The Catholic position is that health care reform is a "national priority" and a "moral imperative". This is the kind of language that makes me proud to be a Catholic.
The Catholic Church’s longtime advocacy for universal health care also makes me proud to be a Catholic. But I’m ashamed of the way the USCCB has acted in this debate, and I’m surprised that a “Pro-Life Catholic for Choice” supports an amendment that restricts choice in a very serious way.
Catholics are free to do what they want. Catholic hospitals have the right to refuse services they find offensive. But when the federal government sets out to reform the health care system in a way that will affect nearly every single American, and only one procedure—affecting only women—is singled out as “inappropriate,” based on the objections of some religious groups, we are not on common ground.
America has honored religious freedom more consistently, perhaps, than any other country. Of course, religious freedom implies plurality. As soon as a religiously-held belief restricts the freedom of others, it’s no longer simply “religious freedom.” It’s tyranny.
This should be a reminder to us that, even with a pro-choice President and a Democratic majority, the war against reproductive health care is far from over. Hydra-like, it rears not one head, but many: sexual hypocrisy, misogyny, religious bigotry. Feministing gets it right:
This has me so incredibly infuriated because it further segregates abortion as something different, off the menu of regular health care. It is a huge backward step in the battle to convey -- not just politically, but to women in their everyday lives -- that reproductive health care is normal and necessary, and must be there if (or, more accurately, when) you need it.
The commenter on Jodi’s post claims that with the bill’s passage, Obama is siding with the USCCB over Planned Parenthood. Is he ashamed that, of all the things the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops could be lobbying for, it has chosen to obstruct access to health care?
In an extraordinary effort over the last 10 days, the bishops conference told priests across the country to talk about the legislation in church, mobilizing parishioners to contact Congress and to pray for the success of anti-abortion amendments.
The bishops sent out information to be “announced at all Masses” and included in parish bulletins, and urged priests and parishioners to tell House members: “Please support the Stupak Amendment that addresses essential pro-life concerns.” They added: “If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed.”
Would the USCCB have been conducting a full-scale organizing effort for health care reform if abortion hadn’t been at issue? Do we ever see the USCCB wearing themselves out over social welfare legislation? What about the death penalty?
When they have the opportunity to help people, the USCCB makes little noise. But given the opportunity to take away women’s rights, the Conference debases itself by turning into a lobbying group of the most aggressive and inappropriate sort. President Obama is, without a doubt, faith-friendly. He understands the importance of religion to Americans, and he believes in the power of religion to do good. But he, like the founding fathers, does not look favorably upon a religious group that would like to create the nation in its image.
So to anyone who thinks that fortune is smiling on USCCB or the Family Research Council or Concerned Women for America, I have this to say: Obama will not let women down. He has the opportunity, and the inclination, to increase funding for health clinics and to change the way abortion providers are treated in this country. And maybe a few years from now, or at least sometime in my lifetime, abortion won’t be a dirty word.
]]>once (or was it only once?) botched a late-term abortion, causing the woman to go into labor and deliver a live baby. So, as any good abortion provider would, he asked the accidental mother if he should "finish the job" and then stabbed the live baby in the head with a pair of scissors. We learn this from the nurse who attended the homicide, then subsequently left the clinic and went to work in a neo-natal unit at a hospital, symbolically converted to the pro-life cause. No one representing the New York criminal justice system ever thinks to ask this nurse why she didn't, you know, report the murder she witnessed. The important thing, obviously, is that the experience changed her heart.
The myth of the born-alive fetus has long been a weapon in the pro-life arsenal. Earlier this year, the South Carolina State House passed a “born alive” bill, requiring that in the case of a botched abortion in which a baby is born alive, every effort must be made to keep the baby alive.Of course, abortions are nearly always performed on fetuses that could not be born because they’re not even close to being alive. And if a (very) late-term abortion goes wrong, and somehow birth happens instead, doctors are already required to care for the newborn.
You see, for OB/GYNs, the boundaries are clear. A baby is a baby, and a fetus is a fetus. The anti-choice movement wants to argue that this isn’t the case—hence the use of words like “genocide” and “baby-killer.” As of The Curvature points out, the unnecessary and redundant bill was part of an effort to fortify negative associations about the abortion procedure, women who have it, and doctors who perform it. The bill legitimizes the myth of the baby-killing doctor and seizes upon a fictional abortion scenario to imply that, even if the abortion is first-trimester and the fetus is palm-sized, it’s a slippery slope from abortion to murder. And the kind of people involved with abortion—doctors, women, activists—are so morally reprehensible that they can’t be trusted to observe the boundaries between a legal medical procedure and a crime.
“Born alive” bills are also a way for anti-choice legislators to gang up on their pro-choice colleagues by reframing the debate as “pro-baby” vs. “anti-baby.” (It’s similar to the way that a legislator who votes to change a draconian drug sentencing law is accused of being a friend to drug dealers.) When Obama voted against Illinois’s Born Alive Infant Protection Act as a state senator, it was incoherently used against him during the Presidential campaign—one of Jill Stanek’s claims was that Obama believed that a woman “alone should decide whether her baby lives or dies.” Women do not have that right in the United States, and Obama certainly didn’t think they should. But the substitution of “baby” for “fetus” in the debate over born-alive bills is just another way for opponents of abortion to derail the abortion debate by blurring the lines between abortion and infanticide.
In short, these bills bring the gruesome allegations of the pro-life fringe into mainstream political debate. And now, thanks to Law & Order, into mainstream TV.
Last Friday’s episode gives troubling credence to the argument favored by defenders of abortion-doctor killers, in what Harding calls “ the moral of this episode”:
The question of whether it's morally correct to kill a living human being just for doing his job actually cannot be separated from the question of whether it's morally correct to terminate a pregnancy!
Taking on the ethics of abortion in a television series is great—but the ridiculous “born alive” tale of the baby-stabbing doctor has nothing to do with the ethics of abortion.
]]>The program is broadcast by four stations throughout Iowa on Saturdays, and a 15-minute drama, directed by Tony Meneses, is followed by a 45-minute question and answer session that refers listeners to health care providers and community organizations.
Meneses, who is Mexican-American, says that “unintended pregnancy often isn’t a topic of conversation” in Hispanic communities. That silence perpetuates not only the burden of unplanned pregnancy among Latina women, but also the transmission of HIV and other STIs. A 2006 study found that, in California, the rate of HIV among Latina women was twice as high as the rate among white, non-Latina women, and that almost a third of all HIV-positive women in the country are Latina.
But while stigma within the community may make it more difficult to address sexual health, a more significant obstacle is economic inequality, as a September report from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health points out. The report cites research that finds that a young woman’s neighborhood matters: in an area with higher median household income and better access to family planning services, more adolescent women use contraception. Unfortunately, Latinas are disproportionately likely to live in areas with few family planning clinics.
Latinas are also less likely to delay pregnancy because they don’t see college a realistic option for them:Many women and men delay childbirth to finish their education, but a disproportionate number of Latino youth leave high school, and many others simply cannot afford the cost of university tuition. For low income adolescents with fewer opportunities, early childbirth is “less costly in terms of opportunities lost.” Indeed, research indicates that being in school, doing well in school while one is there, and believing that one will be able to continue on to college are all protective against early childbearing.
And there’s a simpler reason why young Latinas are less likely to use contraception: one in five has no health insurance. (And the health care obstructionists on Capitol Hill would like to keep it that way.)
It’s clear that it’s not only Latina women who need attention, but also the systems around them, most notably public education and health care. According to another study, the rate of unintended pregnancy among Latinas is more than twice that of white, non-Hispanic teens. And, as the article in the Iowa City Press-Citizen points out, teenagers aren’t the only ones affected by unplanned pregnancy: women whose families are complete are often surprised by a pregnancy:
Unintended pregnancy includes mistimed conceptions, a pregnancy that is sooner than planned, and unwanted conceptions, including after a woman has decided to not have any more children.
Iowa’s radio program is valuable in that it helps women make the most of resources in their communities—whether they’re the urban communities of Des Moines or Waterloo or the rural communities that make up much of the state.
]]>Kristine, of Tacoma, Washington, has been married for three years and is pregnant for the second time. She says that natural family planning
“teaches a man and a woman to develop a mindset of ordering their lives according to God’s Providence — discerning whether or not they are able financially, emotionally, or physically able to get pregnant each month.”
The first part of this statement reflects a basic Catholic idea (and one shared by many religions): seeking to understand what God wants you to do. But the second part is harder to parse. Kristine seems to be saying that NFP helps her and her husband discern whether God believes that the couple is financially, emotionally, or physically able to get pregnant. But NFP involves charting a woman’s body temperature, along with other indicators of ovulation, to figure out when she’s ovulating, and abstaining from sex then. This is a little more taxing than taking a pill or using a condom, and a lot less effective (it has a 12 to 25 percent failure rate), but it’s still a means of attempting to prevent pregnancy when you don’t want to get pregnant. Sounds like reproductive choice, not God’s Providence.
The way NFP is different, of course, is that you exercise this choice by abstaining from sex, rather than using a device or hormone. The latter, according to Kristine:
separates the two meanings of the procreative act — unitive and procreative — and thus sex becomes disordered.
If sex does not always express both a couple’s love for each other and their desire to reproduce, it’s “disordered”—a spiritual mess. But here’s the rub, and here’s why NFP feels disingenuous to me: when a couple is practicing NFP, they are not interested in getting pregnant. So when they’re having sex during the other, presumably non-ovulating times of the month, their sex is still non-procreative. They’re having sex, but they don’t want to have children. That’s why they abstained during ovulation.
To me, NFP seems, like annulment, to be a loophole created when the Catholic Church recognized that even its very faithful could not possibly live according to every aspect of the Church’s vision. Not every marriage works out, and not every married couple wants to be constantly reproducing.
The Couple to Couple League of Chicago, which offers classes in sympto-thermal family planning, claims that NFP is 99 percent effective. Others disagree, and, regardless of statistics, it’s easy to see how body temperature might vary independently of ovulation (when you’re coming down with a virus, when you’re stressed out, when you’re drinking). I guess that’s where God’s Providence comes in.
]]>This post was changed on October 14th, 2009 at 2:45 pm to correct a mistake. The corrected sentences now read:
"The survey found that only 21 percent of Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all cases. At the same time, 50 percent of all respondents believe that health insurance policies, whether they are private or government-supported, should cover abortions “whenever a woman and her doctor decide it is appropriate.”"
Catholics for Choice recently surveyed American Catholics on the issue of health care reform, and, lo and behold, the Catholic hierarchy is not in line with Catholics. Many Catholic bishops have voiced unconditional opposition to any bill that “funds” abortion, and a recent letter sent to Senators by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops outlines admirable goals for affordable, universal health care—only after demanding that abortion not be a part of anyone’s health plan. Catholics, many of whom are pro-life, have different priorities, with 68 percent of respondents disagreeing with the idea that Catholics should oppose the entire health care reform plan if it includes coverage for abortions. The survey breaks down “health care reform,” words which have acquired so much baggage as to become inscrutable to some people, into its essential components in an attempt to clarify the debate.
Jon O'Brien of Catholics for Choice discusses his organization's recent survey that shows strong support among Catholic laity for access to basic reproductive health services condemned by the Catholic hierarchy.
Lowering health care costs was the highest national priority for 37 percent of survey respondents, making it the second-highest issue, after improving the economy. Improving public education, cutting taxes, and resolving the war in Afghanistan all came behind the cost of health care. And 73 percent either strongly favor or somewhat favor “a new government plan that would make health insurance available to people who do not already have it.” Insurance for the uninsured, lower costs—sounds like what Obama has been saying all along. But for some reason, the survey found, people haven’t been hearing him. As opposed to the 73 percent above, only 52 percent of people strongly agree or somewhat agree with “President Obama’s ideas about how we should change the nation’s health care system.”
In their analysis of the survey, Catholics for Choice suggests that the fault lies with Obama—that the President hasn’t been able “to make an effective argument for the American public, including Catholics.” While this may be true—perhaps, as Matt Bai has argued, Obama needs to more directly address Americans’ antipathy towards bureaucracy—Obama has worked hard to articulate his ideas, and he’s a man who knows how to communicate. I’m hesitant to blame Obama for the damage done by the summer’s conservative campaign against health care, which disfigured the debate beyond recognition.
It seems to me that people are wary of an idea of health care reform—a system in which the government makes decisions instead of doctors, in which various questionable practices, some you might not even know about, are funded by the government or, worse, practiced on you without your knowledge or consent. But when you talk to them, people are in favor of lowering the cost of health care. They’re in favor of providing coverage to those who have none, either because they’re good-hearted or because they realize that we, the taxpayers, are paying for their health care already.
The Catholics for Choice survey supports the idea that the majority of Americans (in the survey, almost three-quarters) are in favor of health care reform much in the way that Obama has proposed it, without necessarily claiming to support Obama’s plan. While the right wing has done a great deal to confuse people about health care reform, I’ve been particularly dispirited by the Catholic Church’s recent jump aboard the bandwagon. And the most interesting elements of the survey, to me, are those that probe the question of the Catholic hierarchy’s involvement in the health care debate. Sixty-eight percent of respondents somewhat or strongly disapprove of U.S. Catholic Bishops position that all Catholics should oppose the entire health care reform plan if it includes coverage for abortions. It is not surprising that Catholics feel puzzled and betrayed by their leadership’s desertion of health care, an issue that’s been central to the Church in the past.
The survey found that only 21 percent of Catholics believe abortion should be legal in all cases. At the same time, 50 percent of all respondents believe that health insurance policies, whether they are private or government-supported, should cover abortions “whenever a woman and her doctor decide it is appropriate.” This is one of the survey’s most valuable findings—that is, you don’t have to be “pro-choice” in any traditional political sense to believe in a woman’s right to choose an abortion, regardless of the circumstances of her pregnancy, or to that insurance should cover this medical procedure.
America is a country in which we acknowledge that we can’t think for others. This was an idea central to the founding of our country, and it’s a way of thinking that we’re still good at, as bad as things look sometimes.
Moreover, even if some Catholics don’t believe in abortion and don’t believe that any health plan should cover abortion, these Catholics don’t necessarily wish to sacrifice health care reform for these beliefs, as shown by the respondents’ opposition to the Catholic hierarchy’s all-or-nothing approach. Our country promises religious freedom, and much of our great social progress has been informed by religious philosophies. Health care reform could be the next example of this. Perhaps Catholic bishops should look to their flock for a reminder of how religion does what it does best; that is, to fight suffering, degradation, and despair.
]]>Now that contraception and abortion are safe and legal in many (though by no means all) places, we see children as troublesome inconveniences, says the Cardinal, who is Chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Ah yes, back when children could legally toil in coal mines and mills—that was when we truly respected our young.
Rigali was responding to what he perceives as the “funding of abortion” in all current health care reform proposals. He says,
“It should not be surprising that the neglect, and even the death, of some people are offered as a solution to rising health care costs. Population control advocates have long espoused aborting children in the developing world as a misguided means for reducing poverty.”
And it should not be surprising that Rigali sends the discussion careening towards population control when we were supposed to be talking about health care for Americans. The “neglect, and even the death of some people” is not on the horizon, as Cardinal Rigali supposes—it’s already happened. People have experienced dehumanizing neglect and, yes, people have died because they don’t have health coverage.
Cardinal Rigali also encourages Americans to fix our economy by having more children. As this argument is full of holes, he doesn’t lean on it too heavily, portraying himself, instead, as a crusader against death:
"Death is not a solution to life's problems. Only those who are blind to the transcendent reality and meaning of human life could support killing human beings to mitigate economic, social or environmental problems."
I wonder, is Cardinal Rigali a crusader against the death penalty? You’ll find his name nestled up against “pro-life” plenty of times, but defending the lives of assumed criminals doesn’t seem to be a high priority for him. He did mention the death penalty in a statement in 2004, which discussed a Catholic’s civic duty—that is, to think as a Catholic and to vote as a Catholic. He says, “The role of Catholics in politics. . .is to have a voice on policies that reflect the truths of the natural law.”
Fair enough. Cardinal Rigali sets forth some of the policy issues in which the Church is most interested, including abortion, stem cell research, euthanasia, the death penalty, gay marriage, poverty, workers’ rights, peace, and the environment. And then he gets to his point:
Not all these issues are of equal gravity. Prudent judgments made by thoughtful Catholics can lead to different legitimate approaches to solving the problems of poverty, immigration, healthcare and acceptable military force. Some issues, however, because they lie at the foundation of society and address fundamental aspects of what it means to be human, must be considered first and foremost.
As Catholics we revere life and find the destruction of innocent human life abhorrent. Abortion is an act evil in itself because a fetus in the womb is a complete human being in the process of development. The person is innocent and defenseless from attack. Since abortion destroys this life, it is intrinsically evil. In a similar way embryonic stem cell research by its nature destroys a fertilized egg – an embryo – that would otherwise mature until birth. Regardless of putative benefits to medical science, the cost is the destruction of innocent human life.
Let’s be clear. It may be confusing to you to vote “as a Catholic,” because “Catholic” positions on abortion, contraception, embryonic issues and gay marriage are usually found in one party, while the “Catholic” line on war, poverty, and health care is inconveniently reflected in the other party. But listen: those other issues—war, poverty, whatever—are not that important.
And what about the death penalty? In the statement, Rigali claims (italics his),
As Catholics, we hold in highest priority the right to life and our duty to defend innocent human life. This principle applies directly to the protection of unborn children as well as to the Church ’s opposition to embryonic stem cell research, cloning, assisted suicide and euthanasia.
He goes on (italics mine),
On a different level, we also vigorously oppose the death penalty. Although it does not involve the taking of innocent human life, we consider it cruel and unnecessary for the defense of society, an affront to human dignity.
Not innocent—in whose eyes? For a man who purportedly believes that God is our only judge, Cardinal Rigali is unexpectedly deferential to the judgment of the state and to its power to kill.
In a way, I admire Rigali for being so honest about his priorities. High-ranking Catholics often claim to care about the death penalty, when it’s clear that their sympathies lie with fetuses over purported murderers. But Rigali is as clear as he can be without directly defying Church teaching: "People on death row are guilty. I’m not going to say they deserve what’s coming to them, but you catch my drift.” Abortion is “abhorrent”; the death penalty—murder—is only “unnecessary.” Prevention of assisted suicide is more important than the prevention of heart disease, HIV, or diabetes, and fighting gay marriage is more crucial than fighting poverty.
I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that this statement was released the week before the 2004 election. Cardinal Rigali’s manipulation of Catholic morality to bring it perfectly in line with Republican policy was disgusting and embarrassing five years ago, and it’s just as repugnant today, when our country is finally making strides on something the Catholic Church has long advocated for: health care as a right, not a privilege.
]]>The FDA first approved Next Choice for prescription use in June, and in August, the drug’s manufacturer, Watson Pharmaceuticals, announced that it would be available over the counter. (You can read Next Choice’s drug facts here.)
News to me. I couldn’t find anything on Next Choice in the New York Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post, or the Boston Globe. Perhaps the media is experiencing EC fatigue after this spring’s ruckus (only the latest skirmish in a years-long fight)—or contraception advocates are keeping quiet so as not to attract the attention of the crazies.
But generic EC is an important development, as Nancy Ratzan, President of the National Council of Jewish Women reminds us (via the Feminist Majority Foundation):
"Despite recent efforts to increase access to emergency contraception, cost is still a barrier for many women...all women, regardless of age, income, religion, race or geographic location should have access to the full range of contraceptive options. The introduction of a generic for Plan B is an important step toward achieving that important goal."
EC is a vital component of reproductive health, the more pharma companies that get in on the act, the better. Our mothers probably never imagined the cornucopia of hormonal contraceptives we’d have to choose from—not only pills (over a hundred brands), but also patches and rings. Granted, the formula for EC is probably less variable than that of the daily pill. But competition is good for our health and our wallets. Next Choice is going to cost about 10 percent less than Plan B, which is a good start. And however contentious the EC debate remains, emergency contraception itself must not be ignored.
]]>The article explores the idea that this trend represents a different kind of teen pregnancy: one that is not necessarily unplanned. Daisy Rodriguez, who had her first child at 19 and is now, at 23, a single mother of two, says, “It’s this need of wanting a family, a longing to have somebody as family...There’s just this numbness of being alone in the world.” And Tashayla Jackson-Shelton, who lived in ten foster homes before she was 18, claims that she stopped using birth control when she “aged out” of the foster system because:
“...you feel free for the first time...And some of us (foster kids) come from not-so-healthy families. You just want someone to love.”
Jackson-Shelton claims that she learned how to prevent pregnancy in middle school and at the group home where she spent some of her teenage years. And the program director of San Antonio’s Baptist Child & Family Services Preparation for Adult Living Youth Center, which seeks to assist the transition from foster care to adult life, says,
Within a year of aging out, they’re pregnant. It’s not that they don’t have information about how to get birth control. I think, from what I’ve heard from them, it’s more about wanting a sense of belonging, a sense of family.
The author of the University of Chicago study, Amy Dworsky, points to a number of conditions that contribute to this high pregnancy rate, including childhood trauma; the desire to be the kind of loving parent they didn’t have; and “a lack of hope.”
The sense that sex education is not working among these young women should not lead us to throw up our hands. Carrying the burden of childhood abuse and neglect, these girls and women present a greater, specific challenge to those who work to prevent teen pregnancy. Lack of love in childhood is difficult, if not impossible, to get past, and so the prevention of teen pregnancy requires not only education, information, and resources, but also counseling and psychological care. Perhaps the most immediate way to address these women’s “lack of hope” is to help them build a future for themselves by giving them access to education and internship programs—by allowing them a glimpse of the world, and of their possible place in it.
Andrea Kane, of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, points out,
The child welfare system is very crisis-driven...There hasn’t been a big focus on prevention. Once a person in care has a child, supports kick in, as they should. But very little has been done on the front end.
Prevention, in this case, isn’t just education and birth control pills. With former foster children, we have to acknowledge the tremendous psychological damage possible in a foster childhood and to try to rebuild the self-worth of these young women. And, indeed, foster youth aren’t the only ones getting pregnant out of a quest for love—loneliness and low self-esteem are factors in many teen pregnancies. So, in many cases, sex education needs to fuse information and contraceptive access with emotional education, so that young women want to make healthy decisions.
]]>The recent trend of refusing Communion to pro-choice politicians is a prime example of how flawed leadership is weakening the Catholic Church. The Post’s "God in Government" blog mentions Sebelius’s “rift with the Catholic church.” Sebelius, I would argue, doesn’t have a rift with the Church—she has a history of disagreement with Joseph Naumann. Though it’s possible that members of Church hierarchy receive pressure from higher-ups in certain cases, Naumann’s stunt is all his own. He was undoubtedly incensed that in a state with so much anti-choice activism, a state in which Operation Rescue has its headquarters, a defender of reproductive rights sat in the Governor’s seat. She flouted him in her public, political life, and then she flouted him in her spiritual life, continuing to receive Communion after he asked her, privately, not to. When Naumann’s informants told him this, he wrote the column condemning her.
The picture we have from this is of a frustrated, angry man who is used to having his way. And I would argue that power, or the perceived threat to it, is behind the Communion police whenever they strike. Earlier this year, an Archbishop at the Vatican who formerly served in St. Louis had to apologize after making a comment that was perceived as a criticism of D.C.-area bishops (the offending Archbishop, Raymond Burke, claims that his remark was taken out of context). Burke was talking to Randall Terry about the question of denying or allowing Joe Biden Communion. At the time, the accused bishops, Donald Wuerl and Paul Loverde, defended their turf:
Wuerl and Loverde say such decisions are up to the bishop within the politician's home diocese.
So the din over whether Joe Biden or Kathleen Sebelius or John Kerry should receive Communion (or Ted Kennedy, now blissfully removed from the debate) is not only a struggle of Catholic hierarchs against politicians who displease them, but also a struggle within the hierarchy itself. It shows, very plainly, where the cracks are.
For now, at least, hierarchy rules: after their scolding last year, the bishops from D.C. and Arlington aren’t taking any chances with their new parishioner from Kansas. They’ve said they will “act in accord with Naumann's wishes.” But so far, they've been much quieter than Naumann, doing their institution a great service.
]]>Failing to test, counsel and treat these inmates makes it more likely that they will spread infection once they are released and suffer catastrophic illnesses that shorten their lives and drive up public health costs.
Sadly, the most persuasive arguments, to many, are those that have nothing to do with the prisoner’s well-being. The Times knows it does well to mention the spread of infection and the cost to the state.
Many people don’t believe that a prisoner has the right to good health and a decent quality of life. It has always been difficult to advocate for prison reform of any sort; as the Times points out, corrections officials “tend to rebel against oversight of just about any kind.”
But apathy or hostility from the public is just as damning to the cause. Many people believe that their tax dollars shouldn’t go towards the health of those behind bars. There’s a sense—not always spoken, but implied—that a person in prison deserves to be there, and therefore doesn’t deserve health care, preventive or otherwise. If a prisoner contracts HIV in prison, that’s his problem. If a prisoner doesn’t always receive her HIV medicine, then maybe she should have done more to stay out of prison in the first place.
Of course, those who object to financial support of prisoners should perhaps advocate for the abolition of prisons, since our tax dollars are already going toward feeding and lodging prisoners. The problem is that life-saving health services are marginalized in the process, as Laura Whitehorn points out in Real Health:
In a 1995 AJPH article, Alan Berkman, MD, said, “Politicians allocate more money to build prisons, but [not] for [prison] health care. The result is less money each year for greater numbers of sick prisoners. The public health implications are obvious.”
Whitehorn also points out that, according to a report that appeared in the American Journal of Public Health this April, prisoners in this country are twice as likely to have HIV as non-prisoners, and 55 percent more likely to have diabetes. HIV/AIDS advocates have long argued for condoms in prisons and have been mostly refused by prison officials, who answer that sex in prison is illegal. Governor Schwarzenegger twice vetoed a California bill that would have allowed health organizations to distribute condoms in prisons, but in 2007, he encouraged the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to develop a pilot program in one prison to try out condom distribution.
We all know how effective the legislation of sex is, and so prevention in prisons is a good step. But inmates also need testing, treatment, and counseling. Reentering public life is difficult enough for a former prisoner—doing so when you’re HIV- or hep C-positive is especially difficult, and this difficulty is felt not only by the former inmate, but by all of us.
]]>
The Minnesota International Health Volunteers Tanzania Child Survival Project, which is funded by USAID, trains locals to educate their peers and respond to health emergencies. The project seeks out those who are central to the Karatu community in different ways: traditional birth attendants and taxi drivers. The traditional birth attendants are trained to lead “Survive and Thrive” groups, which support single mothers and mothers-to-be by encouraging health, nutrition, good parenting, and emotional wellness. The program’s goal is to improve early childhood health and the health of women of childbearing age, and it does this by addressing “maternal newborn care, family planning, malaria, diarrheal diseases and acute respiratory infections.”
MIHV also trains taxi drivers to assist in both prevention and emergency response; since many drivers transport sick people to the hospital, they’re in a crucial position to offer help. But, as taxi drivers, they’re also in a crucial position to reach people who aren’t sick, which is why MIHV decided to make drivers health ambassadors—teaching them how to talk to their passengers and neighbors about good health practices, including HIV prevention, and even having them distribute condoms.
By using the peer-to-peer model, MIHV avoids, or at least reduces, public health obstacles that arise when there’s a culture clash. MIHV’s approach shows respect for the community it serves, and it helps silence the anti-choice criticism of international health work—that women in other countries don’t want access to contraception, that they don’t want to be empowered. In a program like the Tanzania Child Survival Project, the demand for health care is irrefutable, because the locals are delivering the care themselves.
]]>Father, send your Holy Spirit into our hearts. Place within us love that truly gives, tenderness that truly unites, self-offering that tells the truth and does not deceive, forgiveness that truly receives, loving physical union that welcomes.
Open our hearts to you, to each other and to the goodness of your will. Cover our poverty in the richness of your mercy and forgiveness. Clothe us in true dignity and take to yourself our shared aspirations, for your glory, forever and ever. Mary, our mother, intercede for us. Amen.
There’s a lot to laugh at, as Ed Brayton points out in his parsing of the prayer. But his final joke gets at something serious:
The Catholics have done enough for sex by A) making it dirty and naughty, and B) giving us the schoolgirl costume. God bless 'em.
This prayer might actually be an attempt to make sex "less dirty and naughty," or, at least, an attempt by the Church to relate to sex in a more positive way. The prayer is only intended for married couples, of course (though I doubt it is meant to include certain married couples in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa), and the Catholic Church has always sanctioned married love—including married sex—even if they don’t always make a point of discussing it. But this prayer is notably forward; a British Bishop calls its inclusion “brave but good.”
The prayer reminds me of the debate in other Christian faiths over the way sex should be talked about. Margaret Talbot’s important New Yorker piece from last November, “Red Sex, Blue Sex,” considered the argument, by a (precious) few in the Evangelical community, that if the church is serious about the sacredness of married love, it should encourage its faithful to think about sex in a healthier way, even if sex is, for the time being, off limits:
The savvy young Christian writer Lauren Winner, in her book “Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity,” writes, “Rather than spending our unmarried years stewarding and disciplining our desires, we have become ashamed of them. We persuade ourselves that the desires themselves are horrible. This can have real consequences if we do get married.” Teenagers and single adults are “told over and over not to have sex, but no one ever encourages” them “to be bodily or sensual in some appropriate way”—getting to know and appreciate what their bodies can do through sports, especially for girls, or even thinking sensually about something like food . . .“the church ought to cultivate ways of teaching Christians to live in their bodies well—so that unmarried folks can still be bodily people, even though they’re not having sex, and so that married people can give themselves to sex freely.”
Can a religion be sex-positive if it limits sex to married, heterosexual couples? I don’t think so. But trying to untangle sex from shame is a good step for Evangelicals or Catholics to take. The pre-sex prayer may or may not do that. What do you think? Is the prayer a silly red herring? Or is it a step toward greater sexual awareness?
]]>The first paragraph of this article was changed at 9:10 pm on September 3, 2009 to correct an inaccurate portrayal of Bishop Pate's original statement, which was not against health reform per se, but against health reform that includes federal funding for abortion care. No bill in Congress includes federal funding for abortion care.
The Catholic News Agency reports that a Des Moines bishop is the latest to join efforts to oppose any health care reform legislation that "includes abortion," despite the fact that no bill in Congress includes federal funding for abortion care. In perpetuating these and other myths about health reform (e.g. that current bills encourage euthanasia) Bishop Pates joins various members of the Catholic hierarchy who have apparently decided to turn their backs on the sick, the poor, and other groups we often hear about in the Catholic Mass.
Last Thursday, the New York Times reported that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is beginning to turn against health care reform, after years of supporting universal health care. While some Catholics have strongly supported health care reform—like Bishop William F. Murphy, who stated in a letter to the President and Congress in July that “Health care...is a fundamental issue of human life and dignity”—others are more interested in fighting for their own interests than in fighting for people’s lives:
“No health care reform is better than the wrong sort of health care reform,” Bishop R. Walker Nickless of Sioux City, Iowa, declared in a recent pastoral letter, urging the faithful to call their members of Congress.
The Catholic News Agency’s report focuses on Bishop Richard Pates. Perplexingly, Bishop Pates speaks at length about the Catholic Church’s responsibility to provide health care. He says:
"Health is among the most fundamental of human needs - right up there with food and shelter. Yet, in many ways, we leave it pretty much to chance, to a health-care ‘system’ that may, or may not, care for us depending on our ability to pay.”
And:
“caring for others was one of Jesus' principal commandments, and Catholics and other Christians have always been involved in providing care. The Sisters of Mercy, for example, established Mercy Hospital in Des Moines in 1893. It's the longest continually operating hospital in the state, and provides care to people of all faiths.”
Yet Bishop Pates is not interested in continuing this tradition. Instead, he’s thrown his support behind a group of obstructionists that includes his fellow Iowan, Nickless, who explains his commitment to “no health care reform” in the following astounding way:
“The Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care,” Bishop Nickless of Sioux City wrote, adding, “Any legislation that undermines the vitality of the private sector is suspect.”
No, Jesus did not say anything about whether or not we should let the 111th Congress pass health care reform. But there are many Catholics who believe that health care reform is a chance to improve the human condition. The Times quotes the acting director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which supports the health care plan. However, the article does not mention a group that has been advocating for health care reform—among many other social justice issues—for over thirty years. NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby, was founded by nuns in 1971 and is now made up of men and women who take seriously teachings that other Catholics seem to have forgotten about. The group lobbies for economic justice, social justice, the environment, and peace. Their knowledgeable and nuanced treatment of health care recognizes the complexity of the issue but argues unequivocally that reform is necessary:
The current state of healthcare in the United States constitutes social sin that must be eradicated through broad and deep engagement of the public conscience.
The health care debate has made it clear—perhaps clearer than anything in a while—that some high-ranking Catholics have forgotten what conscience means. Your moral conscience is not about you; rather, it should guide the way you relate to others, including friends, strangers, and people with whom you agree and disagree. If your moral conscience doesn't urge you to make health care accessible to these people, then your moral conscience is broken.
]]>Terry left Operation Rescue after a legal settlement in 1998 with the National Organization for Women—a sort of permanent restraining order that keeps him away from abortion clinics. (Can we have more of these?) The LA Times story casts Terry as the snake oil salesman of the anti-abortion movement, a charismatic, one-time star who’s been flailing for the past ten years:
Over the last decade, Terry has been a radio talk show host, a Nashville recording artist and a student -- returning to college in New York to study Islam in order to battle Islamist extremism.
He spearheaded an effort against the art photographer Jock Sturges, whose nude photos of adolescents he considers "child pornography." He fought against stem cell research and gay marriage and, in 2006, ran unsuccessfully for the Florida Senate. He also did stints as spokesman for the family of Terri Schiavo, the comatose Florida woman who was the subject of a galvanizing legal battle until she died in 2005.
"You would never have heard of Terri Schiavo if it wasn't for me," said Terry.
The Times also notes that Terry, who was a used-car salesman before he became a crusader for intolerance, recently moved to a suburb of Washington, D.C. to “reestablish himself as a national leader in the antiabortion fight.”
On the subject of his former boss, Troy Newman doesn’t mince words:
"Randall is articulate and convincing," Newman said from Wichita, Kan. "But so are used-car salesmen and cult leaders. He is not a true believer but a charlatan, and a manipulator. . . . He shows up at a national event, makes a flamboyant speech, gets everyone within earshot rattled and then passes the collection plate and moves on."
This looks like a rift that won’t be mended. The dispute sheds light on the way that activism can satisfy a person’s hunger for attention and influence—how it can become a power trip. Terry says, of Newman:
"Why would I let a newcomer with no scars and no history steal my name?"
Such grandiosity has made Terry a liability within the movement. While Newman has been distancing himself from Randall Terry for a while, he had a particular interest in doing so after Terry's infamous comments in the wake of George Tiller's murder.
But according to some in the pro-life community, Newman's distance from Terry is not far enough.
"Operation Rescue is largely a blast from the past, and fairly marginalized in the pro-life movement now," said Marvin Olasky, editor of the World, a generally conservative Christian magazine. "About 20 years ago, the Operation Rescue activities were probably creating more support for abortion overall, and as the pro-life movement recognized that, the emphasis became one of offering compassionate help to women in a crisis," said Olasky. "The group as a whole, and particularly Randy Terry, never made that leap."
Indeed, for all his criticism of Terry, Newman heads an organization that relies on sensationalism and extremism. On Operation Rescue's homepage, a cycling graphic box includes a picture of a bloody "fetus" hand holding a dime, with the caption, "NOT ONE DIME! Stop tax-funded abortion."
Perhaps anti-choice groups are moving away from this visible, aggressive approach—the use of lurid photos and physical and verbal harassment of women and health care workers. But we should be just as wary of what succeeds it. “Compassionate help” is commendable, but in the anti-choice movement, it’s often been a wolf in sheep’s clothing: the same old aggression, intimidation, and falsehood, appearing gentler but just as pernicious.
]]>A stable, modern and functioning Afghanistan is the West's goal. But it is not worth risking the death of one more American or British soldier fighting there unless there is a bold, achievable plan to educate women, enhance their autonomy and meet their need for family planning.
Potts points to the example of Iran, which, though troubled in many ways, has seen an improvement in the way it treats women over the past thirty years. In recent years, the number of women in Iran’s universities has risen considerably. This is due, in large part, to the country’s promotion of contraception:
In the 1980s, the typical Iranian woman had almost as many children as her counterpart in Afghanistan today. . . . The Koran mentions contraception in a positive light, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the religious leader and founder of Iran's Islamic Republic, endorsed family planning. . . .The typical Iranian woman now has 2.1 children.
There’s no doubt that Iran is a politically repressive state, but with its entire population able to seek educational and professional opportunities, rather than just half, it is in a position to be a high-functioning country. Afghanistan is another story. Even if women there were allowed to go to college, many of them wouldn’t get very far when they had an average of seven children to bear, starting very young.
Potts discusses how dramatic population growth feeds terrorism:
One result of rapid population growth is that two-thirds of the Afghan population is below the age of 25. The primary role models for the volatile, testosterone-filled young men in this group are local warlords. The reason Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden (who, incidentally, is the 17th child of a man who had 54 children) have found a haven in Afghanistan is largely because of the mixture of loyalty and anger generated among males in such a society, in which there are no genuine economic opportunities for advancement.
This is true. But the argument I find more compelling is for contraception as one component of women’s empowerment. And as Michelle Goldberg pointed out in the American Prospect last month, women’s empowerment should not be thought of as a luxury for countries that have nothing left to strive for. It’s the other way around; women’s rights are necessary, some development experts believe, in order for a country to become prosperous. When women can choose when and if to have children, they live longer, become educated, and contribute more to society.
The State Department’s webpage on Afghanistan states:
The United States and its international partners remain committed to helping Afghans realize their vision for a country that is stable, democratic, and economically successful, and to an Afghan government committed to the protection of women's rights, human rights, and religious tolerance.
Stability, democracy, and economic development cannot happen without contraception. Obama has demonstrated his support for family planning as a crucial part of international aid, so we have reason to hope that he’ll pay attention to reproductive rights in Afghanistan.
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