Today’s New York Times reminds us that the Jesuits haven’t gone entirely off the rails. Their exposé exposes the fact that Fordham has resisted compliance with a New York state law that requires insurance coverage that pays for birth control pills. Nice to know that on this issue they’re keeping the C in Catholic up at Rose Hill in the Bronx.
Of course this conflict between Planned Parenthood Jihadists and Catholic institutions is now going national. The HHS mandated health coverage requires birth control as a “preventive service.”
The absurdity of all this has united Catholics, as Fordham demonstrates. It’s hardly a hard line institution, but the strange notion that birth control is an essential health care imperative is something any intelligent liberal, Catholic or otherwise, should reject.
Put plainly, whatever one thinks of the morality of contraception, as a drug or device, it’s a consumer good, not a kind of medicine. Like season tickets to the Mets games, it’s something you spend money on to have fun. The overwhelming majority of people don’t suffer from conditions or diseases that REQUIRE them to have sex. They choose to do so, for the obvious reasons that, again, don’t have anything to do with health and everything to do with pleasure.
Of course the New York Times and the Obama administration—and for that matter a big sector of liberal opinion—doesn’t see it that way. Birth control is not a luxury; it’s a necessity, something without which normal, healthy adult life would be quite simply impossible.
The Pill is so fundamental to human flourishing for the New York Times that the article empathizes with the suffering students at Fordham, especially graduate students, who “have found the restrictions on birth control coverage onerous.”
Onerous? We’re not talking about anybody preventing women from buying birth control. Apparently it’s onerous because nobody is paying for it.
Let’s look at this terrible burden. According to the Planned Parenthood website, to get a prescription for the pill a woman needs an exam that may cost $35-$250. A monthly prescription runs $15-$50.
OK. The exam is roughly the cost of whatever the latest hot fashion in women’s shoes, and the prescription less than the cost of buying a regular cup of coffee at Starbucks.
So there you have what’s at stake in for liberalism today: raise taxes on cigarettes, fret over fatty foods, and subsidize sex (or make it into a civil right). Good for Fordham for resisting.
January 30th, 2012 | 3:33 pm
Their exposé exposes the fact that Fordham has resisted compliance with a New York state law that requires insurance coverage that pays for birth control pills.
As the article notes, the Fordham insurance does pay for contraceptives. However, the on-campus student-health-service doctors will not prescribe them. If women obtain prescriptions on their own, the Fordham insurance pays for the drugs.
Jesuits haven’t gone entirely off the rails
Last time I heard, the Jesuits were a Catholic order in good standing. From their founding nearly 500 years ago down through today, they have been an extraordinary group of dedicated Catholic men. They should not be denigrated.
January 30th, 2012 | 11:20 pm
they have been an extraordinary group of dedicated Catholic men. They should not be denigrated.
It is my understanding that the criticisms (as implied or suggested here) involve public repudiation of certain Catholic beliefs and doctrines.
Whether or not they are extraordinary in other contexts, fidelity must be understood as a virtue just as important as any other, as far as members accepting or rejecting beliefs that define their membership in a larger group.
January 31st, 2012 | 8:45 am
Actually, drugs that have a contraceptive effect can have other medicinal effects. Hormone-based oral contraceptives are frequently used in the treatment of polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, several androgen-related skin conditions, dysmenorrhea, and dysfunctional uterine bleeding.
Certainly the large majority of prescriptions for such drugs are intended solely for contraception. But it’s important to note that their uses are by no means limited to contraception.
January 31st, 2012 | 9:16 am
It’s also important to note that the objections are to the contraceptive, as well as abortifacient, requirements not the treatment of the sick. Pregnancy remains a normal and mostly “healthy” (to use the now cliched word) condition.
January 31st, 2012 | 1:35 pm
From the NYT article:
Despite Catholic teachings, surveys have found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women, as in the general population, have used contraceptives.
How long must the media drag this relativistic point? Just because x amount of people use contraceptives, does not make it objectively moral.
January 31st, 2012 | 3:26 pm
Pregnancy remains a normal and mostly “healthy” (to use the now cliched word) condition.
Mike,
Then I suppose women ought not to see an obstetrician while they are pregnant, or have their babies delivered in a hospital. Childbirth is perfectly normal and ought not to require a doctor and a hospital stay.
February 1st, 2012 | 3:59 am
David Nichol
Rather a modern development.
Until the end of WWII, the majority of births in Scotland took place at home, with the assistance of a midwife and, after some 70 years of the medicalisation of pregnancy, there is considerable agitation to make this option more generally available.
February 1st, 2012 | 6:53 am
Then I suppose women ought not to see an obstetrician while they are pregnant, or have their babies delivered in a hospital. Childbirth is perfectly normal and ought not to require a doctor and a hospital stay.
Women die in childbirth. It is very dangerous.
Tell me how many women die from abstinence each year.
February 1st, 2012 | 6:59 am
Actually, drugs that have a contraceptive effect can have other medicinal effects. Hormone-based oral contraceptives are frequently used in the treatment of polycystic ovarian syndrome, endometriosis, several androgen-related skin conditions, dysmenorrhea, and dysfunctional uterine bleeding.
In which case they are not prescribed as contraceptives, but as medically necessary drugs.
The right to religious belief should be viewed as a real human right (yes, conservatives want to have rights too). It is more important than some imagined “right” to promiscuity, but less important than the right to life.
Ethically, religious people should be forced to cover all conditions that are life-threatening. The idea behind universal coverage was sold to us on the grounds that it would prevent deaths.
To demand that a Catholic institution be forced to cover contraception is no different from demanding that a Unitarian Universalist be forced to cover treatment plans designed to cure homosexual teenagers. You’d find it unethical, and it’s not medically necessary. It is dishonest to use the urgency of medicine to force a social agenda through bait and switch tactics.
February 1st, 2012 | 12:06 pm
Blake,
Actually, if you read the Institute of Medicine report titled Clinical Preventive Services for Women: Closing the Gap, the report that recommended the “contraceptive mandate,” you will find quite a bit of medical justification given for it. About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned (that is, unwanted or mistimed), and 42% of those end in abortion.
Would you object to medical insurance covering contraceptives for a married woman who might die if she became pregnant?
February 1st, 2012 | 12:15 pm
Blake –
So long as that distinction is actually honored in practice, then I do think the HHS mandate is overbroad. There are some indications that’s not always the case, though… as you know from the other thread.
(I’m surprised you trust doctors to do that, though. You’re on record as saying “doctors as a group have destroyed their ability to be reliable as filters.”)
February 1st, 2012 | 5:01 pm
“Women die in childbirth. It is very dangerous.”
That’s an overstatement. Most of the time, childbirth is NOT a dangerous process. Complications to childbirth are occasionally dangerous. But you can say that of anything.
As Michael PS pointed out, the homebirth/midwife option is becoming more popular and more desired, precisely because more people are coming to realize that an ordinary, non-complicated birth is not “dangerous” if properly managed. And the skill set to properly manage a birth is not necessarily that of a board-certified sub-specialist.
February 1st, 2012 | 5:57 pm
pentamom,
Just about anything one can do nowadays to avoid a hospital stay is worth considering.
February 1st, 2012 | 7:43 pm
(I’m surprised you trust doctors to do that, though. You’re on record as saying “doctors as a group have destroyed their ability to be reliable as filters.”)
It’s true I view that as a problem, but if you’re suggesting that letting the government micromanage us from Washington is a solution, I call that a case of “out of the frying pan, into the fire”.
February 1st, 2012 | 7:52 pm
That’s an overstatement. Most of the time, childbirth is NOT a dangerous process. Complications to childbirth are occasionally dangerous. But you can say that of anything.
Pregnancy is not a disease – and one could certainly argue that we have “over medicalized” childbirth in the US – but providing medical care reduces a very real risk of death or disability, and that is not inconsistent with a definition of “medicine” that limits “medical care” only to that which is necessary to restore or maintain bodily integrity.
February 2nd, 2012 | 1:36 am
but providing medical care reduces a very real risk of death or disability, and that is not inconsistent with a definition of “medicine” that limits “medical care” only to that which is necessary to restore or maintain bodily integrity.
Blake,
Then I fail to see why preventing (unwanted) pregnancy doesn’t qualify as medical care, particularly in cases where the potential mother has some kind of health problem that could make a pregnancy dangerous.
February 2nd, 2012 | 6:48 am
Blake
You appear to be undermining your own case.
Your opponents will retort that if pregnancy carries “a very real risk of death or disability” is not its prevention as much “medical care” as vaccination against measles?
February 2nd, 2012 | 12:05 pm
“but providing medical care reduces a very real risk of death or disability, and that is not inconsistent with a definition of “medicine” that limits “medical care” only to that which is necessary to restore or maintain bodily integrity.”
That’s too broad. By that definition, ski safety equipment would be “not inconsistent with” the definition of medicine. You need something a little more specific — I agree that “necessary to restore or maintain bodily integrity” is a minimum standard, but you need more than that.
Anyway, my point is not that pregnancy/childbirth care should not be deemed medicine, it’s that the word “dangerous” doesn’t apply to a normal childbirth. I’m not supporting David’s reductio here, I’m just asking you to not contribute to the scary modern attitude toward childbearing. “A real risk of death or disability” is not enough to establish “dangerous,” unless you want to call pretty much everything people do “dangerous.”
It is more consistent with appropriate language to call normal childbirth a “safe” process than a “dangerous” one. That does not mean there are no dangers involved, but it casts a false impression on the real nature of pregnancy and childbirth to call it “dangerous.” It ceased to be *generally* dangerous the day doctors started believing that washing their hands between patients actually mattered.
February 2nd, 2012 | 3:37 pm
I’m not supporting David’s reductio here, I’m just asking you to not contribute to the scary modern attitude toward childbearing.
pentamom,
And I am not seriously suggesting pregnancy and childbirth should not be covered by medical insurance. There are two arguments that are frequently made against the contraceptive mandate, and one is that contraceptives should not be covered by medical insurance because (1) contraceptives are not “medicine,” and the other is that “insurance” doesn’t cover routine or foreseeable expenses. But trying to come up with definitions of “medicine” (or “health”) and insurance is very tricky and usually formulating your definitions to exclude something you think should be excluded also eliminates something everyone would agree should be included.
Medical insurance, if modeled after car insurance, wouldn’t pay for much of anything, and certainly not prenatal care and hospital delivery. One could even argue that medical insurance doesn’t pay for elective expenses, and pregnancy is elective.
February 2nd, 2012 | 5:52 pm
But trying to come up with definitions of “medicine” (or “health”) and insurance is very tricky
No, it really isn’t.
February 2nd, 2012 | 5:59 pm
You need something a little more specific — I agree that “necessary to restore or maintain bodily integrity” is a minimum standard, but you need more than that.
Yeah, but I bet my insurance company could already explain exactly why childbirth is covered and injury-prevention gear isn’t.
My point is that insurance companies have already defined all these things. We already have definitions. We already know all these answers. We’re just pretending we don’t because some people want free birth control, and/or want to be able to dispense free birth control.
And why do people want to dispense free birth control? Are they concerned that it is necessary for health? Well, if they are, they’re not being logical, because cheap/free birth control is already widely available. I think it’s pretty clear that the real motives in this dispute have nothing to do with legitimate medical concerns and everything to do with advancing a social agenda, influencing behaviors and perceptions of behaviors.
And, of course, if Catholics have to go secular as a precondition for continuing to render services, then that’s a twofer: it’s both a victory for atheists (who don’t want Catholics to exist on equal terms within society) and it’s also a way for the secular state to get hold of expensive medical equipment without actually having to pay for it (because that stuff is expensive).
February 3rd, 2012 | 2:03 am
About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned (that is, unwanted or mistimed), and 42% of those end in abortion.
It is not the job of medicine to take responsibility for people who are incapable of responsible adult behavior.
If this is a problem that the government needs to be solving, the correct response is not to make doctors responsible, but rather to appoint guardians to the women who are incapable of taking care of themselves.
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