If you've been on Facebook this past week, I know you saw this photo:
Every pro-"women's rights" guru, including some Catholic women that I know, were asking "What is wrong with this photo?" Fueled by the vitriol that is Planned Parenthood, everyone wondered aloud where the women were at.
All I can say is, get real! The testimonies of these religious leaders were for a specific purpose: religious liberty. They didn't want to hear from pro-contraceptive women why birth control was "necessary". They didn't want to hear from good Catholic women why contraception was bad. The heart of the HHS mandate has really little to do with women. It has everything to do with religious liberty, particularly for Catholic religious liberty, in the good old U.S. of A.
The bitter cynical side of me (most days my better half) would simply posit the question: can any of you who take issue with the above photo know of at least ONE woman who is a Catholic AND on birth control? Do you know at least ONE Catholic couple who contracepts? Do you know of at least ONE Catholic woman who has had an abortion? If you can answer yes to even one of these questions, then you are totally off base with the tired "women's rights" argument here. I am an ordinary American Catholic. Not good. Not bad. Just trying. And I know for a fact that I attend Church every weekend with just as many contracepting women as I would encounter at my local mall. I could argue the moral implications here, but if you go to Church, you should know these teachings anyway, so I'll save my breath. The point is, morality aside, these women have ready access to the contraception they're on. There are multiple resources in our nation for any woman who wants access to contraception. There are governmental agencies and funds available for any woman who supposedly "needs" contraception and also "needs" financial help to secure said contraception. Even while its immoral, women have access to birth control, Catholic or not.
The fight doesn't end here. 40 years ago, the fight to secure contraception was meant to be between a woman and her physician. "Keep your Rosaries off my ovaries" was a mantra chanted by those who "wanted to be liberated" from the confines of society and traditional marriage. Well now, this same woman and her physician are turning on the collar. Women and physicians who see the "moral good" in contraception are turning on the Church and attempting to force Catholics everywhere to pay for contraception. Women like Kathleen Sibelius and Sr. Carol Keehan, both Catholic, are insisting that the Catholic Church go against its moral code and pay for contraception, sterilizations, and abortifacients. "My body my choice" means there's no other option for the Body of Christ.
I would just like to point out the irony here. The birth control movement was lead by feminists who believed that birth control was the only way to empower women. To make women free of the confines of motherhood and pregnancy. To make women strong independent contributors to society like their male counterpoints. And now the birth control movement is insisting that women need to be dependent on the government for their...Birth control???
No! This is not about access to birth control for women. This is about taking birth control and making it as morally acceptable as homosexual marriage has become. As morally acceptable as cohabitation has become. It is saying that sexual freedom trumps religious freedom. We have to accept that women are going to contracept. We can no longer accept that contraception is a moral wrong and that it is a detriment to civil society. That is why this HHS mandate is so dangerous, and so very wrong. That same little pill has been the elephant in the Catholic Church since
Humane Vitae was written. It has kept the Catholic Church out of a majority of Catholic bedrooms. And it is now the Trojan horse (no pun intended) with which the government of the United States is riding in to conquer the Catholic Church in America.
