americans. But instead of dealing with these real issues, Washington is focused on women’s reproductive organs and figuring out new and unique ways to restrict, deny, and control them.
