Alicia Menendez
+ FollowObama as Solomon: Balancing Catholics and Contraceptives
We live in a country where religious liberty and protecting women’s health are both core values. President Obama has proven that those values need not be mutually exclusive, recently laying out a new path forward on birth control by tailoring “accommodations” for religious institutions.
The President’s new policy is a double victory: women will have access to free birth control, and no religious organization will be required to pay for it. If a woman works for a religious institution that refuses to cover contraception, her insurance company will have to offer it to her for free. In turn, the cost to the insurance companies will be offset by the long term cost savings associated with reduced need for maternity care.
The plan has brought together major players on both sides of the contraceptive coverage debate. The Catholic Health Association, a ministry of the Church comprising more than 2,000 health facilities across the country, said the Obama Administration’s framework ”responded to the issues we identified that needed to be fixed.”
Planned Parenthood also supports the measure. In a written statement, Cecile Richard, President of Planned Parenthood said, “In the face of a misleading and outrageous assault on women’s health, the Obama administration has reaffirmed its commitment to ensuring all women will have access to birth control coverage, with no costly co-pays, no additional hurdles, and no matter where they work.”
The back and forth on this issue is likely to continue. Many Catholic groups will only concede that this is “a first step,” and pundits argue that the Obama Administration moved too slowly to find a solution. But, in the long term this compromise will likely be a major win for Obama, both on substance and style.
For women voters, this is a reminder of the things we take for granted in the modern era: access to safe, affordable care, including prescription drugs like many contraceptives.
Nearly 99 percent of American women have relied on contraception at some point in our lives yet more than half of us between 18 and 34 years old have struggled to afford it. Among Latinas, that latter statistic has real consequences for our families and our communities. More than half of all Latinas have at some point stopped using prescription birth control consistently because the cost was prohibitive. As a result of these and other barriers, Latinas have more than twice the unintended pregnancy rate of non-Latinas.
In a time when it is sometimes hard to connect what happens in Washington to what happens in our own lives, there is no better issue to drive home the message that the public and the private are inextricably intertwined than a fight for our access to care.
This week, President Obama demonstrated the type of leadership that has defined the high points of his presidency. He listened to both sides, weighed their competing concerns and found an elegant solution. It’s the vision of governing that Obama espoused throughout his 2008 campaign, one he has had fewer opportunities to execute in the last four years than he likely imagined.
“This difference has at times been uncomfortable,” the Catholic Health Association said in a statement of the Church’s strict stance against contraceptives. “But it has helped our country sort through an issue that has been important throughout the history of our great democracy.”
Contraception coverage isn’t the only difference that separates Americans. It isn’t the only issue we have yet to sort through. These conversations are difficult — they require respect for the concerns of all good actors and a belief that win-win solutions are still possible. But above all else, the evolution of this issue is a reminder that in order to navigate those waters, we need a leader at the helm who knows how to put pragmatism above politics. If Obama hopes to sell himself to voters as that leader, then this new path forward is a feather in his cap.
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6 Responses to Obama as Solomon: Balancing Catholics and Contraceptives
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Just sayin'... says:
Perhaps some of those Bishops just want to follow the Bible (albeit the Church has its faults), which states that we should "be fruitful and multiply" and/or not have sex for fun with whoever you want knowing that you have an "out." If we didn't have such an easy way out of every bad situation we get ourselves into, maybe we would have a little more personal responsibility, a little less fatherlessness, and a natural birth control based on men being the men they should be and not the ones we've become (see the 70% of kids born without a father in Washington D.C., with plenty of Planned Parenthoods and other "free" options for avoiding responsibility). Another fact that we all seem to forget (or counsciously avoid) is that nothing the government or insurance companies provide is "free." Either taxpayers have to subsidize others lack of self-restraint or other insured members that fall under the insurance carrier. Perhaps I don't want to fund this nonsense anymore. Do I have an out?
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These bishops are TOO hypocritical — to think that of all things the big thing weighing on their consciences is whether their women workers are using insurance for contraception. I just don't believe it. They are just trying to make themselves look persnickety and good, but really coming off as silly.