The fact that Sandra Fluke’s testimony didn’t contain anything about her personal need for contraceptives, but was rather a story about a friend of hers whose health insurance didn’t provide the birth-control pills that would have saved her from the disastrous effects of a hormone-related disorder, is interesting but not essential. Also, the fact that Rush Limbaugh, as Rachel Maddow and others pointed out, seemingly doesn’t understand how hormonal birth control works (he seemed to be under the impression that a woman takes a pill EVERY TIME she has sex, which explains to some degree his exasperation that she was running out so quickly) isn’t quite the main problem here either.
The religious institutions who are standing up in opposition to measures which force them to pay for their employees to get contraception through their insurance argue that this is a violation of the rights of religious conscience, of the rights for religious bodies to abstain (so to speak) from going against their own moral teachings. How they have decided which biblical laws to follow and which to ignore is another matter. But the argument is thus: The State cannot impose upon them any requirements which are not in accordance with their morality.
Now before we go any further, let’s just make sure we are on the same page; these are churches we are talking about. They get several allowances from the government, most famous among these being the right to pay zero taxes. However, religious organizations play a huge role in funding and mobilizing political movements and weighing in on hot-button issues. In many cases they go so far as to pour church coffers into one side or the other of a political battle, as many Christian churches did during the Proposition 8 referendum in California which abolished gay marriage.
But that same allowance of not paying any taxes comes with a catch—churches are not to be actively influential in politics. However, it seems that these days this is the primary function of religious organizations. They act as God’s lobbying firm, reaching across all borders to spread theology (and dollars) and concentrate the religious-minded into a single- and simple-minded army of values voters. These pious zombies have in fact congregated in such numbers in one party, the GOP, that some scholars such as Howard Fineman have even suggested that the current Republican Party is the first Religious Party in America.
There is common ground between the religious faithful and the economic libertarian factions in America—they don’t want the fruits of their labors to fund the welfare of others. It’s a classic “what’s mine is mine” mentality. The religious argument is thus: “Our morality forbids us to use condoms and birth-control. Therefore the government is coercing us and infringing on our morals by forcing us to provide contraception for our employees. This is unconstitutional and immoral.”
The economic libertarian argument is more familiar: “The money I make is mine and I don’t want to spend taxes on helping someone with life choices I didn’t sign off on.”
Both of these arguments concern the legality of forced participation. Of course, we are forced to pay taxes of all kinds all the time to fund things we didn’t PERSONALLY sign off on or condone. This is a basic aspect of a representative government. But the heat of the argument has been cranked up (at least recently) on the issue of women’s reproductive health. For the Church it is as if this return to the womb is a never-ending saga; and seeing sexuality as sinful and bad is a theme in American history and in our social makeup that just won’t die.
To me at least it seems strange how little respect the churches have for the vaunted notion of freewill, which is what makes sin possible in the first place. The rule of Law in the U.S. can decree any number of things, horrible or wonderful or banal. The Church will always exist in this sphere of worldliness and both influence it and be influenced by its goings on. In some ways there is an implicit cooperation with any and all laws that exist in the secular society surrounding it. For example, if Congress wages a very unjust war, the congregation will almost certainly (unless they are Quakers or Jains) be made up by people who in some way support the war by tax dollars or even by soldiers who will go to fight and kill innocents in that war. Is this war a direct moral imposition on the Church? If so, then EVERYTHING must be considered as such. However, the members of the churches will acknowledge that they have the freewill to participate directly or not to. That is, they can CHOOSE to go to war or object to it; choose to help politicians who sponsored the war or protest against them, etc. Freewill is at the heart of a moral decision, at least theologically, according to Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. Can’t they apply this distinction to the contraception issue as well? Even if churches are forced to provide their employees with insurance covering birth control pills (I know, it’s SUCH an immoral idea, right?) the women with coverage don’t HAVE to use the pills if they see it as sinful. The temptations of the world abound. Jesus talked about rich and selfish people not getting into heaven, but I don’t see Christians burning money and raging on soapboxes against wealth disparity.
Religious factions seem to be vying to have more public power, to return America to some bygone days where Christianity was the law of the land, even though such a time never existed in American history. At the same time they want exemption from following the laws. In essence, they only want to follow the laws that are Christian, that have been created by them in their image. It is the same as asking for a parallel system of laws, similar to some European societies that tolerate Sharia Law alongside Common Law and Parliamentary Law.
It becomes a huge matter of sovereignty though when crucial issues such as women’s reproductive health are at stake. Who has to follow the rules and who gets to make up their own? And to return to the connection between the “don’t tread on me” libertarians and the “lead us not into temptation” religious folks, the common denominator is about excluding their respective groups from participation in the experiment of social togetherness.
Lest it seem that this essay is a call for everyone to cover everyone else for all their problems, I want to end with some questions and not a call to action. I believe that questions of entitlement programs, welfare, healthcare, wealth disparity, fairness, independence, and the like are all issues that exist for a reason. People do disagree on them vehemently. I DO wish that we could embrace or at least look to other economic models such as those in Canada and Europe regarding government programs. But I will save those arguments for another time. The issues are complex and bear analyzing—to be sure, there are also enormous problems that can arise out of a rampant welfare state.
But the hot-button issue I started with was with Rush Limbaugh, who figures squarely into the “don’t tread on me” camp. Aside from his hateful, intimidating misogynistic language (which though it shouldn’t be ignored doesn’t in itself provide the other side with valid REASONS to put across-the-board coverage of contraception into insurance plans) his ignorance about healthcare and women’s health highlights the more general issue an issue of providing services to people in our society who aren’t like us and whose needs are hard for us to see as worthy of our tax dollars.
Here are some questions and thoughts that come to my mind:
- Regarding socialized medicine and other government initiatives, is it the principle of the thing or the pragmatic value of the policy that’s more important? If offering contraceptives turns out to save our economy money and help fix some aspects of our healthcare system, are the moral objectives valid? Does the end justify the means?
-Rush Limbaugh later compared his buying contraceptives for women to buying running shoes for aspiring athletes. Is this an absurd comparison? Where does entitlement stop and personal obligation begin?
-Do women need to be included among the panel of religious leaders discussing religious objections to birth control? Do these leaders have some kind of authority over what IS religious, or rather just what their particular dogma says about religious precepts?
-Are the extreme conservatives like Rick Santorum straight up crazy when it comes to their views about abortion and contraception?
-Do you think “life begins at conception”? If so, does this necessarily impact laws about abortion? If a fetus is a “life” then isn’t aborting even a rape baby a form of murder? (This is the logical extension that has led Santorum to his outrageous conclusions.)
-Is it part of the definition of a “good society” to create better social welfare laws? Or is society better served by enforcing laws and letting markets be? Can you see any detriments to welfare policies? Examples of systemic welfare state failures? Examples of truly free market societies?
-Are all of these issues moot because the Federal Reserve and a small handful of elite world tycoons control the apparatuses of power and pull the puppet strings to control every negative aspect of domestic and foreign policy we see around us? *painful grimace*
Please weigh in with any thoughts.
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