I understand the political impetus behind Senator Blunt's amendment. Gotta keep the fundies happy if you want to stay in office as a 'Pub these days.
I also understand why women, and those who love them, are riled up about these misogynistic attacks on oral contraception. It's dangerous, demeaning, dated and just plain dumb. I've spoken at length with the planet, and she assures me that her biggest complaint right now is not a shortage of humans.
Something I don't understand about the amendment, and wonder if those who sponsored and voted for it do, is why was it written to include, well, everything? If you've got a prob with abortion or contraception or fertility treatment or whatever, just say so. To write a piece of legislation this open-ended is insane.
Oh, I dig the attempt to obfuscate. "This isn't about contraception; it's about religious freedom." Good luck with that, fellows.
But did anyone supporting this really understand how much "religious freedom" they were allowing here?
The amendment (pdf here) cleverly avoids icky topics like the Pill or IUDs or foams, gels, douches, etc., etc. by allowing individuals, employers and providers to opt out of any "specific items or services" which would violate their "religious beliefs or moral convictions."
So calm down, all you fidgety females. We're not out to deny you birth control.
We're out to deny you health care.
Setting aside the possibility that an employer (or health insurance company) could just capriciously decide that any procedure or medication was against a newly-discovered moral principle ("I'm morally opposed to reducing my company's profits by paying for your chemo"), let's just look at relatively maiinstream religious beliefs that could be grounds for care denial under Mr. Blunt's proposal.
Christian Scientist employers, of course, could deny coverage of just about anything, including vaccinations, something Rosicrucian Fellowship also eschew as unnecessary for the truly spiritual person.
Citing Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:10, and Acts 15:29, Jehovah's Witnesses declare receiving blood transfusions to be sinful.
Treatment for HIV/AIDS could be denied by any number of believers who hold that the disease is itself a sign of God's judgment, but even less controversial ailments would be fodder for "conscientious" damning.
Followers of Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel in California were stunned earlier this year when Smith, father of the "Jesus People" movement of the late 1960s-early 1970s, announced he has Stage 3 lung cancer. Many were perhaps more stunned to hear that Pastor Smith is having his cancer treated, as one of Calvary Chapel's core doctrines is that Christ's power is sufficient to overcome all disease.
Just because the movement's founder elected to have his cancer treated does not mean one of his followers wouldn't deny you the same option, should he or she make your health care decisions under Blunt's amendment.
A few weeks after Smith revealed his disease, NPR ran a report of monumental import: two women undergoing experimental therapy at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute appear to have regained some vision after suffering macular degeneration. The experimental treatment focused on
"Stargardt's macular dystrophy, which is the leading cause of pediatric blindness, and dry age-related macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness in the developed world."
The early results, while still
very preliminary, are startling and quite encouraging.
The bad news? The treatment was derived from human embryonic stem cells. Not that anybody has any religious or moral objections to that, eh? Oh, yeah. I forgot Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Southern Baptists and evangelicals. Not that any of them would be likely to employ people or work in the insurance industry.
I could go on, but you get the idea. In their efforts to hide their essential anti-woman, anti-sex, anti-personal liberty pandering behind a smokescreen of "religious liberty," Blunt and his supporters opened a loophole big enough to essentially deny anyone any treatment whatsoever, setting health care back even farther than the staus quo ante "Obamacare."
It is said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is seldom mentioned that very, very bad intentions can metal the same route equally well.