Where the Girls Are

was the title of a slim volume published by the Daily Princetonian in 1965. The guide provided phone numbers, campus rules and curfews, and directions to seventeen women’s colleges on the East Coast along with evaluations (some more charitable than others) of the young scholars at each of the schools: Bennett College, for example, “doesn’t offer much besides the woods.” The reaction was mixed. One reader described it as “an extremely accurate representation of the situation existing on this campus.” While another expressed her sincere wishes that the book’s contributors “will all be in Vietnam soon.”

Just a little trivia that keeps popping into my head when I hear supporters of the HHS mandate continue to ask, Where are the women who oppose the mandate? Helen Alvaré, of George Mason University, and Kim Daniels of the Thomas More Law Center have managed to find some 20,000 of them to sign an open letter to President Obama, Secretary Sebelius, and members of congress opposing the HHS mandate and making clear that the administration doesn’t represent the interests of all women:

Those currently invoking “women’s health” in an attempt to shout down anyone who disagrees with forcing religious institutions or individuals to violate deeply held beliefs are more than a little mistaken, and more than a little dishonest. Even setting aside their simplistic equation of “costless” birth control with “equality,” note that they have never responded to the large body of scholarly research indicating that many forms of contraception have serious side effects, or that some forms act at some times to destroy embryos, or that government contraceptive programs inevitably change the sex, dating and marriage markets in ways that lead to more empty sex, more non-marital births and more abortions. It is women who suffer disproportionately when these things happen.

No one speaks for all women on these issues. Those who purport to do so are simply attempting to deflect attention from the serious religious liberty issues currently at stake. Each of us, Catholic or not, is proud to stand with the Catholic Church and its rich, life-affirming teachings on sex, marriage and family life. We call on President Obama and our Representatives in Congress to allow religious institutions and individuals to continue to witness to their faiths in all their fullness.