Free contraceptives may be a part of health care reform; fight underway

By Catholic Online
11/2/2010
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Will tax dollars be used to fund contraception, some of which causes abortion?

A panel of experts will advise the government when it meets this month to begin considering what constitutes "preventive care" for women, and what should be covered at no cost to the patient. This is a key stipulation of healthcare reform, as required under U.S. President Barack Obama's overhaul of the healthcare system. Will tax dollars be used to fund contraception, some of which causes abortion?

'We don't consider it to be health care, but a lifestyle choice,' John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center says. 'We think there are other ways to avoid having children than by ingesting chemicals paid for by health insurance.'

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - A debate on of great significance is brewing between some heath care advocates and religious leaders if this will include free, accessible contraceptives to women.

Senator Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., author of the women's health amendment, says the clear intent was to include family planning . But is articicial birth control preventive medicine?

To some medical and public health experts, there's no debate. To others there clearly is. This is compunded by the fact that some articial contraceptives are abortifacient. In other words, they cause abortion, the taking of human life.

"There is clear and incontrovertible evidence that family planning saves lives and improves health," obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. David Grimes, an international family planning expert who teaches medicine at the University of North Carolina says.

"Contraception rivals immunization in dollars saved for every dollar invested. Spacing out children allows for optimal pregnancies and optimal child rearing. Contraception is a prototype of preventive medicine."

U.S. Catholic bishops, and many, many other Pro-Life leaders insist that pregnancy is a healthy condition, not an illness. In comments filed with the Department of Health and Human Services, the bishops say they oppose any requirement to cover contraceptives or sterilization as preventive care.

"We don't consider it to be health care, but a lifestyle choice," John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center says. "We think there are other ways to avoid having children than by ingesting chemicals paid for by health insurance."

Other pro-life religious conservatives have thus far stayed out of the debate - but that could change. Some say they are concerned about any requirement that might include the morning-after pill. The Food and Drug Administration classifies it as birth control; other pro-life medical professional and advocates for the Right to Life argue it is an abortion drug.

Jeanne Monahan, a health policy expert at the Family Research Council, said her group would oppose any mandate that lacks a conscience exemption for moral and religious reasons. She said there's "great suspicion" that a major abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, is leading the push for free birth control.

Half of all pregnancies are unplanned, and many occur among women using some form of contraception. The government says the problem is rarely the birth control method, but "inconsistent or incorrect use," such as forgetting to take a pill.

Advocates say free articicial contraceptives would begin to address the problem.

"We can look at other countries where birth control is available for no cost, and what we see are lower pregnancy rates, lower abortion rates and lower teen pregnancy," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood says. Planned Parenthood is one of the largest purveyors of contraceptives and providers of abortion.

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Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer Intentions for January 2013
General Intention: The Faith of Christians. That in this Year of Faith Christians may deepen their knowledge of the mystery of Christ and witness joyfully to the gift of faith in him.
Missionary Intention: Middle Eastern Christians. That the Christian communities of the Middle East, often discriminated against, may receive from the Holy Spirit the strength of fidelity and perseverance.

Keywords: Contraceptives, moral quandaries, abortion, bishops, pro-life

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1 - 9 of 9 Comments

mike kimani
2 years ago
yes i disagree with contraceptives. infact i was not taking it as abortion. but what about the church teaching about natural family planning methods?
Diane
2 years ago
I also greet this news of free contraceptives with dismay, but not that much dismay. I pray and I believe that" the solutions will arise." Already the majority of the people in this country are throwing off the lies of the political "progressive" agenda, and that grace from God will continue to multiply and spead. It is very progressive to believe in overpopulation, abortion , same sex union and euthanasia. We aren't out of the hole on this yet, but increase your prayers. God answers prayers. Give Him thanks for sustaining us in the Truth. Thank Him for the courageous Pope Paul VI and his work, Humanae Vitae. Bl. Paul VI prays for us. God will draw good out of the present evil for those who cling to Him. Take heart, our courageous and saintly Pope Benedict XVI is changing minds and hearts in Europe. Let's pray for him and his intentions.
Margo
2 years ago
All of you are spot-on. Beth, speaking of whether or not breastfeeding and NFP would be supported by healthcare dollars, of course, you know the answer: that would be a resounding "NOT ON YOUR LIFE." Even private insurance of the fullest coverage wouldn't pay for lactation consultation for us in the early 1990s when our first-born came into this world and nursing proved very problematic for him. We paid dearly out-of-pocket for the first seven weeks of his life (and it was worth every penny to eventually go on to successfully nursing him.) Today's "agenda" perpetrated would never allow for methods linked to the TRUTH of Natural Law to be propagated. No....only lies about over-population and deceptions of every kind leading us rapidly to demographic death and more of the promotion of promiscuity and the culture of death, and all in the name of "liberation," when in fact, the whole ball of wax is enslaving of men AND women, alike. The Father of all Lies has a stronghold on the hearts and minds of so many. We must all educate our children to the TRUTH and teach them to influence their friends. Recently, the aforementioned son found himself in a group of peers when the conversation turned to the topic of contraception. He shared the TRUTH of its evils and all the teenagers in the group listened…and admitted they had NEVER given it any thought. It’s all about planting seeds! Take heart, John D, I also worry about the future very much but we must keep persevering and doing all we can. The anxieties we all experience about these things do not come from God, as you well know, I am sure. We must pray for one another…though we are complete strangers, we are united in our shared concerns on these, the most important issues of our times. We must keep imploring God to assist us in the pursuit of goodness and holiness. God bless and have mercy on us all.
Andrew
2 years ago
Contraceptives, Viagra and other sexual enhancing type drugs, and abortion should not be paid by the taxpayers. - These are ALL lifestyle choices. All US beaucracies know how to do is spend our hard earned money. We need smaller government and less government interferance in our private lives.
John D
2 years ago
RobertZ, that's good insight linking contrception with poverty. Good point. It makes plenty of sense. The question I have is this: where does this end? When will we bottom out in a demographic sense? Because I don't see everyone instantly discontinuing the use of contraceptives and you certainly couldn't make them illegal. How much will the human population be reduced before people wake up? Will we decline to a point where there aren't enough people to man the factories producing the contraceptives? The hands of time could be turned back hundreds of years if the current trends continue. And why wouldn't they cointinue? If people will not want to give up "pleasure without consequences", what's to stop the free fall of the human population? Ultimately, this could get real ugly.
RobertZ
2 years ago
John D, I fully agree with you. I just believe you forgot another part of the chain: divorce leads to poverty. It seems to be a circular repeating process. Contraception leads to very significantly higher rates of poverty, with which contraception is used to "fight poverty" by those in power. Every link in that chain is continually weakened (or should I say strengthened) as far as providing any resistance to getting out of that chain. Faultless civil divorce, ever more pressure to strengthen the abortion agenda, and now free contraception to add to it.
JeanCatherine
2 years ago
Thank you Beth.
Beth
2 years ago
Talk to any group of women and you will hear a litany of complaints about contraception. Women are basically asked to tolerate all the risks and side effects of artificial birth control in order to be sexually available to men at all times and not produce any inconvenient children. And this is liberation? What we know is that there exist completely safe and very effective means of spacing children for the desired health and economic benefits cited in the article by proponents of contraception. These include breastfeeding and other methods of natural family planning. Will these methods be supported by any healthcare dollars? The instruction and support needed to effectively breastfeed and/or learn to chart one's cycles would be far cheaper in the long run than any form of artificial birth control - esp. when one factors in the known health benefits of breastfeeding for mothers and babies, and avoiding unnecessary medications.
John D
2 years ago
Most people have absolutley no idea of the implications this has. Birthrates are low enough in this country and now we're going to do everything we can to make them even lower - so maybe we can end up like Europe, where they aren't producing enough people to replace the current population. They are facing a demographic implosion the likes of which have never been seen before in the history of humanity. Contraception is bad because it promotes promiscuity, which in turn leads to more abortions, more STD's, and increased divorce rates. More divorces means more broken families, more hurt children, and more sadness. To top it all off, it is slowly wiping away humanity as witnessed in Europe, Japan, and South Korea with the rest of the world just behind them. And all of this happens while the economy implodes because there's never been a thriving economy with a declining human population! John Paul II had it right: this is the Culture of Death. We're all guilty of creating this, but we better wake up and tell our kids. God help us if we don't. Anyone intersted in reading more about this should visit these web sites: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25723 and http://www.demographicwinter.com/index.html

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