On Feb. 10, President Obama announced a new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services policy that would require religious affiliated institutions to cover all birth control contraceptives for their employees. This policy created a public battle about how far government involvement should go and the role that religious freedom should play in health care.
After an outcry from the Catholic Church saying that this new mandate was a violation of religious freedom, Obama offered a compromise on Feb. 11, which would require insurers to provide contraception to female employees instead of their religious employers. While keeping religious liberty is essential to our democracy, so is the right for women to access contraception.
Providing contraception to women without a co-payment and a deductible can ensure that women are covered in the case of an unplanned pregnancy and other medical reasons, such as an ovarian cyst or menstrual cramps that would lessened by using birth control pills.
Employers shouldn’t judge whether women are acting morally or immorally because they take birth control for any reason. Rather, that’s a decision that women should make themselves.
Although this is an issue about women’s health, women have not recently been able to get their voices heard concerning contraceptives that affect them.
In a Republican-organized policy committee hearing in mid-February, the panel of five witnesses was made up of all men, and the GOP refused to allow Sandra Fluke, a female Georgetown University law student, to participate. U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., called this omission “an assault on women” on the Senate floor.
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“What does that make her?” Limbaugh said during his radio show. “It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception.”
This kind of name-calling is wrong. Men should not be able to judge and decide women’s health matters. Women are in charge of their bodies and their family planning.
“They don’t think women should have the right to have [birth control],” Boxer said during a Democratic panel. “Not one of them suggested that men shouldn’t have their Viagra.”
The new policy goes into effect in January 2013, but between now and then, government, church, and men will continue to argue over what they believe is best for women’s health.
This should not be a battle between political parties or the power balance between church and state. All women should get to speak their own minds, regardless of whether they support birth control or not, and make their own choices.
Access to contraceptives access is an important right that all people should have in this country. This shouldn’t be a battle about who should have a say in what women are entitled to—that’s an easy thing to figure out: Women should have that say.
