Yesterday, I followed a link on Twitter to an unknown blog called Veritas Nihilum Vincet, or "Truth Conquers Nothing".
The linked article is titled "Stupid Jesus Freaks" and presents a clear and definitive defense of President Obama's compromise on birth control.
I found myself nodding my head almost all the way through the article, because once it's broken down into a few simple parts, it becomes clear that the right thinks it has found the newest wedge issue to drive outraged voters to the polls (because it's obvious that their current field of candidates won't do).
(I must warn you that this blog does not suffer fools or Catholics well, so be prepared)
First, no one is forcing Catholics to use birth control, despite the fact that a vast majority of Catholic women use it anyway. The hypocrisy in preaching for others what Catholics themselves will not practice is appalling but, and of course, what can one expect from Catholics? One does not simply abandon two thousand years of utterly two-faced hypocrisy overnight.
It's pretty clear from available statistics out there that
a huge percentage of Catholic women use or have used birth control:
Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same among Catholic women (98%).
The way that the author presents it in his article is how we should all look at it, as a benefit of employment, not something bestowed as a gift to women out of the kindness of their hearts:
Health insurance is a job benefit, the same as wages, vacation time and sick days. As such, it belongs to the employee, not the employer. The Catholic church has no right whatsoever to tell their employees where or how to spend their days off. Imagine if they stopped providing health insurance entirely but commensurately increased the wages of their employees to compensate for that lost benefit. Would they then be entitled to say, “You can now purchase your own insurance but you may not buy a policy that covers contraception”? Of course not…but that is exactly the position they take: “We pay for it, and you cannot make us pay for something we consider immoral!”
No, they don’t pay for it. The employees pay for it, the same damn way they pay for their Social Security and unemployment benefits. These fatuous cretins might as well claim that since the salaries come out of their coffers, they have the right to say how that money shall be spent. It takes a certain sort of delusional mindset that can only be supported by the certain knowledge that one is doing god’s own work to believe such convoluted horseshit.
This takes me back to the House debate over Planned Parenthood, and how Republicans used the old saw of "fungible" federal monies going to pay for abortions, despite the Hyde Amendment:
Nevertheless, they assert that funding should be cut because taxpayers are “subsidizing” abortion. Their argument is that money is “fungible,” meaning that every dollar the government gives Planned Parenthood for family planning services, STI and HIV prevention and treatment, and cancer screening “frees up” money for it to spend on abortion care. According to them, mechanisms to segregate public from private funds are mere “accounting gimmicks” and “funding schemes.”
This is not the first time they’ve tried to play the fungibility card. Some may recall that former Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) made the exact same argument when he tried to prevent private insurance companies receiving premium subsidies from offering coverage of abortion in their health plans during the health reform debate. And more recently, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) has tried to expand the Hyde Amendment policy well beyond its current scope, including by reaching into the tax code to restrict abortion access for the first time ever.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Basically, it boils down to this, Republicans and the lobbyists for the Catholic Church think they should be able to tell not only their Catholic employees, but all females under their employ, how they can use their own money.
There is a legal maxim that says one’s right to swing one’s arms about ends at the tip of my nose…and so it is with belief and conduct within the secular law: your right to pray ends when you order me to kneel, and your right to eschew birth control goddamn well ends when you tell me I must also abide by the restrictions you set for yourself.
I can't do justice to this well written piece, so check it out for yourselves:
http://cousinavi.wordpress.com/...