Please take a seat in the shaming room...

[ljs_lj]

Originally posted by karma_aster at Please take a seat in the shaming room...
Originally posted by denorios at Please take a seat in the shaming room...
Since a number of US newspapers have refused to republish the latest Doonesbury cartoon strip which highlights the way Republicans are attempting to undermine a woman's right to choose, I feel it's important to make

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

As to the contraceptive issue:

First, Rush Limbaugh is an ass, but that's not news to anyone, right? (I mean, even when he has good points, which he actually does a lot more often than you'd think, he's still an ass. Which, granted, is partly his public persona, but mostly it's because he really is an ass.)

I didn't pay attention to the testimony, because from what I could tell in second-hand discussion everyone on both sides was more interested in demonizing the other side than actually discussing the issue at hand, and my blood pressure didn't need raising.

I think the Roman Catholic church's beliefs about sexuality are theologically wrong and contradict the Bible, but it is their right to believe such things, and asking them to pay for something which directly contradicts their beliefs is a clear violation of their constitutional right to freedom of religion. However, not even the Roman Catholic Church argues against the use of birth control to treat *other* medical conditions, just like Roman Catholic hospitals perform abortions when necessary for the health of the mother. (There have been exceptions to this, but not many.) Should they be required to pay for "birth control" that is used to treat other serious conditions? Yes. Birth control in general? No. The gender of the legislators and those who gave testimony is irrelevant to the fact that it would completely blow the idea of religious freedom out of the water and replace it with "you're free to believe any religious thing you want ... as long as it doesn't offend a large constituency." Again, I do not agree one iota with their beliefs about sex, sexuality, and birth control! But it is their right both to believe that and to live it out.

I think ordering insurance companies to pay for it without charging anyone may be legally defensible, but is economically stupid with the health system we've got. TANSTAAFL--there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody, somewhere, is paying for it, and a large part of the reason our health care system is so broken and insurance is so expensive is that there is already a huge disconnect between services and payment, for a variety of reasons: what you pay for doesn't cover what treatment you get, and vice versa. It is a huge complicated mess, which requires labyrinthine paperwork (and lots of people to do the paperwork, which adds to the expense without contributing to quality of care), and adding an extra layer of disconnect/mess to the top seems to me to be ... less than productive. This doesn't surprise me, however, because in the last ten years I haven't heard any politician of any party or gender suggest an approach to the health care issue that I thought had a chance in hell of actually making things better instead of worse.

[epeeblade]

Not going to get into a debate on this, since I think we're firmly on opposite sides of the issue. Just pointing out that maybe they might want to ask a few women (other than Sandra Fluke who had to fight to give testimony) about something that affects them.

[beatrice_otter]

Yeah, I don't think we're going to agree overall. Would I prefer that birth control was available to all regardless of economic status? Yeah. Do I think that it would have been nice if they'd had more women in on the discussion? Yes, both for your point and also, on a strictly practical level they had to know the Democrats were going to use it to turn this into "Republicans don't care about women!" particularly in an election year. But bottom line, regardless of the genders of the people who testified, access to cheap birth control does not and should not trump basic constitutional rights like the right to freedom of religion. There are a lot of very prestigious law schools that are not Catholic, and there are a lot of places to do social ministry and religious work that aren't Catholic, either, so it isn't like they were trying to (or could) prevent anyone from accessing birth control. (That, I would be 100% against). All they said was, "since it is clearly against our beliefs, we don't want to have to pay for it." Which I think is pretty reasonable, even though I could cite chapter and verse on why I think those beliefs are wrong and misogynistic. And, argh, I was just going to say "yes, let us agree to disagree," only apparently i can't help being long-winded, which isn't exactly news, but still.

Anyway, thank you for being polite and reasonable in discussion, even if we don't agree and aren't going to. I've seen too many "debates" recently that start out with vicious flames about the morals and intelligence of the other side, and descend rapidly from there. And it seems to be people on both sides doing it, while still claiming that they're the ones with the moral high ground. Yeuch.