A catastrophe? Really?

by Ruth Sheets

This evening on “the News Hour,” on PBS, a commentator, Mark Shields, whom I usually find to be lucid and thoughtful, made a comment that really got me thinking.  He said that the current administration’s decision to require insurance companies to fully cover contraception is a catastrophe for President Obama.  He said it was a blow to Catholics everywhere and that they might withdraw their support for Obama in the upcoming election.

I do understand that the Powers that be in the Catholic Church are expected to be outraged about offering women the ability to plan the size of their families and whether or not they will become pregnant.  That’s, of course, supposed to be God’s job, or something like that.  However, I do not see how this should negatively impact rank and file Catholics, regular church goers or not.  Survey after survey finds that Catholic women use contraception at nearly the rates of other women.  This has been true since the late 1960’s.  What is the problem?

Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to use contraception yourself, then deny the service to someone else, someone not even of your own faith the right to have it covered by their insurance? What about the concept that just because it is covered doesn’t mean you have to use it?

Catholics and their Fundamentalist Christian friends hate abortion and want to do everything they can to stamp it out in America.   One of the best ways to do that, it would seem,   is contraception.   But, this is also to be prohibited.  So what is it they actually want?  It seems that they want only married people to have sex.  . 

If you don’t stick to this lifestyle, your punishment is having a baby that you must raise or give up for adoption, even if either choice is unacceptable.  What is more, you have to do it alone with as little support as possible.  “What about the child?” you say.  “The sins of the parents are visited upon the children even to the fourth generation,” or so the Bible says. 

I am so glad that this time, the president and his administration have stood up to the Republican/Conservative bullying.  Just as bullying harms our children, and we must help them stand against it, political bullying harms our country and our people and we must stand against it.  Making more options available for women is not a catastrophe.

I hope the president and his Secretary of Health and Human Services do not back down on this one.  If those Catholics Mr. Shields evokes can’t see that the world needs some new broader thinking in the 21st Century if they and the rest of us are to survive, it is unlikely that neither Obama or any other thoughtful person will be able to reach them.  We may just have to leave them to the Romney’s and Gingrich’s of the country.  Those guys don’t have any vision or concern for the needs and rights of women either.